Team Shark? Team Train?

Shark vs Train by Chris Barton,  illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld, Little, Brown, 2010

I loved this photo from the Blue Rose Girls wrap-up of ALA.  Team Shark or Team Train? Who is superior?  That is a question that could lead to an inspired library lesson.  If you need some help, Little, Brown has a Shark vs Train website, with posters and activity sheets to download.

Tom Lictenheld's comic illustrations are delivered with broad, over-the-top humor and subtle nudges which will delight the book's audience of kids and kids of a "certain age," as the French say.    A sly and canny wit underpins the project which comes from  Chris Barton's inspired concept of a shark and a train, trying to out-do each other.  The story is a celebration of children and imaginative play.  

If it is not on your library shelf yet,then this is a must have for your school library's first order of the year.  

In fact if you don't have Barton's 2010 Sibert Honor biography, The Day-Glo Brothers: The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer's Bright Ideas and Brand-New Colors, illustrated by Tony Persiani, Charlesbridge, 2009, in your library, you best get a copy of it too!

Cynsations interview with Chris Barton

Beyond the Book: SHARK VS TRAIN by Chris Barton and Tom Lichtenheld

Tom Lichtenheld

Chris Barton

Puppets and Muppet History

There is something magical about the relationship of kids and puppets. Bring out the puppets and every kid in a class will be on task. Just watch a child with a puppet on their hand sometime. You will see that they have entered a new world of imagination and wonder.

You have to have ground rules (puppets don't fight and puppets don't bite) otherwise you will lose control. And, alas, there was always one kid who will not follow directions and I would take their puppet and tell them to follow along with their hand. After a minute or two, I would ask them if they thought they could remember their puppet manners and would ALWAYS receive and emphatic, "Yes!" I never could bring myself to deny them the fun of playing for the whole class period. In the meantime, any other students pondering a breach of puppet etiquette had hastily reconsidered. It is just too much fun to have a puppet on your hand.

Much of what I know about working with puppets and kids, I learned from a librarian in our district. You also learn a lot from the kids themselves. There is no more satisfying feeling than hearing 22 voices cheer when they come into a library and see the puppet stage out and the puppets laid out for them.

Thanks to Nat Pacheco, via Puppeteers Unite for this bit of Muppet history. This is why we loved Jim Henson!