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Hello and welcome, everyone! I plan to enter my Middle Grade novel, THE PRINCE OF STEEL PIER, in this year's Pitch Wars. Despite the usual struggles that writers face, I thoroughly enjoyed writing this manuscript. Here's my pitch: All four of the Goodman brothers have summer jobs but none of them as dangerous as Joey’s. This summer, he’s working for a gangster. It’s August of 1975 in Atlantic City, and all Joey wants is to have his voice heard above the din of his large, Jewish family. He’s tired of hearing that he can’t do this and he shouldn’t do that at his grandparents’ kosher hotel. And he’s had it with living in his brothers’ shadows. Then Joey stands up for himself to the so-called King of Steel Pier, Artie Bishop. In Artie’s world on the Boardwalk, Joey finds a place to belong, to feel important. Artie even hires Joey to “chaperone” his charming daughter, Melody, for a couple of weeks. But the more involved Joey becomes with Artie and Melody, the further he endangers the people he loves. His lies begin to pile up, and soon, Joey must decide: Will he risk the lives of his own family to become part of a different “family”? THE PRINCE OF STEEL PIER is a middle grade, stand-alone novel with series potential, complete at 58,000 words. It will appeal to readers of Gennifer Choldenko’s Al Capone Throws Me a Curve and This is Just a Test by Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang. Like these wonderful books, my novel explores sensitive family dynamics and cultural issues in a retro setting of decades past. Here's an aesthetic. I spent a great deal of time down the shore in New Jersey as a kid in the 1970s, and yeah, this captures it.  A little about me:
I'm a middle school librarian at a wonderful independent school in the Columbus, Ohio, area. If you love books, writing, and kids, THIS IS THE DREAM JOB! Now, I also count myself as a #MG writer. I earned a Master's in Education from Columbia University Teachers College in 1990, and I taught middle school language arts for many years. In 2014, I earned my Master's in Library and Information Science from Kent State University. Basically, I've spent my entire adult life working with 11-14-year-old kids. They are the best. Besides my own kids, who are 20 and 23. They're really the best. I grew up in South Jersey and practically lived at the St. Charles, my grandparents' kosher hotel in Atlantic City. This is NOT the Jersey Shore from the television show. I don't what that Jersey Shore is. My Jersey Shore was full of warm summer days on Steel Pier and Million Dollar Pier, hot dogs from Nathan's, and afternoons at the arcade playing Skee-Ball. My writing: I was one of those kids who wanted to be a writer from the time I was six years old. I wrote Star Wars fanfic before fanfic was a thing, and of course, I believe in my heart that I am a Jedi. Voice is central to my writing. I start with a protagonist who has a strong yet vulnerable inner life, and I surround him/her with a family that is both challenging and supportive. Middle grade readers are discovering that they have their own place in the world, but they also need to know that their family is behind them. It's this tension that I seek to explore in my writing. I write about Jewish kids, so I suppose that makes me an Own Voices writer. I think the world needs more stories about Jewish American kids. For Pitch Wars, I hope to match with a mentor who feels that not every story needs to have epic proportions to be an epic piece. I write about real kids with real problems and issues, and I'd love to work with someone who loves a strong, honest voice. Please follow me on Twitter @snockowitz.
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 This egg drop competition thing...I never heard of it until they did it on Modern Family. But apparently, it's a thing. At schools and in communities. Egg drop contests. Contestants attempt to create a protective little shelter for a raw egg, which will then be tossed over the side of a building. If the egg is cushioned well enough that it doesn't break upon landing, you win. Or you tie, I guess, if there are multiple unharmed eggs. In her book jacket bio for her MG novel The Science of Breakable Things (Random House, 2018), Tae Keller tells us that she participated in such a contest at her school growing up in Honolulu, but she was not victorious. Still, the idea of this contest does make for a compelling story line for her book.
Seventh-grader Natalie needs the prize winnings from the egg drop competition she's been convinced to enter by her strange but thoughtful science teacher Mr. Neely. Why does she need $500? Well, Natalie's mom is going through a major depressive episode, and Natalie believes that if she can just get her mother to New Mexico to see the rare Cobalt Blue Orchids, her mother's spirit will be lifted out of her depression. Mom is (was) a botanist, but since she started staying in bed for days at a time, she hasn't taken care of any of the flowers in the family's greenhouse, including their own Cobalt Blue Orchid. So all the plants at home are dead, Mom is a shell of her former self, and Dad is just trying to hold things together. When Mr. Neely suggests the egg drop contest might be a good way for Natalie to complete her scientific question assignment, Natalie enlists her best friend, Twig, and a new boy named Dari to help. Friendships are tested, friendships are formed, and Natalie tries her best to make an unbreakable egg to fix her broken mother. One of the things I like most about The Science of Breakable Things is that Tae Keller did not make any of the three kids- Natalie, Twig, or Dari- some kind of science genius who could win them the contest without, well, breaking an egg. These kids are real. Their quirks and behaviors are genuine. Natalie is an average student. Twig is offbeat. Dari is an anxious sort. I know these kids. They've been in my classroom, and they come to my library. They do seem more like 6th graders than 7th graders to me, but that's just a small quibble. Twig is an especially endearing character. I've known so many kids like Twig, and they're all wonderful, as is Twig. If they're lucky, they find a friend like Natalie who is supportive and accepting. The Science of Breakable Things is ultimately a story about a girl dealing with the broken world that's left behind in the wake of her mother's mental illness. Natalie may not know much about the scientific method at the beginning of the story, but by the end, her experiments have yielded just the right results.  I went to summer camp in the Pocono Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. From the time I was eight years old until I was deep into high school, I lived at Camp Akiba for eight weeks each summer. I adored summer camp. Or at least that's how I feel when I look back on it now. Akiba was a wonderful place, our days packed with all kinds of activities, our nights spent snuggled in our bunks under "jelly rolls" (scratchy wool blankets we'd roll to the end of our beds every morning).
So, I always look forward to a camp novel: prose that sings the praise of warm summer days and nights filled with the sounds of crickets and bullfrogs. Which does NOT describe Camp Omigoshee, the boys' "transformation camp" of Kate Beasley's Lions & Liars (FSG, 2018). Camp Omigoshee is where poor Frederick Frederickson finds himself after an unfortunate boating incident. Most fifth graders in Frederick's place would probably find a camp counselor and call Mom ASAP. But Frederick has other ideas. At camp, he's not flea-biting-the-butt-of-a-meerkat Frederick Frederickson, loser extraordinaire. At camp, he's Dash Brightwood, delinquent legend and tough guy. At least, that's who everyone thinks he is since the real Dash Brightwood hasn't yet shown up for camp. And as long as everyone thinks he's Dash, Frederick has a shot at being more than a flea; he may even be a lion. Frederick and his Group 13 bunkmates circle around one another for awhile and form some tentative friendships. But there's little to prepare Frederick for what he's about to face: a Category Five hurricane is headed straight for Camp Omigoshee, and Frederick in for a boatload of trouble... Lions & Liars is sure to remind readers of Louis Sachar's Holes: the "camp" for delinquent boys who turn out to be not-so-delinquent, the tough-as-nails adults in charge, the "What more can happen to this kid?" plot twists. Not to mention the main character with the funny name. But Lions & Liars is much tamer than Holes and doesn't go into issues of race and bigotry. Kate Beasley's book is very much focused on Frederick, his emotions, and his growth. I found myself rooting for Frederick by the time Hurricane Hernando bears down on him and his pal Ant Bite. Frederick basically admits that he's not a particularly likeable kid at the beginning of the book. But he overcomes many obstacles through the course of the book and he gives a lot of thought to how he's behaving and how he's coming off to others. He becomes an endearing character who finds that even fleas can get by if they find some good friends along the way. Kate Beasley's writing is very engaging. Kids will fly through this book and will find the hurricane scene edge-of-your-seat exciting. Dan Santat's wonderful illustration are sprinkled throughout the book. They enhance the prose by conveying the kids' facial expressions and actions with realism but also with tenderness. This is especially true of the illustration of Frederick and his new friends lying in a star pattern on the road outside of camp. I'm grateful my summers at camp were nothing like the days at Camp Omigoshee. I don't think I would have survived Frederick's ordeals. The worst thing that happened at Camp Akiba was when they ran out of chocolate milk at the afternoon snack break!  I'm a sucker for a book that takes place in the Philadelphia area. I lived in South Jersey, just across the bridge from Philly, for the first 18 years of my life. I'm a Jersey girl, but my heart was always in Philly. Dad and I went to all the major sports teams' games: 76ers, Phillies, Flyers, and, of course, our beloved Eagles. Yes, they're Super Bowl Champs now, but when I was growing up, they were a metaphor for the city itself: scrappy, decidedly unglamorous, and never the winner its big brothers are (New York, Dallas).
So, my heart swelled when I picked up Every Shiny Thing by Cordelia Jensen and Laurie Morrison, because it's a Philly book. It's full of references to Philadelphia stuff that really brought me back to my hometown. My heart also swelled because Every Shiny Thing is a lovely, warmhearted read that middle grade kids from just about anywhere will enjoy. It's not a perfect book, but it's a story with depth and complexity. The main characters feel real, and they're as down-to-earth as the city the story calls home. Lauren and Sierra come from different worlds. Lauren is a typical suburban kid with parents of means and an autistic brother. Sierra, on the other hand, is in the foster care system because her father is in prison and her mother is a raging alcoholic who cannot care for her 12-year-old daughter. When Sierra is placed with foster parents in the home next door to Lauren, the girls become fast friends. This doesn't go over well with Lauren's oldest pal, Audrey (WHY can't three girls be friends in a book???), who gives Lauren the cold shoulder for much of the story. Every Shiny Thing takes a pretty dark turn when (spoiler!) Lauren becomes a kleptomaniac, shoplifting from stores and stealing items from people's houses. She has what she thinks is a good reason for her thievery: she wants to sell the items she steals, which she believes are totally extraneous items to their owners, and give the money to her brother's old occupational therapist to help defer costs for other people's OT sessions. But Lauren forces Sierra to hide the stolen goods and the money she makes selling the stuff online, even though Sierra begs her to stop. In addition, Sierra's mother, whom she hears from infrequently, is in and out of rehab, as well as in and out of the arms of abusive, alcoholic men. Lauren tells her story in prose, while Sierra's narrative is in verse. This device is a bit clunky. I never truly understood why Sierra's story had to be told in verse. Was this just to give the book a little something extra? Was it to set off Sierra's plight as being more tragically poetic than Lauren's? I could buy that, but the verse chapters don't have the emotional impact I think they're supposed to have. Sierra speaks of kaleidoscopes and shifting colors, but I'm not sure I get the metaphor here. Regardless, the girls' stories are both compelling. Sierra is caught between a rock and a hard place with Lauren, with her mother, with her foster family- wanting to give of herself, but wanting not to be hurt yet again. Lauren has a good heart, but she's going about her fundraising in a most repugnant way. The authors do a great job of building the tension throughout both narratives, and the ending is quite satisfying, if a bit long-winded. I have two beefs with Every Shiny Thing, and they're both minor but persistent. First, the kids in this story just don't sound like seventh graders to me. They come off as more like fifth or sixth graders. I spend most of my days with 11-14-year-olds, and their voices are all distinct. Seventh graders today are more sophisticated than Lauren seems to be. Instead, she sounds much more like one of the fifth grade kids in Wonder. My other issue with the book is that the authors seemed to have sprinkled in diverse characters just for the sake of having diversity. There's a black and white couple, a white and black couple, a family with two dads, and an Asian family, but why? I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have diverse characters in a book. On the contrary, I think that diverse voices can enrich a story and add dimension to a cast of characters. Here, it felt to me that the authors were just covering bases: black and white couple? Check! Asian family? Check! Gay parents? Check! Diversity achieved! It seemed more of an afterthought than something organic to the story. Still, I did enjoy Every Shiny Thing quite a bit. It's a very readable book, and I stayed up late finishing it one night because I really wanted to know what was going to happen to the girls. They are characters the reader can truly invest in and care about. And the mention of a Brian Dawkins jersey every so often won me over entirely!  Remember the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder? You may have read it in high school or seen it performed by a local theater company. In Our Town, one of the main characters, Emily, dies, and her ghost spends Act III of the play getting used to the idea that she's dead and observing the aftermath of her death on the lives of those she loved. Once she understands how her family and friends can move on without her, she can move on without them. It's a lovely play, rooted in early 20th century American values and the idea that human life is ephemeral.
Jewell Parker Rhodes's Ghost Boys (Little Brown, 2018) is a 21st century version of Our Town. In Ghost Boys, Emily is replaced by 12-year-old Jerome, a boy from the Chicago projects killed by a policeman who mistakes Jerome's toy gun for a real one. After his death, Jerome watches as the repercussions of his senseless murder are played out among his family members and his friend Carlos, as well as those he didn't know at all, the family of the cop who killed him. Also like Emily in Our Town, Jerome is guided by other ghosts, in his case, the "ghost boys" who were all killed because of the color of their skin. The leader of the ghost boys is Emmett Till, the 15-year-old murdered in Mississippi in 1955 by white men who were acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury. Emmett helps Jerome see how his death is rooted in the racism that has plagued our country since its inception, racism that robs families of their sons and brothers in a way that is also uniquely American. There's an otherworldly quality to Jewell Parker Rhodes's writing in Ghost Boys , an unearthly atmosphere that she creates with her words. It makes for a mesmerizing reading experience. It's not a scary read; rather, it's a book that whispers. But it whispers fiercely. Jerome's grandmother tells Carlos and Jerome's sister Kim: "Can't undo wrong. Can only do our best to make things right." That means bearing witness, telling the stories of the ghost boys, and understanding that "(o)nly the living can make the world better." Ghost Boys is an astounding book that should be required reading in middle school classrooms and homes. Rarely have I been so affected by a story that I run out and tell language arts teachers about it the day after I finish it. But that's what I did with Ghost Boys. It is the Our Town for our century: a century in which the problems of the past are still visited upon the youth of today; a century where the "American value" that leads to the deaths of our young, black boys must be made right by the living.  I used to watch the TV show House all the time, especially after it went into syndication. I remember vividly when "Thirteen," the doctor played by Olivia Wilde, was faced with the dilemma of whether or not she should take the genetic test and find out if Huntington's Disease was in her future. Thirteen, aka Dr. Remy Hadley, was a woman walking on the razor's edge; deciding whether or not to find out if she was going to succumb to that horrific disease had her, understandably, in knots. She was terrified to find out but just as terrified not to know.
So, imagine coping with that kind of decision and its aftermath as an 18-year-old. That's the dilemma facing Tovah and Adina, the twin high school seniors in Rachel Lynn Solomon's moving novel You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (Simon Pulse, 2018). Adina, a viola prodigy, and Tovah, whose main goal in life is to go to Johns Hopkins and become a doctor, do take the test, do find out the results, do have to come to terms with the consequences. How can 18-year-olds possibly confront their futures once they know who will live and who will die? The Siegel sisters tell their stories in alternating chapters. Both girls are protagonists here, despite Adina's best efforts to be the antagonist. She tries her darnedest to ruin her sister's life, but her attempts to do so are just as much about self-pity as they are about hurting Tovah. Turns out, the only antagonist here is Huntington's Disease, which has already struck the girls' mother and turned their beloved Ima (Hebrew for "mother") into someone they barely recognize. One of the twins sees her future before her in the everyday struggles and inevitable decline of their mother. The other must live with the guilt of knowing she will not be struck by the disease, but will instead have to watch as another immediate family member deteriorates. The sisters do not turn to one another for support after receiving their test results. They've hurt one another badly in the recent past and those wounds are still raw. Instead, Tovah seeks solace in her Jewish faith and her new boyfriend, artist/kind-kid/ubiquitous space-between-his- front-teeth-that-just-makes-him-cuter Zack. Adina tries to force true love into her relationship with her older viola teacher and contemplates suicide. She deludes herself about a number of things, as an 18-year-old is apt to do, so her story has a lot more edge and pathos than Tovah's. As I read, I kept wanting the sisters to just get everything out in the open to clear the air between them, but Solomon continually pushes the girls together and pulls them apart in a way that I found both poignant and frustrating. Fellow young adults will admire, relate to, and scorn this dance all at once, as young adults are apt to do. You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone contains sex, sexual references, foul language, and all of the other trappings of a very real teenage life today. There's also quite a bit of transliterated Hebrew, which may annoy people who do not speak the language (I'm glad I do, so I didn't have to constantly stop my reading to find out what the girls and their parents were saying to one another). In any case, Tovah and Adina end up teaching one another lots of life lessons as they struggle to come to terms with their future selves. And they are, in the end, the antidote for one another's ails, which they do figure out. But not until after they put one another, and the reader, on the emotional roller coaster ride of late adolescence. Highly recommended.  I'm pretty sure that Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang were thinking about me when they wrote This is Just a Test (Scholastic, 2017). Yeah, they definitely were. They know just how I felt in 1983, when we (meaning everyone I knew) believed that the Cold War was about to culminate in nuclear war. As a junior in high school, I stared slack-jawed at the television screen while watching a movie called The Day After. They were showing us on national TV what was going to happen when the Soviets dropped the bomb. For a kid with an anxiety disorder (then undiagnosed because, well, 1983), The Day After churned up every feeling of terror, panic, and twitchiness possible.
So, This is Just a Test had me hooked from page 1. David Da-Wei Horowitz is your typical, 12-year-old, half-Chinese, half-Jewish kid in 1983. He's awkward. He can't utter a simple sentence around the girl he likes. His little sister is annoying. But David has bigger fish to fry than these hum-drum worries of adolescence. His bar mitzvah is coming up and his grandmothers are about to kill each other. Oh, and he's digging a fallout shelter in his friend's yard, scrambling to finish before the Soviets drop the big one. Now that he has watched The Day After, that possibility is always in the back of David's mind. It's hard to concentrate on your schoolwork and your Torah portion when you're faced with potential annihilation. This is Just a Test follows David's trials and tribulations as he straddles two cultures and navigates the troubled waters of middle school life. He and his best friend Hector are Trivial Pursuit afficianados and become members of a trivia tournament team with BMOC (Big Man on Campus) Scott. For reasons that don't become apparent until later in the story, Scott doesn't want to include Hector in his and David's half-baked plan to dig a fallout shelter. So, David finds himself playing intermediary, a role he performs at home, too. Both his maternal and paternal grandmothers hover and fuss and generally try to make David embrace one ethnicity over another. David is remarkably poised when it comes to his grandmothers, a little less so when it comes to his friends. David's parents are part of the story, too, but it's his grandmothers and his pals who are the focus of most of his energies. The "test" of the title takes on multiple meanings as David careens through seventh grade. His friends test his loyalty and judgment. His grandmothers test his patience and mediation skills. And, of course, the Emergency Broadcast System tests its reach as its warnings blare across everyone's TV screens. David does his best with all of these tests, and he comes off as a totally authentic 12-year-old: questioning his own decisions and those of his family and friends, building confidence, and making his voice heard. Of course, we know that the world is not coming to an end in 1983, but David dauntlessly faces all of his life-changing moments with aplomb, or at least, a brave face. One of the things I love best about This is Just a Test is its sensitivity to both the Jewish and Chinese cultures represented in the story. No one is a stereotype (though I certainly recognized my own mother in David's Safta), and neither culture comes off as more appealing than the other. David embraces his heritage on both sides, and though they sometimes exhaust him, his grandmothers are kind-hearted, loving women, each of whom has a lasting influence on David's life. This is Just a Test reminds me a lot of Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars, a book that I adore for its humor and shrewdness. The book will appeal to middle grade boys and girls alike, though the looming threat of nuclear war may frighten some, considering the state of international relations today.  I've decided to make this the last WWHs of the school year. I always like to do a "Best of" for the final post, so...in no particular order...here are my favorite Weekly Web Hits from the past 10 months! (Please contain your excitement. You're just embarrassing yourself.) The 80s were so awesome, weren't they? I mean, MTV actually showed music videos all day, and our vocabulary was enhanced by words like bodacious, hoser (or its alternative, hosehead), and Eurotrash. You never hear those words anymore, unless you're watching this. We've lost a lot of great words to time, but it looks like some long-dead words may enjoy a resurgence soon. Linguists and historians at the University of York have put together a list of 30 "lost words" that they believe could be relevant to our lives today. The researchers looked at historical texts and etymological dictionaries to build the list, and the insurance company that paid for the research is now sponsoring a vote by the public as to which words warrant a comeback. The list contains some truly useful words, like slug-a-bed (a lazy person who lays in bed all day) and rouker (a person who spreads rumors). But the best? Betrump, a verb meaning to deceive or cheat. I coney-catch you not.  You MUST try Breakout EDU, an "immersive learning games platform" created for the classroom. In a BreakoutEDU challenge, students have to work together and use a lot of critical thinking to solve a series of puzzles. The end goal is to unlock a box that contains a "prize" of some sort. It's kind of like an escape room game but without the zombies. BreakoutEDU comes as a kit, with boxes and locks and such. You make up the clues, and you provide the denouement, so to speak. There are also subject packs available, so your breakout game can align with your curriculum. It's an awesome idea. If you're interested in trying BreakoutEDU, let me know. The library will happy to host your students! *UPDATE: Michelle P. and I went to a BreakoutEDU workshop in April, and we each have a Breakout kit that's fully stocked with all you need to make your Breakout experience a great one. Maybe a bit late for this year...although you can't beat a good interactive game for the last week of school!  Oh, Canva, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways! I've written about Canva before, but they just keep making it better, so it's worth re-posting about this amazing design tool. The lovely US librarians and I were just singing Canva's praises the other day! I use Canva to create all of the JAG meeting invites. You can design presentations, posters, photo collages, infographics, and more. Now Canva offers a ton of teaching materials and lesson plans on all kinds of topics, everything from biodiversity to product branding and marketing. You can also peruse design articles and tutorials on a whole host of topics. Whitney and I had our advisories make initial selfie posters this morning, and they're adorbs! I don't gush about web tools all that often, but Canva is a gem. *UPDATE: The above JAG logo was created on Canva, and it will be used on a snazzy table banner and buttons for the Affinity Group Fair on the last day of school.  Take a look at What Unites Us, a really interesting interactive from The Washington Post. For What Unites Us, photographers from the WaPo gathered answers to that question from people in every state plus Washington, D.C. In a country that seems so polarized by the current political climate, what values and beliefs connect Americans today? What does it mean to be an American today? You can explore the site thematically, through topics like Community and Empathy, Opportunity and Drive, and Freedom and Fundamental Rights. Another way to explore the site is to click on the thumbnail photos of the 100+ participants in the journalists' interviews. The interviews "reveal commonalities and convictions that bridge geography, gender, occupation, race or religion — an indication that perhaps what unites Americans to one another is as powerful as what divides them." After exploring the site, students could conduct their own interviews with fellow students and faculty to find out what unites us right here at CA. Could be a thought-provoking project...  In my never-ending quest to slay the fake news dragon, I've been thinking a lot about media bias. I think I can skip over the question "Is media bias a real thing?" and go straight to "How does media bias affect journalism today and what can we do about it?" Truth is, people do want unbiased news, but we also think our country's media is doing a very mediocre job at being unbiased. Of course, as citizens living in a polarized political climate, "a significant proportion of the public feels that powerful people are using the media to push their own political or economic interests, rather than represent ordinary readers or viewers." Interestingly, the Pew Research Center found that the U.S. is "one of only a few countries where governing party supporters are less satisfied with their news media than are nonsupporters." All of this is very confusing. If we believe that the media is biased, does that mean it is? According to this chart, one of many you can find online, the answer is yes. But then again, we really can't trust our ourselves because of our own biases, so I think I'm back at square one. Clearly, this is going to take a lot more research to unravel... Search challenge time! Last week's challenge: There are some pretty strange symbols on the emoji keyboard on my iPhone. I don't know for certain, but I'm kinda sure that the same symbols appear on all emoji keyboards? Anyway, this one looks like a gold circle or horn with a red belt on it. There's even another emoji of a building with this circle on it (without the red belt). What is this symbol and what is its meaning? Solution: If you see tears streaming down my face, don't worry; they are tears of joy. I'm so proud of so many of you- especially my Star Searchers- because you've grown so much in your search skills this year. I don't think there's any challenge that you cannot tackle! You've become excellent query formers, and you don't become discouraged if your first attempt doesn't yield the results you want. Stellar work this year, kiddos! Maybe the time for search challenges has passed. You're just that good. As for the solution to the above challenge: Many of you were able to figure this one out quickly. Various search queries included [emoji meaning horn red] and [gold circle emoji with red belt]. Even if these initial queries did not yield desired results, you persisted! You may have been led, like Star Searcher Dan, to an emoji search engine, or to an emojipedia (yes, that's a thing). Detective Benson's search led to her to the following, the perfect answer: Postal Horn A postal horn (usually called a post horn) was used in the 18th and 19th centuries to indicate that a mail coach was arriving to deliver the mail. When the horn was blown, people would have to get out of the way, sort of like a siren today.The appearance of a postal horn is similar to that of a bugle — a trumpet-like brass musical instrument without any valves.This postal horn can be found in the logos of many European postal services, and is also shown on the front of the European Post Office emoji in the Apple artwork. Postal Horn was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Dan confirmed what I'd read: This postal horn can be found in the logos of many European postal services, and is also shown on the front of the European Post Office emoji in the Apple artwork. Congratulations to all of our amazing colleagues who are retiring this year! You are loved and will be missed by all! And to those friends who are moving on to other opportunities: Best of luck in all you pursue! You are loved and will be missed as well... Have a great summer, everyone! Stay safe! Stacy  Apropos of nothing, this TedEd video does have some lessons to teach: Which is Stronger: Glue or Tape? It's actually a pretty interesting video. Adhesive vs. cohesive, and all that. You'll learn about why glue sticks to stuff and why tape sticks to stuff and which sticks to stuff better. It's really more than you ever thought you wanted to know about stickiness. But it would be fun to poll kids before watching it, asking them which they think forms the stronger bond, and then debriefing afterwards. You'll also learn a little history lesson about glue, which is good cocktail party conversation.  You're crushing it, teachers! There is nothing in this whole world like holding it together with students in the last weeks of school, is there? That's why this week is Teacher Appreciation Week! Yay, us! And while the words "teacher" and "appreciation" may seem like they're on opposite ends of the spectrum sometimes, for the most part, we have it pretty great here at CA. So, to help you celebrate yourselves, check out this list of stores, etc., that will show you some appreciation bu giving you discounts and freebies this week. And here's a list of restaurants where teachers can get free food this week. By the by, you can get a 15% educator discount at Madewell and J.Crew at any time. You just have to show a teacher ID at the register. Just a tip from your Uncle Lar.  Interesting development: The Boy Scouts of America will drop the word "Boy" from its name as it allows girls to join the program. Put that on the "things that make you go 'Hmmm'" list. According to the NYTimes, from now on, the group will be known as Scouts BSA: "The change was announced as part of the organization's new Scout Me In marketing campaign, which features girls and boys." So, now girls will have the opportunity to enter the organization's highest rank and become Eagle Scouts. More than 3,000 girls have already enrolled in Cub Scouts, the group for ages 7-10. What do the Girl Scouts think about this change? Not much, apparently.  The sixth graders have a neat project coming up in social studies class. They'll be looking at an innovation from Medieval times and researching how that technology has evolved over time. If you'd like to wax nostalgic for old technologies, mosey on over to the Museum of Obsolete Objects, a YouTube channel with 15 videos demonstrating the purpose, usage, and obsolescence of objects like the fax machine, the cassette tape, and the rotary telephone. Now, I would argue that not all of the objects in the Museum of Obsolete Objects are, in fact, obsolete. Plenty of people still use a phonograph, aka, a record player, and many still use a pocket calculator. Even so, it's fun to reminisce about the days of yore as you watch a video about the good ol' floppy disc. I can think of many more things that could be added to the MofOO: dial-up modems, dot matrix printers, truth-telling from our government...Oops. Did I say that? Search challenge time! Last week's challenge: A kid came into the Middle School Library the other day and asking for a specific book. He couldn't remember the name of the book or the name of the author. All he could tell me was the following: 1) the book is the first in a series; 2) the book is darkish blue and has a one-word title; and 3) the book has a drawing of a dragon on the front. I knew just what he wanted and grabbed it off the shelf. Can you find the book he was looking for? Solution: Several of you answered this one correctly, and you each used a slightly different search strategy, which I love to see! Mainly, you searched some combination of [young adult book dragon blue cover first in series] or something along those lines. And you came up with the correct answer: Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Now, the reason I asked this particular question is because I want to show you how to search for something when you don't know quite so much about it. I gave you a lot of hints. But sometimes a student comes in and just asks for "that blue book with a dragon on it." In cases such as that, try searching by color on the Advanced Search page for Google Images:  It's just a neat little extra there on the Advanced Search page that you may find useful. It's an especially good tool if you're looking for a transparent image or a black and white image. Just a little tip from your Uncle Lar.
This week's search challenge: There are some pretty strange symbols on the emoji keyboard on my iPhone. I don't know for certain, but I'm kinda sure that the same symbols appear on all emoji keyboards? Anyway, this one looks like a gold circle or horn with a red belt on it. There's even another emoji of a building with this circle on it (without the red belt). What is this symbol and what is its meaning? We're getting down to the last weeks here, folks. I will probably put out another two weeks of WWHs and then call it a year. Hey, do you follow me on Twitter? Please do: @snockowitz. Also, I'm getting my book review/educational musings blog going again, under a different name, so visit every once in a while, will ya? www.MrsNReads.com. Nothing much to look at yet, but I'm contemplating posting the WWHs there. Thoughts? Last week, Diane Daniel gave me an article she'd found in the Wall Street Journal titled: "It's Never Looked Sunnier in Philadelphia." The article discussed how people in Philadelphia are feeling oddly optimistic about the town lately, what with the Eagles' Super Bowl win and the Villanova NCAA Championship and the '76ers looking good in the playoffs. Well, there's something in Jewish called kinehora, which is when, by saying something aloud, you assure it will never happen. And of course, as soon as that article comes out, the '76ers find themselves down 3-0 in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. KINRHORA! Wall Street Journal, why did you have to point out all of my beloved Philadelphia's victories? The Sixers may as well not show up for their next game. The WSJ has jinxed them out of the playoffs. Have a great week, everyone! Stacy It's possible that you once read my previous blog, Some Novel Ideas. Some people did read it. But then I became a librarian, and I had no time to write book reviews anymore. Ironic, huh? Now I've decided to get back to blogging. I'm still a librarian, but I know what I'm doing now, so I actually do have time to write reviews again. I'm also writing a novel now. Again. This time with gusto.
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