Jump Into A Book

A New Post

If you're looking for our new site here it is

http://www.jumpintoabook.com/2011/09/the-great-and-incredible-unicorn-book-list-part-i/

Today we have the first part of our great and incredible book list about Unicorns. Hope you'll join us.

Brand New Giveaway Wonderstruck, The Invention of Hugo Cabret plus 3 more books

To enter the contest please come to our new site/url www.jumpintoabook.com 

See you there.

And The Winner Is...........

The winner of 5 Kate Di Camillo books is

Brenda Sylvester

I’d like to thank everyone for entering and playing along with us. A new giveaway will be announced very soon and I promise it’s a good one as well.

Have a great rest of the week and Happy Reading!

~ Valarie

 

Happy Roald Dahl Day

 

Roald Dahl Day takes place every September 13th, the celebrated birthday of one of the world's favorite storytellers. There are celebrations happening all over the world and Jump into a Book is no different. To get started go have a look at some of these very fun activities to not only prepare for your party but have fun jumping into some of the most well known books of all time.

 

Next on our list of Roald Dahl Day celebrations is the Reading Relay. How many Roald Dahl books have you read so far in your life? Though he has written many fantastic stories, our favorites are Matilda, The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Twits,Fantastic Mr. Fox, and of course James and the Giant Peach. If you should choose to take part in this very fun reading relay, and you are one of the first 5000 people to read 3 Roald Dahl books, you have the chance of owning your very own "I'm a Revolting Reader Badge."  Good-luck, I know you can do it.

 

Last on our list of incredible Roald Dahl Day celebrations is the fact that James and the Giant Peach is 50 years old.

Yes, who can believe that its been half a century since James Trotter walked up to a giant peach, stepped inside and shared a magnificent adventure with a grasshopper, spider, ladybug,centipede and an earth worm. Together they weathered many a storm and changed their fortune by working together.

Since we discovered that its a big birthday for James and the Giant Peach, we're taking part in a global peach of a party. It's our goal to roll a giant peach all around the world so why don't you join us and Follow that Peach! Here are the links to sending either a virtual or an actual paper peach a gram around the world.

And for those of you who love to jump into books as much as we do, the Roald Dahl Day celebration committee as put together a wonderful not to be missed book adventure called Teach the Peach. Have a really wonderful time and Happy Happy Roald Dahl Day !!!!! Oh and thank you Mr. Dahl for some wonderful years inside your books.

Today's illustrations are all by the incredible Quentin Blake.

 

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

While I was in N.Y.C. I made my usual pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This time, however, I took one of my favorite books along, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg.

I had always wanted to read this book while inside the museum and this was my chance. As I would wander through each section of the museum I would find quaint little corners to sit and read in, such as the Egyptian section

and the roof top garden.

It was truly the perfect way to mix two of my favorite activities, reading and art, together.

If you haven’t read the book and are wondering why I would be reading a book while I was inside a museum, here’s why:

12 year old Caludia Kincaid is sick of the monotony of her life, the unfair amount of chores, her limited T.V. time, and her low allowance.

Claudia decides to run away from her home to some place beautiful, comforatble, and indoors. Being the organizer that she is, she crafts together a masterplan to escape to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while convincing her little brother Jamie to come with her.

The story unfolds and tells of their big adventure, of how they lived undetected for a whloe week inside the museum. while there, they took the opportunity to learn new things. While discovering each section of the museum, they run across a new exhibit housing a marble angel thought to be from the hands of Michelangelo, the famous italian painter and sculptor.

Caludia and Jaime decide to figure out the mystery of the statue before retuning home, that is if their money will hold out. Using the last of their finances they locate the previous owner of the statue Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who also happens to be the narrator of this classic tale as well. After much negotiation between Mrs. Frankweiler and the children, a deal is reached and the true craftsman of the statue is uncovered.

This book won the Newbery Medal in 1968 and its no wonder why. Each time I would wander into a new section of the museum I would wonder where I would hide if I decided to live in the museum. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end as did my time with this favorite read and looking at some of the greatest art in the world.

If you were going to live in a museum, where would you make your home?

To find out more about what inspired this book have a look at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts “From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler brochure.

Something To Do:

 We’ve decided to go through the Metropolitan Museum Map section by section to study the art and it’s masters, as well as, create our own. First up, we have a small fascination with stained glass. For this project we made our own stain glass windows using a fantastic child friendly stain-glass kit. There are many time periods and styles of kits from this company and it is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Constructing real stain glass uses some very dangerous elements such as glass, and hot irons. There are many ways to make child friendly stained-glass and the fun we had in researching the project was fantastic as well. Next we’ll be moving onto sculpting but before we do I just have to say that this book is a such a great of incorporating art into our every day lives. It was so fun to re-visit this book from inside the museum and then to share that experience with the kids. Enjoy and Happy Reading. Oh and remember, there’s just a couple more days left in our Kate Di Camillo Giveaway. Be sure to join us.

 

The Danger Book

Just a quick reminder of a couple things before we dive into this great book. First don't forget to put our new url in your reader www.jumpintoabook.com. Second, don't forget the great giveaway we have going on right now, 5 Kate di Camillo books. If you use the twitter entry, each person who tweets about the giveaway gives you an extra chance to win and be sure to enter on our facebook fan page as well. If you shouldn't have either facebook or twitter, just leave me a comment and I'll enter you into the contest. 

Now let's getting going into the Danger Book........

 

 

“The Danger Box” by Blue Balliett is a wonderfully fun and quirky mystery by the author of “Chasing Vermeer” and ” The Wright 3″. The Danger Box is her fourth novel where she leaves the art scene of her previous three books behind and plants us firmly in the rural town of Three Oaks Michigan. There we find Zoomy, a sweet, legally blind 12 year old boy, living with his grandparents. Zoomy is a boy who notices everything. When his head gets too full of things it makes him nervous and he starts tapping and twitching to relieve his brain.  His grandmother after noticing this tendancy, bought him some notebooks and encouraged him to write his thoughts down. Now every time he observes something it gets placed on a list, written with a purple pen inside his notebooks.

Everything is fine in Zoomy’s world until the day that his no-good father Buckeye rolls into town in a stolen truck and a box to hide.

Buckeye’s secret box changes life for Zoomy but maybe not in the way you might think. Inside the box is a notebook filled with clues that leads Zoomy to the library for further investigation. There he meets the first friend of his life Lorrol ,pronounced Laurel. Both Lorrol and Zoomy love problem solving and together they work on solving a bunch of mysteries that have surfaced since the box with the notebook has come to town. Linking  history, science, and mysterious secrets that could change the world, The Danger Box is a real gem of a read.

Inside the pages of this great read are messages about fmilies coming in all shapes and sizes, kids doing amazing things, misfits finding their place, and the charm of a small town community. Blue Balliett weaves together a fast paced mystery using real facts, ( the object Zoomy finds is actually still missing in real life today), and places such as Three Oaks, Michigan.

Using codes, cryptic newspaper stories, and guessing games this story had us playing along with Zoomy and Lorrol as they uncovered the secrets of “the Danger Box”.

Won’t You Play Too?

Something to Do Book Review:

There are so many fun adventures to take with this book. First let’s make our own Danger Box.

Danger Box: Click on the link to find instructions to make a danger box and notebooks.

The Danger Box

Writing  in  Code

On page 38 of The Danger Box, the second Gas’s Gazette posts asks if we can write our names in code. Pulling out our crayons and markers we had a very fun time writing not only our names but messages as well in cryptic code. Can you figure out what I wrote in this message? Use the code breaker in the Second Gas’s Gazette to figure it out.

Can you make up your own secret code. Try it and share it with your family and friends. Send messages back and forth, it’s so much fun. My eldest daughter made up her own symbol based language called Felfish.

Publish Your Own Cryptic Gazette

The quotes used in Gas’s Gazette actually come from Darwin’s notebooks and letters. Using these to write Gazette posts in a “guess who” fashion is such a fun idea. Make your own gazette using a biography and or journal you’ve read about a person you admire. Using quotes create “guess who” Gazette posts and see if your readers can guess who you’re talking about. This is actually a very fun way to get to know about a lot of different people from different walks of life and fields of study.

~Spoiler Alert~

If you haven’t read the book yet, this will clue you in as to who created the still missing journal. Who could it be?

photo by stella magazine

Though Charles Darwin is known for his controversies, to me he is known for his incredible contributions to the biological sciences. In dealing with this book and it’s topic matter I focused on this perspective with my children. There are a lot of skills that can be gleaned from his observations, research, and sample studies. I was very surprised to find out in my research about Charles Darwin that he was actually conducting research all over the world and corresponded constantly with his research teams. 2000 people corresponded details to him about their findings on plant and animal life in the region they lived in. Along with his letters there were also many boxes through out the years sent to England to make a global biological composite of the plant and animal life of Earth. For Darwin’s personal research team he included many of his own family members. He was a very animated and personal man and I was really surprised to discover that. By reading through some of his letters I could gather a clear personality about him. TheDarwin Correspondence Project has all of his correspondence and is available online.

Here is a short excerpt from one of his field journals.

When Sedgwick returns we will look over your specimens & I will send you our joint report—^f4 they seem quite large enough!— I myself caught an Octopus at Weymouth this summer & observed the change of color whenever I opened the tin box in which I put it, but not in such great perfection as you seem to have done— The fact is not new, but any fresh observations will be highly important— Quere if a serpentine rock be not the produce of volcanic baking of a chloritic slate? The rock of S^t Paul may not be an exception to the usual character of the Isl^ds. of the Atlantic.^f5 I have got the description of the plates to the Dict. Classique & will send it where you direct. Your account of the Tropical forest is delightful, I can’t help envying you— So far from being disappointed with the Box—I think you have done wonders—as I know you do not confine yourself to collecting, but are careful to describe— Most of the plants are very desirable to me. Avoid sending scraps. Make the specimens as perfect as you can, root, flowers &leaves & you can’t do wrong. In large ferns & leaves fold them back upon themselves on one side of the specimen & they will get into a proper sized paper. Don’t trouble yourself to stitch them—for the really travel better without it— and a single label per month to

[DIAGRAM HERE] this side is folded back at the edges

those of the same place is enough except you have plenty of spare time or spare hands to write more. L. Jenyns does not know what to make of your land Planariæ. Do you mistake for such the curious Genus, “Oncidium” allied to y^e slug, of which a fig. is given in Lin. Transact.^f6 & are not the marine species also mollusca, perhaps Doris & other genera— Specimens & observations upon these w^d. be highly interesting. If you could get hold of Cuvier’s Anatomie des Mollusques,^f7 you w^d. find it very useful but I fear it is out of print— I will tell your Brother to enquire at Truttels.^f8 Watkins has received your letter— And now for the Box— Lowe underpacks Darwinoverpacks — The latter is in fault on the right side. You need not make quite so great a parade of tow & paper for the geolog^c. specimens, as they travel very well provided they be each wrapped up German fashion & closely stowed—but above all things don’t put tow round any thing before you have first wrapped it up in a piece of thin paper— It is impossible to clear away the fibres of the tow from some of your specimens without injuring them— An excellent crab has lost all its legs, & an Echinus 1⁄2 its spines by this error. I don’t think however than any other specimens besides these 2 have been at all injured. Another caution I w^d give is to place the number on the specimen always inside & never outside the cover. The moisture & friction have rubbed off one or two—& I can’t replace them. I shall thoroughly dry the different perishable commodities & then put them in pasteboard boxes with camphor & paste over the edges, & place them in my study or some very dry place. The heavy material I shall send to my lecture room, so soon as it is again habitable—for at present we are all in confusion—building a large Museum & lecture room & private rooms adjoining mine,^f9 for Clark & Cumming— I must now leave off for the Senate house & put this bye till I can find a few more minutes to conclude it.— Excerpt taken from the Darwin Correspondence Project

As you can see they had some problems transporting their specimens all the way back to England. Pretend you are a scientist and answer the following questions:

• If you were all the way down in South America in the 19th century, how would you send specimens back to England?
• What part of the plant would you send?
• What packing materials would you use?
• Is it better to send live animal specimens or dead animal specimens?
• If you wanted to know about something happening in another place on the planet how would go about finding the answers?
• How would you go about finding helpers to research for you?
• If you could investigate and explore any place on earth, where would you go and who would you take with you?
• What things would you bring along on the trip?
• Now look around you, right where you live? Write about the plants you find and discover, the birds that live in your yard, the types of bodies of water that exist around you. There is so much to discover.

This is a photo of Darwin’s actual library and study back in England.

 

The 5 Book Kate di Camillo Book Giveaway Update

Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to update you on a few things about the giveaway.

For those of you who do not have a Facebook profile to enter the contest under, please leave me a comment and let me know and I’ll enter you manually. This also goes if you do not have either Facebook or Twitter.

For those of you with a Facebook profile please enter here.

Here’s a special perk about entering via Twitter and tweeting about the contest. For every twitter follower that enters the contest through your tweet, gets you an extra chance per entry to win the contest.

Please be sure to let everyone know about the contest. It’s been so much fun to see all of your comments in response to the giveaway question. We’ll be back tomorrow with a new book to jump into.

 

 

The 5 Book Kate di Camillo Book Giveaway

Greetings Everyone.
First I’d like to welcome you to our official and new website, www.jumpintoabook.com . If this is the url you have saved in your readers then you’ll be fine. If you have the typepad link saved you’ll need to change it to the .com. It looks just like the old site but we’re just using our own url now.

Lately, I’ve been very busy getting my older girls back to university. While I’m finishing up that project I thought I would announce our new giveaway.
Today starts a giveaway of another one of our favorite authors, Kate di Camillo. There are five hardcover books to be given to one lucky winner.

The Magician’s Elephant

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

The Tale of Despereaux

Because of Winn Dixie

Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken

This time all you have to do to enter is enter on our facebook fan page. While doing the Elsa Beskow giveaway I discovered that Facebook requires that one must run a contest using a third party app. Hence, we are trying something new this time. You can enter the giveaway by clicking here or by clicking that floating red bar at the bottom of the screen. If you’re already a facebook fan, wonderful !!!! You’ll still need to sign-up for the giveaway on our facebook fan page site. The contest starts today and ends September 11th at 11:59 pm. Winner to be announced on September 15th 2011.
We will be having a book giveaway every month through December so be sure to subscribe to our blog if you haven’t already so you won’t miss our giveaway announcements, fun activities to make our favorite books come alive, and our fun and free downloadable book adventures coming in the next two to three weeks. Each giveaway is for a collection of books by one of our favorite authors. I’ll be back in a couple of days with some more books to jump into. Until then Happy Reading!

 

What We're Listening To: Our Reader's Favorites

A couple weeks ago I posted about our favorite "listening reads". I was so happy to find in the comment section a list of some of your favorite listening reads. I have to admit that I hadn't heard of some of theses choices but the suspense was killing me so I went out and found them, checked them out from the library, and we had many happy moments of listening while we were crafting and such.

Rain: Love the Little House on the Prairie books on CD.

Janelle: Her family has greatly enjoyed Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel.

Amanda: Came through with a new book series for us which we've become a bit addicted to. The Akimbo books by Alexander McHall are fabulous.

Amy@ Hope is a Word: Is also listening to Alexander McHall but his Max and Maddy series.

Jennifer V: Insists that not only is Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo, a must read but a "must listen-to" as well. It's a fantastic book in any form isn't it?

Pom-Pom: Brought back an incredible memory of All of a Kind Family. There are several books in the series but I have never listened to them on audio recording. They are now sitting on our listening shelf ready to be heard.

Thank you so much friends for sharing these great finds with us.

There is one more listening site that we've recently discovered My Audio School. It's really an incredible place with many many things to listen to. Molly Evert, is a homeschooling mom to five children, who range in age from infant through high school. She started her website My Audio School when one of her children was diagnosed with dyslexia. She helped her child progress in his reading comprehension by listening to audio material. She sought an alternative to high priced audio books, began searching for public domain audio books to meet his ever growing needs.

 From Molly's Website:

"My Audio School offers children safe and easy access to classic audio books, interesting educational old time radio drama, kid’s art podcasts, television and radio broadcasts of historic events and much more. My Audio School is a treasure trove for the classical educator, with almost 600 distinct audio resources currently available for subscribers, including over 350 full-length downloadable audio books. Easy to use, organized by historical time period, and thoughtfully illustrated, My Audio School is a bargain at just $14.99 for a full year subscription!"

She also has some free downloads to let you get a feel for their productions. We are really enjoying these. My son loves history and he just cannot get enough of these portrayals and books. Please pass by and have a look.

Disclosure: As with everything on Jump into a Book, we have purchased our subscription and are not being asked by Molly or anyone to give this opinion. We are not receiving any reinbursement what so ever. We are just sharing what we actually use and like.

I hope you enjoy some of these listening reads to fill out your last days of summer.

When Jessie Came Across the Sea

When Jessie Came Across the Sea by Amy Hest and Illustrated by P.J. Lynch

This beautifully illustrated story about a young Eastern European girl who travels across the sea to a new life in America, is one of those tried and true family treasures. Though my children enjoyed the story when they were younger, the real meaning kicked in starting at about 7 yrs old.

Jessie is 13 years old and the opportunity is given to her by the village rabbi to have his ticket to go to America. Jessie's decision is fraught with uncertainty as she will have to leave the grandmother she loves very much and who has raised her.

Once in America, Jessie takes up her grandmother's profession as a seamstress/dressmaker. Jessie works for 3 years to save enough money for her grandmother to come and be with her. The story and the illustrations are extremely panoramic and beautiful. It is such a pleasure to hold a picture book made for middle grade readers.  I recommend this book for read a loud or read together at age 6 or 7. 

• Reading level: Ages 6-12
• Paperback: 40 pages
• Publisher: Candlewick (September 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076361274X
• ISBN-13: 978-0763612740
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 11 x 0.2 inches

Somethings To Do:

This book lends itself nicely to opening up the discovery and exploration into one's heritage. We have jumped into this book as our own little family and we've done it within the confines of our bookclub. We welcome this book by opening conversations within our own families, about heritage, names, languages, and favorite foods.

Taking A Look:

What is your heritage and where to the various members of your family come from? When looking at geneaeology we always start with ourselves and work our way back. Here's a place to find a variety of family trees to print out. It's really so much fun to sit and help the children fill this out. We have very fun conversations about each person. Some of the people on our chart we didn't even know but we just like the sound of their name, such as my Great-grand mother's sister Lina-Stina-Petterson. This is also a great occasion to interview grandparents about their childhood. Have everyone in the family fill out a tree from different generations and you'll come up with even more relatives, names, and stories.

When we've done this in a party setting, we always send a copy of the familytree to each family with the party invitation. That way they can bring it all filled out to the party. 

Finding Your Family:

photo from the Ellis Island Archives

Unless you're Native American, your family came from a different country at some point. It might have been recently or several generations ago. One of the largest gateways into the United States was Ellis Island. People entering the United States from the 1850's through the 1920's probably came through Ellis Island. Look at your family tree and see if anyone on your tree lived during this time period. Were they born in the United States or did they come across the sea? 

Have a look at the Ellis Island Website, put in a name on your tree and see if you can find your relative.

Immigration Pot-Luck

One of our favorite things to do with this book, especially with our bookclub, is to invite everyone to bring two dishes from their ethnic heritage. Along with the great food, everyone is to dress up as one of their ancestors and be prepared to tell everyone who you are and what sort of life you lived or are living. It's really funny when one of the kids decided to be one of their grandparents and would reinact and talk about "The Olden Days" as if they were prehistoric times. 

Heritage Crafts

Flags: Creating flags either  using wax-crayons, paints or construction paper make a nice activity.

Culture Collages: Research the countries of your heritage. Taking images from those countries create a collage to place as a screen saver, movie, or print them out and actually collage them to poster board. It If you've happened to have visited the countries of your heritage, use your family photos. Including photos of fun family moments,childhood photos of grandparents and parents, make for a nice heritage family memory board.

The Heritage Game

Another request that is made of our Immigrant Potluck Supper guests or family dinner participants is to pack a small suitcase,trunk, or backpack. One is to reflect on what is important to them and what they would want to bring to the "New World". The rule was one trunk per person. Most people travelled with a sack of some kind. People who left their countries never or rarely went back to their place of birth. What they would take with them would be all they had to remember their family, country and friends. People did write letters back and forth but it would take weeks to get news from someone and many times the letters didn't make the crossing of the Atlantic ocean. 

Here are a few ways to bring this book to life. I hope you enjoy this lovely book and the celebration of heritage and culture.