Common Core State Standards Explained

Confused about the Common Core?
Having trouble reading the Standards?  Not surprisingly, these were written by educators for educators.

Here's a translation by writer, Barbara Kerley, explaining on the I.N.K blog (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) just what this is all about.
There are ten big standards, The Anchor Standards for Reading.

How nice to discover that we writers are already fulfilling most of these standards in our books.

Nonfiction Monday

Check out the I.N.K blog (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids).
Check it out every day this month.
Because this month they are featuring life-changing nonfiction and how it influenced them.
See if they talk about some of YOUR favorite childhood books.

The Nonfiction Monday roundup is being featured today at Stacking Books.
Go check it out, as well.

Time Management and Mind Management

Here's a couple of links I found interesting today --

Like Sharon Darrow, I also grew up with the motto -- when you begin a project, you need to complete it before going on to another project.  But her husband's philosophy sounds so much more workable; a much better way to manage your time and energy.  She calls it S.W.E. P.T.

On another note -- Is your memory disappearing?  Has using GOOGLE destroyed people's ability to remember things?  Interesting thoughts over at Slate.com today.

And, just for your laugh of the day, click here.

Making a Picture Book

Why are picture books thirty-two pages?  Why not seventeen? or thirty-six?  It's all because of how they are printed.  The Writer's Rumpus blog has an article showing exactly why you have to write short for a picture book.  Click on over and see how it's done.

Single space or Double space? Which are you?

Now, just call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I have to confess something.

Event though I've been told that the new rule is to single-space everything you type (keyboard?), my fingers don't always remember.  I was taught on a typewriter, where the rule was to double-space between sentences and after colons, because it made it easier to read. And now my manuscripts seem to be a combination of both, depending on how fast I'm typing and whether my fingers remember to single space or not.

I also thought that the reason publishers were now requesting single space was because they could save money and print books with less pages that way.

It turns out that the single-space rule isn't that firm -- there still is some discussion about it.
Check out these articles and blog posts:

Why two spaces after a period isn't wrong on a website called Heraclitean River.
and
The Punctuation Conundrum on Kathryn Gagalione's blog, Hers for the Reading.

and from the MLA rulemakers, themselves :
MLA

Friday the 13th -- Sting Rays at the Beach

Friday the 13th came on a Friday this year, and I have to say that nothing happened.
Nothing bad, that is.

Since I'm in a break between Packets for college (Packet 2 is in my advisor's hands and I get this breather room before she sends it back and I have to attack revisions, again), I took a group of teens to the beach right after school on Friday.

Since it was high tide, I was worried that there would be little or no beach to set down our stuff. Although the water licked the rocks at the beach entrance, we managed to find our way down to sand further along.  The girls grabbed their boogie boards (short surf boards made of foam, not wood like the expensive ones), and took off while I settled in my chair to read my book -- which wasn't there!  I had forgot to pack it.

So, I walked the beach, instead.
A little while later, while the girls were digging holes and building sand castles (they never outgrow that), the lifeguard jeep came by, warning people about the sting rays.  "Be sure to keep your feet on the bottom at all times - and shuffle your feet to let them know you are coming!"
Yikes.

(And now you know why I walked along the edge of the surf in my bathing suit, instead of going into the water.)

The girls had a grand time -- and nobody on the beach was stung by sting rays, so that's why I can say with confidence that nothing happened.

After the beach, the girls met up with several other girls to have a study party and sleepover.
My teen insists that she has ALL her homework done, now.

Book Trends from Scholastic

I would inbed this video into my blog, if I only knew how.

Since I don't -- here's a link to the Picture Book Party blog that has a video where the wonderful David Allender talks about the ten most popular trends in books from Scholastic Press this year.  I've read some of the books he mentions, and they are great.

This is the sort of thing that Scholastic offers at the American Library Association is one of my favorite things to attend.  Now, with the invention of YouTube, everyone can see/ hear the publishers book offerings.