Hanna's Suitcase by Karen Levine

"Once there was a little girl named Hana Brady. She lived in Czechoslovakia with her beloved family. She liked to ski cross-country with her brother and play with her wolfhound and her fluffy, white kittens. She helped her father at the family’s general store. More than 50 years later, a suitcase with her name on it was sent to an education center in Japan. School children learned all about Hana and what happened to her during the Holocaust, a story told with words and photos in Hana’s Suitcase." For some audio - check out - http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/hanas-suitcase-a-tragic-story-from-the-holocaust-with-a-message-of-hope  This is a wonderful book for anyone interested in this time in history.  Powerful!

One by Kathryn Otoshi

An intriguing story - here is the author reading her book http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TGaDSMAS1E  The author has a fun website as well -  http://www.kokidsbooks.com/  You can listen to the book as well - http://utbtkids.com/2009/08/16/one/
Kathryn Otoshi's One is a great resource for teaching about bullying, but there is more to this book. "If someone is mean and picks on me, I, for One, stand up and say No." It has great watercolor illustrations. Many books about bullying are too preachy and feel false, but One is certainly a clever one that stands out.

Claudette Colvin by Phillip Hoose

A  book by Phillip Hoose, "Claudette Colvin, Twice Toward Justice," describes how the girl stood her ground, yelling, "It's my constitutional right" as the cops pulled her off the bus, threw her into the back of a cop car, and handcuffed her through the window. In Hoose's telling, a teacher named Geraldine Nesbitt had emboldened her students, teaching them about the 14th Amendment. "It just so happens they picked me at the wrong time—it was Negro History Month, and I was filled up like a computer," Colvin tells NEWSWEEK, "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman, the other".

Check out this biography when you start to intoduce or review the ideas of civil rights.

Groundhog Day 2011 

Groundhog Day is February 2nd. It is said that if the groundhog sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of bad weather, and if he doesn't, that spring will be here soon. Here are some activities, a quiz and other things to keep your little ones (and not so little) busy. http://holidays.kaboose.com/ground-hog-day/   

Here are some "little known facts" http://wilstar.com/holidays/grndhog.htm   

46.6 days until Spring!

March 20, 2011