As you may or may not know, I had last week off. I was able to visit my sister and her family in Colorado, so I didn't get much of a chance to post anything. That just means you get an extra long post today.
We had so many more people at our last meeting! It was nice to see so many new faces. We started off the meeting with a wordsearch full of words from our book,
The Ordinary Princess. I wanted to have treats that related to the book so, I decided to have two types of treats. We had oatmeal cranberry cookies and lemon cookies for the time Princess Amy was in the forest and chocolate pudding with whipped cream for all of the fancy food she ate while living in a palace.
We had a couple of people who had to leave early, so we decided to pick next month's book before discussing
The Ordinary Princess, but I'll get to that later.
It was a little difficult to get a hold of the book for some people, so there were some at the meeting who hadn't had a chance to read it yet. Part way through the discussion I gave a synopsis of the book, with spoilers (don't worry, I made sure no one cared), so we could include more people in the discussion.
Ok, now for next months books. I wanted to incorporate the theme of the summer reading program, One World, Many Stories, into the book we read this month. I looked for books that would let us discover another country. There were a lot to choose from, but I finally narrowed it down to two. They were
Glass Shoe, Golden Slipper by Paul Fleishman and
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin.
Glass Shoe, Golden Slipper is actually a picture book that tells the story of Cinderella. The unique thing about this book is that every page covers the story from a different country's point of view. We have about 15 picture book versions of Cinderella from different countries in our collection and I thought it would be fun if everyone picked three or four to compare for our next meeting.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is about a girl in China that wants to improve the life of her family, so she sets off to talk to The Old Man Of The Moon to ask how to improve their fortunes. Interwoven throughout the story are different folktales of China.
When we voted on the book we ended up in a tie, but ultimately
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon won the vote.
And now for the book info:
In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man of the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man of the Moon to ask him how she can change her family's fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer.
A bit about the Author
Grace Lin grew up in Upstate New York with her parents and two sisters. While the other sisters became scientists, Grace became an artist. Surprisingly enough, being an artist was not Grace's first choice. She first dreamed of being a champion ice skater, and drew many pictures of herself twirling and dancing on the ice. Unfortunately, Grace had neither the talent nor coordination to make it to skating stardom. However, the pictures she drew of herself held much promise and quickly became Grace's career focus.
After attending the Rhode Island School of Design, Grace quickly set out to achieve her dream of creating children's books. Her first book, THE UGLY VEGETABLES, was published in 1999 and was quickly heralded. As well as being an American Booksellers Association's "Pick of the List" and a Bank's Street College Best Books of the Year, THE UGLY VEGETABLES was nominated for the California Young Reader Children's Choice Award and named a Growing Good Kids Book Award CLASSIC.
Grace followed that success with the publication of over a dozen more books, including DIM SUM FOR EVERYONE! and LISSY'S FRIENDS. Grace's first children's novel, THE YEAR OF THE DOG was released to glowing praise in 2006 and nominated to the TX Bluebonnet list, which she followed with THE YEAR OF THE RAT. Her most recent novel WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON was awarded the 2010 Newbery Honor, chosen for Al Roker's Today Show Kid's Book Club and was a NY Times Bestseller. Grace's early reader LING & TING was awarded with the Theodor Geisel Honor in 2011. Grace, herself, has been honored by the Boston Public Library with the Literary Lights for Children Award and was an Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award nominee for the United States.
Book and author information taken from
http://www.gracelin.com/
Photos by Alexandre Ferron
Our next meeting is going to be on July 8, 2011 at 3:00 pm in Community Room A in the Saint George Library Branch.
I hope we'll see you there!
Gloria
The Herdmans are six scrawny children ( Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie and Gladys) who are notorious delinquents in their community. Among other things, they lie, steal, smoke cigars (even the girls!), swear, and hit little kids.
I grew up in a southern Ohio river town--Portsmouth--and that small town atmosphere has affected most of my writing. 
I grew up in upper Manhattan, Washington Heights to be exact, a hilly, pretty neighborhood. My family lived across the street from P.S. 173, my elementary school, and from a park where I used to climb what my friends and I called the "danger" rocks, which were part of the palisades that overlook the Hudson River. Going up, clinging to cracks with my fingertips, terrified, I'd think, If I live, I will never do this again. When I reached the top I'd work my way down and start over just as frightened as before.
The two main characters are Sham, the horse that would later become The Godolphin Arabian; and Agba, the horse’s loyal friend and groom. From the deserts of Morocco to Europe, “King of the Wind” takes the reader on a fantastic journey full of hardship and misfortune, but glorious in the end. Despite cruel owners and masters Sham and Agba persevere with the help of each other. Overall, “King of the Wind” is a tale like “Black Beauty,” though in this case the horse has a loyal friend who sticks with him to the very end.
Born to Louis and Anna Breithaupt, the youngest of the five children, Henry was a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Henry was stricken with rheumatic fever at the age of six, which kept her bedridden until the age of twelve. Because of her illness, Henry wasn't allowed to go to school with other children because of her weak state and the fear of spreading the illness to others. While she was confined indoors, she discovered the joy of reading. Henry's love of animals started during her childhood. Soon afterwards, she also discovered a love for writing when her parents presented her with a writing desk for Christmas. Henry later said, "At last I had a world of my very own -- a writing world, and soon it would be populated by all the creatures of my imagination." 
