New Christmas Books

The Night Before Christmas - illustrated by Jan Brett
Presents the well-known poem about an important Christmas visitor.

The Nutcracker - Susan Jeffer
An abridged version of the story of Marie Stahlbaum, who helps break the spell on her toy nutcracker and watches it change into a handsome prince.

New YA Books

Gateway - Sharon Shinn
While passing through the Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, a Chinese American teenager is transported to a parallel world where she is given a dangerous assignment.


Breathless - Jessica Warman
At boarding school, Katie tries to focus on swimming and becoming popular instead of the painful memories of her institutionalized schizophrenic older brother.

New Children's and YA Books

The Twelve Days of Christmas - Gennady Spirin
On each of the twelve days of Christmas, unusual and fanciful gifts arrive to celebrate the season.

Under the Snow - Melissa Stewart
A journey through the fields, forests, ponds and wetlands to see how animals survive in the snowy winter months, and when the sun's rays grow stronger, join all the animals as they get ready for springtime.

Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia - Brandon Sanderson
When Alcatraz and Grandpa Smedry make a pilgrimage to the Free Kingdom city of Crystallia, they are shocked to find the city under seige by the Evil Librarians--led by Alcatraz's own mother.

Peter and the Sword of Mercy - Dave Barry
James, one of Peter's original Lost Boys, is now working for Scotland Yard and suspects that the heir to England's throne, Prince Albert Edward, is under the influence of shadow creatures who are after starstuff hidden in an underground vault which has only one key: the Sword of Mercy. Molly is determined to help, but when she suddenly goes missing, it's up to her eleven-year-old daughter, Wendy, to keep the starstuff out of the creatures' clutches ... and Peter Pan may be her only hope in saving the world from a shadowy doom.

The Twilight Zone: Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up - Mark Kneece
Bus passengers stranded in a diner during a snowstorm become suspicious that someone there is really a Martian from an unidentified flying object that has been reported in the area.

The Small Adventures of Popeye and Elvis - Barbara O'Connor
In Fayette, South Carolina, the highlight of Popeye's summer is learning vocabulary words with his grandmother until a motor home gets stuck nearby and Elvis, the oldest boy living inside, joins Popeye in finding the source of strange boats floating down the creek.

November 2009 Newsletter

Children's and Young Adult Literature Database Enhancement

When the Children's and YA Literature Database first went online in May 2006, it included just over 1500 titles.  As of this writing, it now contains 5668 titles.  Because of the increased size of the database, users were getting a very long list of hits for some searches.  For example, searching for realistic fiction (without including a reading level) returns 815 titles, a rather daunting search result.  Although users have always been able to limit their searches by selecting reading levels, a new way to limit searches has been added to the search screen.  Thanks to Kyle Linden of the Computer Services department, users can now limit their searches by publication year.  Doing a search for realistic fiction with a publication year of 2009 returns a much more workable list of 47 titles.  So for users who want to know what the latest books are, limiting by year will prove to be very useful!

Website of the Month

Blogging is becoming more popular by the day, and the world of children's and young adult literature is certainly part of the blogging revolution.  The website KidLitosphere Central contains a list of some of the most popular blogs about children's and YA literature.  It's a long list, so here's a few selected ones to get you started:

Collecting Children's Books

The Brown Bookshelf

100 Scope Notes

New Materials

Additions to the CMC in October included a large number of fiction and nonfiction trade books, new health posters, an in-depth September 11 curriculum, and several new math and science DVDs.  Click here to see the complete list.

New YA Book

Vanishing Girl - Shane Peacock
In broad daylight, a high society girl vanishes on a crowded street. Days pass, then weeks; the daring abduction remains an impenetrable mystery, without a ransom note, a single clue, or even public information. The moment young Sherlock Holmes reads about it, he knows that it's the case that will make his name.

New Activity and Idea Books

The complete learning disabilities handbook : ready-to-use strategies & activities for teaching students with learning disabilities
An overview of the field of learning disabilities -- Research in the field of learning disabilities -- Understanding the laws -- Early childhood education for at-risk students -- The student study team process -- Formal assessment and identification of the student with learning disabilities --Planning for the student with learning disabilities -- Classroom management for teachers -- Academic management considerations -- Interventions for specific problems -- Reading and the student with learning disabilities -- Writing, spelling, and speaking -- Teaching mathematically challenged students -- Adolescents and adults with learning disabilities -- The role of the family -- Education in the new millennium

The Civil War : literature units, projects, and activities
This unit uses literature to teach the story of the Civil War. Six core books -- two works of historical fiction (Across five Aprils / by Irene Hunt ; Bull Run / by Paul Fleischman), two informational books (The boy's war / by Jim Murphy ; Undying glory / by Clinton Cox), and two biographies (Lincoln : a photobiography / by Russell Freedman ; Behind rebel lines / by Seymour Reit) -- are used to build the unit.

Sequencing. Grade 4

New DVD

In Plain English: Making Sense of the Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis presents information with illustrations explaining the Federal Reserve. This includes information about the three divisions of the Federal Reserve and the duties of each division.

New CD

SPEECHercise
Songs and stratgies for easy speech practice

New Computer Software

The Great Depression
This curriculum guide for the Great Depression for grades 9-12 was produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

New Children's and YA Books

In Too Deep (Book 6 of The 39 Clues) - Jude Watson
Amy and Dan cross the oceans on the trail of a famous aviator, but they find more than they're looking for. Their enemies are becoming more vicious, and the truths they discover more crushing than ever.

Sylvie and the Songman - Tim Binding
Sylvie Bartram's beloved dog, Mr. Jackson, has lost his bark. The birds have stopped singing. And in the growing silence, her dad has disappeared. Determined to find him, Sylvie and her best friend, kite-flying, tone deaf George, are drawn into the nightmare world of the Songman, a world haunted by the terrifying Woodpecker Man in his swan-powered balloon, a world where nothing can sing and no one can speak. Only Sylvie can save the earth from its terrible voiceless fate.

Fancy Nancy: Splendiferous Christmas - Jane O'Connor
Nancy is devastated, which is even worse than heart-broken, when her fancy Christmas tree topper breaks, threatening to ruin Christmas.

New Children's Books

Big Frog Can't Fit In -  Mo Willems
Big Frog really wants to fit in. But how? After much frustration, and with her friends' help, she finds out how.

Strega Nona's Harvest - Tomie dePaola
After helping Strega Nona plant her vegetable garden just so, Big Anthony takes some extra seeds and sows another garden willy nilly, then must find a way to deal with the consequences.

Merry Christmas, Splat - Rob Scotton
Splat the cat is worried that he has not been good enough to deserve a visit and a present from Santa Claus.

New YA Fiction Books

Arch Enemy (Part 3 of The Looking Glass Wars) - Frank Beddor
Virtuous Queen Alyss, who has lost the power of imagination, and her murderous aunt Redd battle for control of Wonderland.

Liar - Justine Larbalestier
Compulsive liar Micah promises to tell the truth after revealing that her boyfriend has been murdered.


Solace of the Road - Siobhan Dowd
While running away from a London foster home just before her fifteenth birthday, Holly has ample time to consider her years of residential care and her early life with her Irish mother, whom she is now trying to reach.

The Rock and the River - Kekla Magoon
In 1968 Chicago, fourteen-year-old Sam Childs is caught in a conflict between his father's nonviolent approach to seeking civil rights for African Americans and his older brother, who has joined the Black Panther Party.

Hate List - Jennifer Brown
Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junior year, struggles to cope with integrating herself back into high school life, unsure herself whether she was a hero or a villain.

Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones - Brandon Sanderson
Thirteen-year-old Alcatraz Smedry and his companions seek Al's father and grandfather in the Great Library of Alexandria, where they face undead, soul-stealing wraiths called the Curators of Alexandria, and one of the Scrivener's Bones, a part-human, part-machine mercenary.

The Doom Machine - Mark Teague
When a spaceship lands in the small town of Vern Hollow in 1956, juvenile delinquent Jack Creedle and prim, studious Isadora Shumway form an unexpected alliance as they try to keep a group of extraterrestrials from stealing eccentric Uncle Bud's space travel machine.

New Nonfiction Books

Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary - Elizabeth Partridge
Recounts the three months of protest that took place before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s landmark march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery to promote equal rights and help African-Americans earn the right to vote.

Life in the Boreal Forest - Brenda Z. Guiberson
The boreal forest is buried in ice and snow during winter. But in summer lakes teem with fish, and bogs swarm with insects. Follow a snowshoe hare, beavers, a lynx, and other animals as they survive a year in this endangered landscape.

Saving the Ghost of the Mountain - Sy Montgomery
A pale, spotted, almost cloud-like coat makes the snow leopard uncannily invisible in its rocky mountain habitat. Author Sy Montgomery and photographer Nic Bishop accompany conservationist Tom McCarthy and his team as they travel to Mongolia's Altai Mountains to gather data about snow leopard populations in an attempt to save this endangered species.

The American Presidency
Explores the lives and contributions of the people who have held the office, from George Washington to Barack Obama. Each presidential profile includes a detailed biography, the president's signature, who served as vice president, a profile of the first lady and timelines.

Peter and the Wolf - Chris Raschka
Retells the orchestral fairy tale in which a boy ignores his grandfather's warnings and captures a wolf with the help of a bird, a duck, and a cat.

Crow Call - Lois Lowry
Nine-year-old Liz accompanies the stranger who is her father, just returned from the war, when he goes hunting for crows in Pennsylvania farmland.

All the World - Liz Garton Scanlon
Follow a circle of family and friends through the course of a day from morning till night as they discover the importance of all things great and small in our world, from the tiniest shell on the beach, to warm family connections, to the widest sunset sky.

New Posters

Anatomy Chart Set

Joints

The Human Skeleton

The Eye

Body Organs

Breathing

The Heart and Circulation

Digestion

Muscles

Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
In an alternate 1914 Europe, fifteen-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts.

Front and Center - Christine Gilbert Murdock
Other folks have big plans for D.J. Like her coach. College scouts. All the town hoops fans. A certain Red Bend High School junior who' keen for romance and karaoke. Not to mention Brian Nelson, who she should not be thinking about! Who she is done with, thank you very much. But who keeps showing up anyway . .

Fire - Kristin Cashore
In a kingdom called the Dells, Fire is the last human-shaped monster, with unimaginable beauty and the ability to control the minds of those around her, but even with these gifts she cannot escape the strife that overcomes her world.

Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
By winning the annual Hunger Games, District 12 tributes Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have secured a life of safety and plenty for themselves and their families, but because they won by defying the rules, they unwittingly become the faces of an impending rebellion.

New Posters

Pharynx & Larynx

The Larynx

Breathing

New Music Book

One-Page Composer Bios - Jay Althouse
Contains 50 reproducible biographies of famous composers.

New Christmas Books

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (retold by Josh Greenhut)
A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.






The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus - L. Frank Baum
A human foundling child, adopted by a wood-nymph and raised by the creatures who inhabit a magical forest, grows up to be the immortal Santa Claus.


The Story of Christmas: The Birth of Jesus
An illustrated version of the story of the birth of Jesus, based primarily on passages from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, features pop-up angels and a final three-dimensional Nativity scene.

New Picture Books

Big Bear Hug - Nicholas Oldland
A bear who loves to hug everything meets a human who is about to chop down a tree, and the bear must make a decision on how to save his forest.

ThunderBoomer! - Shutta Crum
A farm family scurries for shelter from a violent thunderstorm that brings welcome relief from the heat and also an unexpected surprise.

New Children's Books

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood - David Benedictus
Collects the further stories of Christopher Robin and his imaginary animal friends in the Hundred Acre Wood, where the animals anticipate Christopher Robin's return, meet a new friend, and solve the mystery of missing bees.

Dessert First - Hallie Durand
Third-grader Dessert's love of treats leads to a change in her large family's dinner routine, then an awful mistake, and later a true sacrifice after her teacher, Mrs. Howdy Doody, urges students to march to the beat of their own drums.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days - Jeff Kinney
In the latest diary of middle-schooler Greg Heffley, he records his attempts to spend his summer vacation sensibly indoors playing video games and watching television, despite his mother's other ideas.