Zervas High Five Short Animated Movies

 

 

 

 

Mr. B's Class:

Zervas High Five - Think 1st (5B) by Zervas1 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Be Flexible (5B) by Zervas2 on GoAnimate


Zevas High Five - Work Hard (5B) by Zervas3 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Aim High (5B) by Zervas4 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five 5 - Be Flexible (5B) by Zervas5 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Chose Kind (5B) by Zervas6 on GoAnimate

Ms. Deeks/Ms.  Hayward Class:

             Zervas High Five - Choose Kind (DH) by Zervas1 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Work Hard (5DH) by Zervas2 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Think First (5DH) by Zervas3 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Choose Kind (5DH) by Zervas4 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Aim High (5 DH) by Zervas5 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Be Flexible (5DH) by Zervas6 on GoAnimate

Mr. Stern's Class:

Zervas High Five - Be Flexible (5S) by Zervas1 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Work Hard (5S) by Zervas2 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Choose Kind (5S) by Zervas3 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Aim High (5S) by Zervas4 on GoAnimate


Zervas High Five - Think First (5S) by Zervas5 on GoAnimate

Favorite Audio Books

This is a very subjective list of audio books that my family has either personally enjoyed listening to in the car or are just books that we love and highly recommend.

The Narnia books by C. S. Lewis

• These classic fantasy adventure stories are even better performed by award winning English actors such as Kenneth Branaugh, Lynn Redgrave, Derek Jacobi and Jeremy Northam.

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

• Read by Rob Inglis who is amazing and even sets the songs to music and sings them

Anything by Kate DiCamillo, but these inparticular:
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Because of Winn Dixie
The Tale of Despereaux

Roald Dahl books are great too, but some of them can be a little dark. 
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Mathilda

Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman (and anything by Ms. Cushman)

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

• Hilarious and crazy this will appeal to the entire family

The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander

• The Book of Three (the first book in the series) is not read as well as the next four books, but they are still all well worth listening too.

Hatchet by Gary Paulson (survival/adventure)
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (historical fiction/Revolutionary War)
The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare (historical fiction/colonial America)
Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool (historical fiction/Kansas)

The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli

• This is an oldie, but a goodie especially if you are at all interested in life in the Middle Ages (as I was as a young person).  The language might be challenging to read, but listening to this story makes it really come to life.

Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Gray Vining

• Another older book (and another Newbury winner), another Medieval tale.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien

and of course the first three Harry Potter books!



For a slightly older crowd:

The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud (fantasy)

The Wednesday Wars and Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt (realistic, 1968/1969 historical fiction)

Harry Potter books 4-7

Best Book Trailers:

Books for 3rd Graders that help explain a symphony

The Composer is Dead (with cd) (Snicket) (this one is on the longer side)

Zin, Zin, a Violin (Moss)

Philharmonic Gets Dressed (Kuskin)

Peter and the Wolf (with cd) (Dewhirst)

Remarkle Farkle McBride (Lithgow)

The Story of the Incredible Orchestra (Celenza)

Feliz takes the Stage (Lasky)

The Farewell Symphony (Celenza)

Moses goes to a Concert (Farrar)

Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Britten)

Those Amazing Musical Instruments! Your Guide to the Orchestra Through Sounds and Stories(with CD) (Helsby)

Story of the Orchestra : Listen While You Learn About the Instruments, the Music and the Composers Who Wrote the Music! (Levine)

2012 Recommended Books for Middle Schoolers

Adventure/Mystery

Poison Most Vial by Benedict Carey

Don't Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon

Safekeeping by Karen Hesse

Tokyo Heist by Diana Renn

Secret Letters by Leah Scheier

Double by Jenny Valentine

Realistic Fiction

Laugh with the Moon by Shana Burg

See You at Harry's by Jo Knowles

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by

Jennifer E. Smith

Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip by Jordan Sonnenblick

Humorous

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

Chomp by Carl Hiaasen

Ungifted by Gordon Korman

Cat Girl's Day Off by Kimberly Pauley

Historical Fiction

The Wicked and the Just by Jillian Anderson Coats

The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine

For What It's Worth by Janet Tashjian

Tracks by Diane Lee Wilson

The Last Song by Eva Wiseman

Crow by Barbara Wright

Graphic Novels

Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks

Ichiro by Ryan Inzana

The Girl Who Owned a City by Dan Jolley

Drama by Raina Telgemeier

Cardboard by Doug TenNapel

Pandemonium by Chris Wooding

 Fantasy

 Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

 Arthur Quinn and the World Serpent by Alan Early

 Seraphina by Rachel Hartman*

 The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen*

 Winterling by Sarah Prineas

 The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Horror/ Supernatural

Long Lankin by Lindey Barraclough

The Demon Catchers of Milan by Kat Beyer

Fracture by Megan Miranda

Transcendence by C.J. Omololu

Ripper by Stefan Petrucha

The Dead of Winter by Chris Priestley

Science Fiction

The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman

A Year without Autumn by Liz Kessler

Insignia by S.J. Kincaid

The Vindico by Wesley King

A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

Biographies & Nonfiction

His Name Was Raoul Wallenberg: Courage, Rescue,

and Mystery during World War II by Louise Borden

Teen Cuisine: New Vegetarian by Matthew Locricchio

The Fairy Ring, or, Elsie and Frances Fool the World by Mary Losure

Zombigami: Paper Folding for the Living Dead by Duy Nguyen

 The Mighty Mars Rovers: The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity by Elizabeth Rusch

Art Lab for Kids by Susan Schwake

Poetry

Eva of the Farm by Dia Calhoun

The Arrow Finds Its Mark: A Book of Found Poems by Georgia Heard

Sisters of Glass by Stephanie Hemphill

Running with Trains by Michael J. Rosen

*I've read this book myself and liked it.

Children's Books about Tics

• Tic Talk: living with Tourette Syndrome, a 9 year olds boy's true story about living with Tourette Syndrome by Dylan Peters
• Hi! I’m Adam by Adam Buehrens
• I Can’t Stop by Holly Niner
• Mommy, I Feel Funny! A Child's Experience with Epilepsy by Danielle M. Rocheford

YA Review: Bitterblue

Bitterblue by Kristen Cashore Bitterblue is a sequel to Cashore’s fantasy YA novel Graceling and a companion novel to Fire. Bitterblue, the young Queen of Monsea, is the main character in this book. Unlike Katsa and Po from the first book and Fire from the second, Bitterblue has no Grace or superhuman powers or abilities.

Summary: “The long-awaited companion to New York Times bestsellers Graceling and Fire Eight years after Graceling, Bitterblue is now queen of Monsea. But the influence of her father, a violent psychopath with mind-altering abilities, lives on. Her advisors, who have run things since Leck died, believe in a forward-thinking plan: Pardon all who committed terrible acts under Leck's reign, and forget anything bad ever happened. But when Bitterblue begins sneaking outside the castle--disguised and alone--to walk the streets of her own city, she starts realizing that the kingdom has been under the thirty-five-year spell of a madman, and the only way to move forward is to revisit the past. Two thieves, who only steal what has already been stolen, change her life forever. They hold a key to the truth of Leck's reign. And one of them, with an extreme skill called a Grace that he hasn't yet identified, holds a key to her heart (Amazon.com, 2012)

Things I liked:

• There is humor. I like that. This book was very funny in parts. It certainly isn’t always funny, but especially in the beginning there were such funny things being said and discussed... sometimes very silly things.

• The librarian. His name is Death (rhymes with teeth). There are a lot of librarians in books written for youth and, while it is true, that many of them are heroic, lovely model human beings, some are not. The one fault I always found with the Harry Potter series was that Hogwarts had such a mean and vindictive (and old) librarian. Whenever I run across a mean librarian in fiction I imagine that the author is getting her revenge on some real-life librarian who did her wrong as a child or who refused to help her while she worked on her first book. The librarian in Bitterblue is different. At first he starts out as the stereotypical old-school, sour librarian, but so extreme that he makes me laugh. Out loud. As the book goes on and I get to know him more I came to understand where his behavior comes from; what shaped him into the dour person he has become. He wins me over as he wins over Bitterblue herself and he becomes one of my favorite characters in the book. Whatever you do, don’t skip over the list of characters at the end of the book as Death wrote it and it is also incredibly humorous – in a witty, biting kind of way.

• Cashore is a master of creating real and honest relationships on the page - relationships that I, as a reader, feel a part of. I actually went back and re-read Graceling and realized that even though I love so many things about the book the parts I treasure the most (and like to go back and reread) are the sections where Po and Katsa are becoming close. There is a quality of openness and honesty in those sections that takes my breath away in Graceling (for sure), but also here in Bitterblue.

• The theme of this story is not as original as the themes in the two previous books, but that isn’t necessarily a criticism. While Graceling is about a young woman with extraordinary physical prowess learning to face the only real fears she has – fears around loving and trusting and Fire turns teenage angst about appearance on its head by creating a character that possesses shocking, otherworldly beauty, but who desperately wants people to know her inner self, Bitterblue is a somewhat more standard young woman’s coming of age story. But Bitterblue is not just any young woman growing into adulthood she is also the leader of her country – a country that is coming out of the long shadow of the her father’s devastating tyranny. Although this is a fantasy novel, I felt like the problems that Bitterblue faces are not so far from reality… say if she happened to be the new leader of North Korea or Albania or Romania after the fall of communism instead of the Queen of Monsea.

I didn’t fall head over heels for Bitterblue as I did for Graceling which seemed so wildly new and eye-opening when I read it for the first time. However, I did thoroughly enjoy reading this book – which deals so much with honesty and truth and the cost of lies and I certainly heartily recommend it.


Citations: Amazon.com. (May 1, 2012). Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Bitterblue-Graceling-Kristin-Cashore/dp/0803734735/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336419409&sr=1-1.