Nixon School Media Center
Come expand your imagination, your world and your learning by checking a book out of the Nixon School Library. There is nothing better than reading a book to your child or having them read a book to you. Reading helps children understand new words and how words connect together. Make time to share a book with your child everyday.
Dear Parents,
It is the intention to use this page to build over time, your awareness of the content of a variety of books that are available in the Nixon School library. The expectation here is that you will discover specific titles you feel would be appealing to your children and would like to recommend to them--and hopefully also share with them during reading times at home.
S. Schnakenberg
Nixon School Librarian
Nixon School Library Book Circulation PolicyIn order to provide equitable access to our library collection for all of our students—and to encourage respectful use of this community resource—guidelines have been established regarding checking out books when a student does not return previously borrowed materials on time:
In both of the above cases students may choose new books; these are held in the library and are available to them as soon as they return their overdue volumes. Extra library time, for use by all students, is provided during every school day so they need not wait until their scheduled weekly period to return their old and check out their new selections. |
This Month
More About the “Warm” Season
It begins with a certain winter weather forecast, one often troubling to grown-ups, but delighting the young, producing in them the most earnest hopes that it be correct. Young faces peer out of windows, gazing in happy anticipation at the graying sky. When all goes just right the result is that great pleasure of childhood: the snow day.
This event is treated in contrasting ways in two picture books in our library: Kevin O’Malley’s Straight to the Pole and Eleanor Schick’s City in the Winter. In the first we see a child, apparently alone in a blinding blizzard, attempting to reach—as the title suggests—the “pole”—probably the one way up to the north. This desperate struggle continues for several pages and then the situation, if possible, worsens with the appearance of what is initially described as a wolf, but which subsequently looks more like a friendly basset hound. At this point the reader begins to realize that the author has been slyly engaged in creating a bit of fantasy for his readers and that his protagonist has not been in any of the dangers the text and illustrations imply. An entirely different approach is seen in City in the Winter, realistically told and illustrated with detailed pencil drawings. Here, in an urban setting, a boy spends his day at home with his grandmother after a real blizzard has closed the schools. Initially unsure of what to do with his unexpected time off, she helps him with suggestions of making a cardboard building and planting a sweet potato—and the reader follows them both in this quiet depiction of the small but significant events that make up the child’s memorable day.
While City in the Winter is best suited to first and second grade students, Straight to the Pole can probably be enjoyed at different levels by a greater range of children; it is also available at the Roxbury Public Library under the call number EJ O’MALLEY.
Good Books for the Month
Kindergarten: Mouse’s First Snow, by Lauren Thompson
First grade: The Little Man in Winter, by Walburga Attenberger
Second grade: Snow Shapes; a Read-and-Do Book, by Judith Moffatt*
Third grade: Winter; An Alphabet Acrostic, by Steven Schnur
Fourth grade: It’s Snowing! It’s Snowing!, by Jack Prelutsky
*This title is also available at the Roxbury Public Library under the call number J 745.59 MOF.