Book Review

by Book Reviews and RecommendationsNews

Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece by Marc Harshman and Anna Egan Smucker 

Reviewed by Dawn Miller

In a discussion with an out-of-town visitor some time ago, several of us at the Charleston Gazette-Mail tried to convey that our readers have a strong sense of place. The visitor, having listened carefully, nodded: “I think it’s safe to say you love West Virginia.” The emphasis was his.

I thought of that exchange while reading Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece by West Virginia authors Marc Harshman and Anna Egan Smucker, who also have a love of place, and know how to appreciate it in others.

Their poetic words, and somehow moving illustrations by LeUyen Pham, tell the story of Edgar Kaufmann (as in the old Pittsburgh-based department store formerly anchoring the Charleston Town Center), who wanted to build a house at a special place, near a waterfall on Bear Run in western Pennsylvania.

“Campfires have been built on that big rock for hundreds of years,” Kaufmann told Wright, a famous architect whose best years and projects were behind him, or so people believed.

For 34 dynamic pages, Harshman, Smucker and Pham make even the thinking that goes into the design of Wright’s most famous house suspenseful.

“No house should ever be on a hill or on anything….,” Wright wrote in his autobiography. “Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.”

Most adults coming to the book will already know that Wright builds Kaufmann’s house over the water, so that the campfire rock becomes the hearth of the house. Yet it is a revelation as it emerges from drawings, rock and scaffolding.

There’s a page where Wright stands out on the farthest point of the terrace, extended out over the creek.

I think of it every time I drive by the Charleston Civic Center’s ongoing renovations, where an inviting bowsprit has emerged over the Elk River.

I tried the book recently in Martha Barnes’ and Sarah Woody’s third-grade class at Piedmont Elementary School in Charleston. Here’s how it went:

“That’s beautiful.”

Can you imagine going to bed in a house where you could hear the waterfall in every room, I asked.

“I would go right to sleep,” one girl said, and closed her eyes.

“How does it not block the waterfall?”

“How do we know that people have camped at that rock for centuries?”

I asked if anyone has a special place like this. The quick answers were big, the places of exciting family memories: Myrtle Beach. Las Vegas. China.

The slower answers were closer, and quieter: Fayette County. My grandma’s front yard.

Dawn Miller, a 26-year Read Aloud West Virginia volunteer and former board president, is the Gazette opinion editor at the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

 

 

No Fear Shakespeare

by Enrichment IdeasNewsReading

By Heidi Jeffries

No milling and seething!

My students at Elkins Mountain School, a placement facility for boys ages 13-17, love to explain these words to the new students who enter our classroom. Shakespeare was a daunting new topic for me as well as for my students this school year. A true confession is that I had only read Romeo and Juliet in high school. Granted, I have seen many of the plays, some multiple times; however, I was not comfortable with the idea of getting through a play with my students who often struggle with reading and lack basic vocabulary. During some history/English cross-curricular collaborative planning, a colleague, Lauren Johnston, English teacher at the West Virginia Children’s Home, encouraged me to go for it, and shared materials she had used successfully.

Just before reading Macbeth, I stumbled across an idea online for using quote cards as a pre-reading activity for the original text of the plays. This simple yet brilliant idea was a hit. Before even reading the prologue, students are introduced to original text quotes that give meaning and anticipation to the play. Students are given a quote card and go through a process together of pronouncing unfamiliar words and practicing delivery of the quote without a context. We did this outside where they were instructed to “mill and seethe” around while quoting aloud to each other. We practiced intonation and then gestures to go with the quotes. Most loved the physical, interactive activity. As a result of this simple activity, students recognized the quotes and understood the context as we read and watched movies and plays using the original texts. Students would excitedly state, “That was ‘my quote,’ Ms. Jeffries!”

Picture books hold a special place in my heart. I try to incorporate them with these young men, always reminding them that it is a very important thing for men to read to their children.

I wanted my students to have a good overview of the play, so I began with the beautifully illustrated Favorite Tales from Shakespeare by Bernard Miles. While I read each of the engaging versions of the plays aloud, students drew an aspect of the story on sketch paper using colored pencils. No Fear Shakespeare by SparkNotes really seemed like cheating to me, a purist about original texts and a critic of condensed or dumbed-down anything. Wow, was I wrong. The text is set up with the original on one side and a modern take on the other. Still clinging to my principles, my first best intention was to have them read the original text aloud while comparing to the modern text. This was not realistic considering the varying levels of reading abilities and the frequent interruptions, absences and new student additions. So, we simply read the No Fear version and, if particularly inspired, each student could read a bit of the original. In this way, we happily and eagerly read through Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Hamlet in just one semester. Students clamored to take parts, even the lower reading level students read willingly for the most part. If not, they were in charge of making up sound effects.

We also created an area of banishment in the classroom. Students who did not participate or attend class were banished. Coats of arms created by students for this unit would be moved to the “Ugly and Desolate Area” until a peer would agree to rescue the student by reciting a key speech from the play using gestures and tone, while wearing a silly hat. Students also provided an aesthetic response to the original text from the Queen Mab passage in Romeo and Juliet when they finished that play.

Boys love swords and shields. Elkins Sewing Center collected empty fabric tubes and cardboard forms. With a little metallic paint, and lots of brilliantly colored duct tape, these were crafted into attractive swords and shields sporting family crests from a research activity. Their artwork was showcased at the local library in April as a display for poetry month.

I feel so rewarded by the comments made by these young men.

“Hamlet is one of the most interesting plays I have ever read.”

“It (the unit) was fun, everything about it was interesting. It was a better way of teaching than I have  experienced before.”

“What play will we read next?”

Seeing multiple kids signing out the graphic novel versions of Shakespeare’s plays in the original language was another plus. I am now inspired and determined to learn more myself through a future training on non-traditional teaching of  Shakespeare next fall. The learning was not short–term with these techniques. So often students memorize or remember for an exam or essay and then forget the material. Not so with this multi-faceted unit. They fell in love with the stories and characters.

These at-risk teens strongly related to the themes of family, young love, betrayal, despair and violence. These young men enjoyed themselves with activities that engaged them and will have pleasant memories of an English class years from now. Did I mention that this learning happened without even having to take a traditional test?

Heidi Jeffries is English Language Arts teacher at Elkins Mountain School in Randolph County. 

 

 

Read-A-Palooza fundraiser most successful to date

by EventsNewsRead-a-Palooza

By Sara Busse

It was a red carpet night as Read Aloud West Virginia hosted Read-A-Palooza on March 19, 2018, at Paterno’s at the Park in Charleston. The annual event was attended by 220 friends of Read Aloud who enjoyed the event’s theme, “Books to the Big Screen”—a celebration of children’s books that have been adapted into movies.

The purpose of Read-A-Palooza is to raise vital funds for Read Aloud’s programs, as well as to raise awareness of the work Read Aloud does in 30 counties and 210 schools in West Virginia.

As they say in the movie biz, “The award goes to…” our two Signature Sponsors, BrickStreet Insurance and the Elliot Family Foundation, and to Paterno’s for giving us the perfect setting for the popular fundraiser. Many others helped make the event possible, as listed below.

Artwork, excursions, and other exciting items were part of a silent auction that raised funds to help spread the Read Aloud message throughout West Virginia. Many people contributed silent auction items, including gifts from our Berkeley, Boone, Greenbrier, Hampshire, Kanawha, Mingo, Morgan, Pocahontas, Preston, Randolph, Roane and Wood county Read Aloud chapters. We received auction items from friends in California, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina and Virginia, as well. Monetary donations were received from Berkeley, Jackson, Jefferson,  Kanawha, Marion, Monongalia, Nicholas, Preston, Randolph, Wood and Upshur counties as well as from Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia.

Thanks to all of our friends who contributed auction items and to those who purchased items! Another thanks goes to the Read-A-Palooza committee, led by Hayley Woodrum, who put in countless hours to make the  evening a success.

Even though the event was held in Charleston, the movie-themed evening was a state-wide affair, enjoyed by Read Aloud supporters from Boone, Cabell, Greenbrier, Jackson, Kanawha, Logan, Mingo, Pocahontas, Putnam, Raleigh and Randolph counties.

Read Aloud is deeply indebted to Read-A-Palooza’s sponsors, silent auction and monetary donors and everyone who helped make the event a success. We hope you will join us next year!

Sara Busse is a long-time Charleston resident and community volunteer.

Special thanks to our Read-A-Palooza 2018 Sponsors!

Signature Sponsors: BrickStreet Insurance and The Elliot Family Foundation

Platinum Sponsor: Johnstone & Gabhart

Gold Sponsors: Moses Auto Group, TransCanada Corporation, United Bank

Silver Sponsors: Appalachian Power, Summit Community Bank

Bronze Sponsors: Advanced Eye Care, Assured Partners of WV, LLC, BB&T Wealth, Charleston Pediatric Dentistry

Read Aloud West Virginia Board member, Denise Davenport, surveys guests on their favorite book-to-movie pair as they enter Read-A-Palooza 2018. (Photo credit to Rafael Barker)

 

Summer reading projects highlight the importance of access and family involvement

by NewsReading

By Lesley McCullough McCallister

 Sunshine and warm temperatures mean summer break is upon us! While children may be focused on how many summer hours can be spent at the pool or playing outdoors, it is equally important to encourage them to read while they are away from the classroom.

According to Richard Allington, co-author of Summer Reading: Closing the Rich/Poor Achievement Gap, any child who fails to read during the summer will lose some reading proficiency during the break. (It is the equivalent of an athlete who stops training and loses physical skills.) Children from low-income families are particularly at risk. National research shows they  routinely lose two to three months of reading proficiency every summer, while middle-income families gain about a month, resulting in a three to four-month gap building each summer. Allington notes that the main issue seems to be access to books, not lack of ability. He cites the fact that low-income families own fewer books than middle-class children, and on average, middle-class students have ten places to buy or borrow books in their community for every one place accessible by a low-income neighborhood.

While Read Aloud West Virginia’s Book Distribution Program gives books to students in participating schools through a variety of programs throughout the year (Snuggle and Read, Kindergarten Round-up, and special family participation events), special emphasis is increasingly given to distributing reading material in the weeks leading up to the summer break. The success of a trial project, which began in one school in Greenbrier County in 2016 has led to an expansion of the project into two additional schools located in Fayette and Raleigh counties. Funding from the Carter Family Foundation and the West Virginia Leaders of Literacy: Campaign for Grade Level Reading has made this expansion possible.

According to Read Aloud West Virginia Executive Director Mary Kay Bond, the summer reading project is built on a partnership between educators, families, the State Read Aloud office and local chapters. First, Read Aloud staff and local chapter volunteers meet with school faculty to discuss the program and share the books which will be available to students: typically 120 titles representing a wide range of interests and reading levels. The faculty are encouraged to display the books in their classrooms, discuss or read short passages from various titles, and generally build excitement about reading books during the summer. Weeks later, local Read Aloud chapter volunteers return to the school as shopping helpers. Each student is invited to create a list of their top six book choices (and two alternate selections). The selected books are then prepared with personalized book plates bearing the student’s name on the inside front cover of the book. The six new books are placed in a tote bag and affixed with two tags, one with the child’s name on it, and the second with a tip sheet for families explaining all the ways they can help their child maintain or build reading skills over the summer months. Families and students are invited to a year-end celebration where the importance of summer reading and the role families play in raising enthusiastic readers is discussed. Finally, each child is called forward individually to receive the tote bag containing the book selections they requested earlier that month.

“The excitement of the children is palpable!” said Bond. “One child said it felt like Christmas.”

This simple project has yielded great results. Reading scores at Crichton Elementary, where the project is in its third year, have been raised from the lowest in the county to the highest. The principal notes staff and students are gaining valuable instructional time in the fall since they do not have to spend the early months of the school year remediating students and getting them back to their previous skill level. It is a win/win for teachers and students alike.

When creating a summer reading plan for a child, families are urged to make it fun and keep it simple. Suggestions, all of which are FREE, include the following:

1) Read to your child daily. Reading even 10 to 15 minutes a day can help them keep up their literacy skills and transition back to the school year more easily.

2) Let your child see you reading regularly on a daily basis. Habits are caught more than taught.

3) Visit the library together and enroll in a library summer reading program. Also, sign up for a free library card.

4) Let your child choose the material. Comic books, magazines or books about various subjects are all reading.

5) Limit screen time. Children need time to “unplug” from TV, video games and other electronic devices.

6) Spend time talking, singing, dancing and drawing with your child to encourage their creative side and introduce them to new words.

All of these activities are free but valuable!

The benefits of summer reading will help your child further a sense of discovery and develop positive attitudes about books, as well as maintain reading proficiency during summer break, which in turn will help your student transition back to the classroom in the fall more easily.

Lesley McCullough McCallister is a Read Aloud supporter, volunteer reader, newsletter contributor and a  freelance  journalist.