In class today you researched topics such as the Slave Trade, Bacon's Rebellion, The Great Awakening, Benjamin Franklin, and the American Revolution. What did you learn??

A book I have read recently....

Once Upon a Marigold by Jean Ferris

A young man with a mysterious past and a penchant for inventing things leaves the troll who raised him, meets an unhappy princess he has loved from afar, and discovers a plot against her and her father.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a fun read and had a nice ending....Has anyone read this book?

8th Grade Progressive Era

The Progressive Era describes the first two decades in American history where many reforms took place.

What else can you tell me about the Progressive Era?

• Create your own travel map or travel blog


• Airfare comparison at TripAdvisor

6th Grade Students!!

Today in the library you learned about different biomes of the world. What biome did you choose to research? Tell me some facts that you learned today!!

The Book Fair is coming to and end :(

What books did you buy? Did you love them, hate them? Let me know!!

New Moon Contest!!!

Stop by the library to enter a drawing to win a New Moon prize pack. All you need to do is write a review of any of the Twilight books or write something you know about the series. The contest will run through the book fair!!!

The Scholastic Book Fair will take place in the school library from November 10 through November 19. Stop by and check it out!!! Here is a preview of the book fair!

Book Review

Calling all Students!!!!

Has anyone read a book that they loved or hated? Please leave a comment about your book. Your book review may even be chosen for the library newsletter!!!

Welcome Teachers!!! You have just learned all about blogs. Please leave a comment about something you learned today!!!

Ms. Morgan's ELA Class

You have just selected a fiction book. As a book critic your assignment is to write a book review of your choosen book and post it to the blog. Be creative, your review just might end up in the Library Newsletter!!

Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls

Click here for book talk.

My Name is Sam.
I am eleven years old.
I collect stories and fantastic facts.
By the time you read this, I will probably be dead.

Living through the last stages of leukemia, Sam wants to know facts. Facts about UFO's, ghosts, how it feels to kiss a girl. He wants to break a world record, watch horror movies, go up the down-escalator. And Sam is determined to find answers to all of the questions nobody ever answers-all of them.

Written as a collection of journal entries, lists, questions, and pictures, Sam's story will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and it will show you how one boy friend a way to live forever.

Blue Bloods by Melissa De La Cruz

Schuylar Van Allen, a loner at a prestigious New York City private school , sets out to learn the secrets of the Blue Bloods , an ancient group of vampires.

Vote for the Teens Top Ten

Leave a post with you choice!!!!!

Graceling
By Kristin Cashore

Untamed
By P.C. and Kristin Cast

City of Ashes
By Cassandra Clare

The Hunger Games
By Suzanne Collins

Truancy By Isamu Fukui

Truancy: Origins
By Isamu Fukui

The Graveyard Book
By Neil Gaiman

Paper Towns
By John Green

Runemarks
By Joanne Harris

Identical
By Ellen Hopkins

Eternal
By Cynthia Leitich-Smith

The Disreputable History of Frankie
Landau-Banks
By E. Lockhart

Daughter of the Flames
By Zoe Marriott

Wake
By Lisa McMann

Breaking Dawn
By Stephenie Meyer

Bloodline
By Katy Moran

The Knife of Never Letting Go
By Patrick Ness

Evermore
By Alyson Noel

Geek Charming
By Robin Palmer

Melting Stones
By Tamora Pierce

Living Dead Girl
By Elizabeth Scott

Flygirl
By Sherri Smith

Wherever Nina Lies
By Lynn Weingarten

Impossible
By Nancy Werlin

Absolutely Maybe
By Lisa Yee

October 18-24 is Teen Read Week. Here are some books ideas:

Dokey, Cameron- The Storyteller’s Daughter

Jones, Diana Wynne- Howl’s Moving Castle

Levine, Gail Carson- Ella Enchanted

Levine, Gail Carson- The Two Princesses of Bamarre

McKinley, Robin- Spindle’s End

McKinley, Robin- The Blue Sword

Napoli, Donna Jo- Beast

Napoli, Donna Jo- Zel

Pope, Elizabeth Marie- The Perilous Gard

de Lint, Charles- Jack of Kinrowan

O’Shea, Pat- The Hounds of the Morrigan

Pratchett, Terry- Carpe Jugulum (part of a much larger series, but can be read alone)

Sleator, William- The Boxes

Welcome Back! I hope that you have a wonderful school year. You just learned all about what the library has to offer. Every student that responds to this post with their favorite book or one thing they learned about the library today will receive a special prize!!! Keep reading and visit the library often!!!

100+ Reading Challenge-- Books Ms. Catalano has read in 2009

1. Nobody's Prize
2. Nobody's Princess
3. Voices of the Trojan War
4. Just Listen
5. The Au Pairs
6. Pride of Baghdad
7. The Graveyard Book
8. Savvy
9. Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
10. Among the Hidden
11. Innocent Traitor
12. A Northern Light
13. Touch
14. Murder Most Royal
15. Cracked Up to Be
16. Everything is Fine
17. Stay With Me
18. After the Moment
19. Kissing Anabell
20. Doomed Queen Anne
21. The King's Rose
22. City of Ember
23. People of Sparks
24. Love that Dog
25. The First Part Last
26. Stop Pretending
27. I Know It's Over
29. Boy Toy
30. Out of the Dust
31. Twilight
32. New Moon
33. Eclipse
34. Breaking Dawn
35. Sweethearts
36. Because I am Furniture
37. The Chosen One
38. Willow
39. Charlotte's Web
40. The Secret Between Us
41. The Summer I Turned Pretty
42. Frenchtown Summer
43. Someday this Pain Will be Useful
44. Blue Bloods
45. A-List
46. Tricks
47. Troy High
48. Boy Toy
49. The Boy in the Striped Pjamas
50. My Favorite Mistake
51. The It Girl
52. The Good Girl
53. Sloppy Firsts
54. Gossip Girl
55. Twisted
56. Tricks
57. Impossible
58. Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can Not Have
59. Uglies
60. The Death of Jayson Porter
61. Once Upon a Marigold
62. Names Will Never Hurt Me
63. Psyche in a Dress
64. The Glass Castle
65. Crazy Hot
66. SunKissed
67. Papertowns
68. Far From you
69. Bad Apple
70. The Queen's Mistake
71. Vladamir Tod
72. Liar
73. Number the Stars
74. Hate List
75. Love is the Higher Power
76. Freaks and Revelations
77. This is what I want to tell you
78. Flash Burnout
79. Tuck Everlasting
80. Reaching for Sun
81. Push
82. All We Know of Love
83. Dear John
84. Beastly
85. Initiation
86. At first sight
87. Impulse
88. Crank
89. Easy
90. Cracked up to be
91. Dreamland
92. Perfect You
93. The Year My Sister Got Lucky
94. Message in a Bottle
95. Leftovers
96. How it Ends
97. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things
98. Such a Pretty Girl
99. The Stolen One
100. Ballads of Surburbia

What Books Have You Read????

Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher

Still troubled by his older brother's violent suicide, eighteen-year-old Dillon becomes deeply involved in the terrible secret of his friend Jennifer, who feels she can tell no one what her stepfather is doing to her.

The alchemist's Dream by John Wilson

The discovery in 1669 of a journal recording Henry Hudson's tragic search for a passage to Cathay over fifty years earlier, forces Robert Bylot, a once-great maritime explorer, to recall his experiences as part of that expedition--memories he would prefer to forget.

Breathing by Cheryl Renee Herbsman

With a new boyfriend, asthma attacks that come when least expected, and a pesky younger brother, fifteen-year-old Savannah's summer vacation takes many unexpected twists and turns.

Big Mouth by Deborah Halverson

Fourteen-year-old Sherman Thuff, a student at the tomato-obsessed Del Heiny Junior High, has his hopes set on being a competitive eater, but when his training regimen begins to seriously interfere with his enjoyment of life and he even starts losing his friends, he decides he should rearrange his priorities.

Better Late than Never by Marilyn Kate

Jenna Kelley has always dreamed of living a conventional life with normal parents, despite her supernatural gifts, but when her mother winds up in rehab and her estranged father unexpectedly shows up, she knows there is no chance of her dream coming true, especially when she uncovers her father's dark secret.

11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass

After celebrating their first nine same-day birthdays together, Amanda and Leo, having fallen out on their tenth and not speaking to each other for the last year, prepare to celebrate their eleventh birthday separately but peculiar things begin to happen as the day of their birthday begins to repeat itself over and over again.

Baseball Great by Tim Green

From Kirkus:

Josh is a hugely talented player who loves baseball and is destined for greatness. His father, who never made it to the majors, takes a job with an independent youth baseball team, pulling Josh from his school team to join him. Josh wants to please his father, but all is not as it should be on the new team. Winning is everything and the coach pushes his players to be ever bigger, stronger and fiercer, insisting on tortuous weight training and surreptitiously passing along "gym candy." The third-person narration filled with crisp dialogue brings immediacy to Josh's painful practice sessions, the excitement of his games and his confusion at the flux of middle-school dynamics. Although several of the characters are somewhat one-dimensional, Josh and his friends are well developed and likable. Green carefully constructs the dilemmas and decisions they face as they come to terms with the steroid issues, so that the rather histrionic finale comes across as both plausible and satisfying. A cut above the usual baseball novel

All We Know of Love by Nora Raleigh Baskin

From Booklist:

Four years ago, Natalie Gordon’s mother ran off, abandoning her child. Now a high-school sophomore, Natalie decides to follow in her footsteps and run away as well. She is running away from a toxic “love,” from a possible pregnancy, and, finally, to hopefully find her mother and discover the reason behind her disappearance. As she rolls along I-95 on a Greyhound bus, Natalie meets others who recount their own stories of love and loss, gradually preparing her for her mother’s saga of depression and poor choices, which leads her to acceptance of her own plight. This sad but ultimately satisfying journey is well written and interspersed with familiar quotations about love. The simple lesson that Natalie begins to learn from her seatmates and finally grasps from her mother—that she must love herself first, before anyone else can love her back—is a lesson for all readers to absorb and understand. It is, after all, “all we know of love. . . .”

Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin

From Booklist:

Baskin tells this luminous story entirely from the point of view of Jason, an autistic boy who is a creative-writing whiz and deft explainer of literary devices, but markedly at a loss in social interactions with neurotypicals both at school and at home. He is most comfortable in an online writing forum called Storyboard, where his stories kindle an e-mail-based friendship with a girl. His excitement over having a real friend (and maybe even girlfriend) turns to terror when he learns that his parents want to take him on a trip to the Storyboard conference, where he’ll no doubt have to meet her in person. With stunning economy, Baskin describes Jason’s attempts to interpret body language and social expectations, revealing the extreme disconnect created by his internalization of the world around him. Despite his handicap, Jason moves through his failures and triumphs with the same depth of courage and confusion of any boy his age. His story, while neither particularly heartbreaking nor heartwarming, shows that the distinction between normal and not normal is whisper-thin but easily amplified to create the chasm between different and defective. This is an enormously difficult subject, but Baskin, without dramatics or sentimentality, makes it universal. As Jason explains, there’s really only one kind of plot: Stuff happens. That’s it.

All the broken pieces : a novel in verse

From Booklist:

Airlifted from Vietnam at the end of the war and adopted by a loving American family, Matt Pin, 12, is haunted by what he left behind, even as he bonds with his new little brother and becomes a star pitcher on the school baseball team. In rapid, simple free verse, the first-person narrative gradually reveals his secrets: his memories of mines, flames, screams, helicopters, bombs, and guns, as well as what the war did to his little brother (He followed me / everywhere, / he follows me still). But this stirring debut novel is about much more than therapy and survivor guilt. When his parents take Matt to a veterans’ meeting, he hears the soldiers’ stories of injury and rejection and begins to understand why the school bully calls him frogface (My brother died / Because of you). There is occasional contrivance as Matt eavesdrops on adults. But the haunting metaphors are never forced, and the intensity of the simple words, on the baseball field and in the war zone, will make readers want to rush to the end and then return to the beginning again to make connections between past and present, friends and enemies. Add this to the Booklist read-alike column Children at War.

The Amaranth enchantment

From Booklist:

Intriguing characters, fine plotting, and a richly worked narrative carry the reader into Lucinda’s vaguely medieval world. Orphaned as a small child when her wealthy parents were killed in a carriage accident, Lucinda has grown to the age of 15 as the maidservant in her goldsmith uncle’s home, suffering abuse at the hands of his wife. Life changes quickly for Lucinda after her uncle dies when she attempts to complete an errand to return a strange glowing stone to a woman locally known as the Amaranth Witch. A street thief, the local Prince Charming, a goat with the manners of a loving dog, and an evil chief justice are among the characters who complicate and enrich Lucinda’s life as she discovers her own past and the otherworldliness of Beryl, the amaranth lady. Tamora Pierce fans will particularly appreciate Berry’s smoothly rendered first novel, where magic and historically accurate courtly rites are balanced with Lucinda’s maturing sense of independence, fate, and self.

After the Train by Gloria Whelan

From Booklist:

Growing up in Germany in the 1950s, Peter is tired of his eighth-grade teacher droning on about the evils of anti-Semitism and all the bad things the Nazis did. He knows that the Holocaust happened, but why must he hear about it and feel guilty? He just wants to play soccer with his friends and think about the present. Then he discovers that he is adopted and that his birth mother was Jewish and died in a concentration camp. There are many plot contrivances as Peter finds secret files his loving Catholic adoptive parents have kept, including a picture of his birth mother. But the intensity of the issues, the blend of personal conflict and historical facts, and the young teen’s present-tense narrative will hold readers as Peter embraces his Judaism, attends synagogue, and confronts the prejudice that continues among classmates and adults. Grades 6-9.

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han

Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer -- they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one wonderful and terrible summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.

"This book has what every girl wants in a summer." -- Sarah Dessen, author of Just Listen and Lock and Key"

The Summer I Turned Pretty offers a hard-to-resist combination -- a beach house, summer love, enduring friendship. A deliciously sweet read." -- Deb Caletti, author of Honey, Baby, Sweetheart and Wild Roses"

If I could live inside this amazing book, I would. I would inhale the ocean air and soak up the sun, and I would hang out all day with kind-wonderful-funny-awkward Belly and her two known-'em-forever buds, Jeremiah and Conrad. I'd watch the three of them stop being kids and start being more...and I'd hope hope hope that when Belly falls in love -- 'cause you know she will -- she'd give her heart to the exact right boy." -- Lauren Myracle, author of the ttyl series and Bliss