Summer Reading
Thursday, June 26, 2014
This summer has been so hot! With highs in the hundreds we even decided to start and finish school early so the kids don’t have to be studying in the heat of the day. With the super hot weather my kids and I have been trying to get out of the sun and we spend a lot of our time reading our awesome new books. One of our amazing donors, Ashlie Contos of Texas, must have been feeling nostalgic for her childhood books recently, and she sent a whole box of her favorites that I remember being obsessed with when I first read them. I love to share some of my old favorites like A Wrinkle in Time, The Tale of Desperaux and Anne of Green Gables and watch my kids devour them. It is amazing to see how well they are reading now! A huge favorite of ours is Strega Nona, and we were lucky enough to have copies signed by the author and illustrator, Tomie dePaola. We used these fun stories about the magical Strega Nona and her bumbling assistant Anthony in our 4th grade English classes as a part of their Common and Proper Noun unit.
British author Sarah Hill recently sent a batch of her beautifully illustrated and imaginative Whimsy Wood series books. They are filled with nature, adventure and enchanting stories the kids love. She is genorously donating a portion of her profits to us! When her publisher John Halsted at Abela Publishing heard about this, he jumped on board too. He sent a stack of folklore, fairy tales, myths and legends from around the world from their international series and is donating half of his profits from these books to us! Appropriately, "Abela" is the Zulu word for to share or distribute. We are grateful that they are keeping the tradition of story telling alive!
Our very own fellow Brendan Wenzel did the awesome illustrations for the new children’s book, Some Bugs. He is the real deal folks, we are convinced these books will be the new Very Hungry Caterpillar or Goodnight Moon!
The older girls have gotten super inspired reading I am Malala. Her bravery and fight for girls' education really resonates with them.
Book Buddies is a new early reader program we started as a part of the Resource Center focused on helping students who are struggling with their reading comprehension and basic reading skills. It gives students the opportunity to practice one-on-one with a teacher or volunteer and move at their own pace. Thank you to Jack, Alex and Cassidy for getting this wonderful program up and running!
I have started to get so excited about the new library we are designing which will house volumes and volumes of books for our students and the community. We received some of the funding from a grant through Reed Elsevier Corporation which has really allowed us to dream big! Our team has designed a tranquil, beautiful space built beside a terraced rice paddy with tons of places for kids to settle in for a good read. I can't wait to fill it with books.
The transport of books to Nepal is difficult because our mail is unreliable but there are some great ways to share your favorite books with the Kopila kids. Better World Books has discounted gently used books and they offer free shipping right to the school. We generally don't encourage people to mail things to Nepal but for some reason these books have been getting through to our address in Surkhet, Nepal.
The kids have also been loving to read on our Kindle! With the new Kindle, you can donate some of your favorite books to us that you might think our kids would enjoy! Please consider making BlinkNow your designated charity on smile.Amazon.com - they will donate .5% of eligible purchases to help support our kids!
Much love and appreciation for all of your support!