“If You’re Hap—“ No, no… “If You’re A Monster And You Know It”

Grades Pre-K to 1

The other day at work I was browsing the shelves of new books and came upon Rebecca and Ed Emberley’s If You’re A Monster And You Know It. As soon as I saw it, I grabbed it off the shelf—I knew I held gold. One of my first posts was for Emberley’s Go Away, Big Green Monster, which preschoolers I read to love—as in love SO much, I use it as their “treat” book at the end of a good storytelling session. I was excited to see this new monster book based off the song “If you’re happy and you know it.” The book has verses where one can “snort and growl” or “stomp your paws.”

The illustrations are true to Ed Emberley’s style—bold colors that play against a black background. These monsters are not as uniform in design as his previous book—they resemble paper cut collages, which actually makes them look cool and yet a little out there.

If you go to the Scholastic website, you can even download the song performed by Adrian Emberley. Ooooo--I can’t wait to share this with the preschoolers I read to on Tuesdays! This is a perfect book for Halloween.

Emberley, R. A. (2010). If You're A Monster And You Know It. New York City, NY: Orchard Books.

Emberley, R. (2010). If You're A Monster And You Know It. Retrieved September 26, 2010, from Scholastic: http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/book.jsp?id=1312582

I Geek Out Over Meeting Lucy Calkins!

For those of you who don’t know who Lucy Calkins is, let me enlighten you—she is the go to person for reading and writing workshop or anything literacy related. Calkins is the director of The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP) at Columbia University, as well as the author of multiple literacy titles. If I could be her mentee, I would do it in a heartbeat (too bad TC doesn’t have a doctoral program in reading).

TCRWP holds workshops throughout the school year dedicated to guiding educators through a year of the Units of Study for writing and more recently, reading. I was lucky enough to be able to attend two workshops, one presented by Calkins herself--my (controlled) giddiness alone when I saw her could rival some teens--and the other by Project leaders. I was thrilled to be able to make a connection to the classroom again. I like being able to refresh knowledge about best practices for students in a full time classroom--especially since that’s the clientele I’m trying to help through my job.

Calkins is an incredible person—she really knows how to present to a crowd. She is very passionate about her work and really holds educators that are part of the Project in high esteem. She was kind enough to give a coworker and myself a tour of the offices for the Project (we got to sit in her office—OMG!) as well as have a lunch meeting with us (my company is creating a catalog of book collections from the lists provided—that we collaborated on--in her Units of Study for Reading, grades 3-5).

The Teachers College Reading And Writing Project Columbia University Home Page. (2010). Retrieved Sept. 12, 2010, from The Teachers College Reading And Writing Project Columbia University: http://rwproject.tc.columbia.edu/