A most excellent Halloween

Please forgive this excess of photos, but I couldn't resist.


We think Margarita's do was well worth the trouble.


Greg is the little black hat guy from XKCD.


Jack was apparently one of several Sarah Palin impersonators


James was the only Joe the Plumber I was aware of.


It's Ben-Lauren and Lauren-Ben. No, Lauren-Ben and Ben-Lauren. No, it's -- oh, forget it.


John was this year's costume contest winner. You can see why - check out the umbrella-wings and duct tape mask.


The Monty Python Spanish Inquisition, brought to you by Charlie, Adam, and Erick.


You can't tell here, but Johnny's bells jingle while he juggles.


Karen and Joy are overly excited American tourists in Japan.


Max is lucky to have a medical illustrator in the family. I think.


You guessed it: the blue-haired English teacher. Don't miss the red pen in the pocket. Nice touch.


Stirling as Ellen Degeneres. He was sad that he couldn't find someone to be Portia.

On your marks, get set...

Christina just reminded me that National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo, is about to start. Can you spend the month of November writing a 50,000 word novel? Last year, 15,000 people managed to complete submissions by the deadline, including our own Linda Song.

What to put in the novel? Overhead in the library during 8th period:
- Freshman girl pestering a subbie boy to go to the Winter Formal with her. Subbie boy, highly suspicious, backs away slowly...
- Two freshmen boys discuss and share their "extra credit doodles." Characters include Super Sheep, the Llama Light Brigade, the Extra Credit Black Hole, and Cowthulu (who has udders and shoots existential terror at target teacher's anti-extra credit doodles).

50,000 words? Make that 100,000.

The real reason I went to graduate school

To learn that I should take pictures of the cable configuration on a TV, VCR, and DVD player arrangement when several of the TV inputs no longer function. If one person removes one single cable from this delicate setup, all is lost (especially since my feeble brain cannot remember the configuration, much less the concepts governing it).

Bibliofun

This week's issue of American Libraries Direct was full of funny bits. Here's a taste -

A mom in Halsey, Oregon thinksThe Book of Bunny Suicides is so inappropriate for young teens that she won't return it to the school library. People from near and far are offering to replace the book, which features "adorable yet despondent white rabbits trying to end their lives in bizarre ways." I wonder if that mom has something to do with our copy, which has been "At Bindery" since last December...

The Judge a Book by Its Cover website is one of those delightful time killers (sorry, Mr. Garvey). After looking at the cover of a book, see if you can guess its star ranking on Amazon. My experience so far is that most people aren't very critical. Everything I look at seems to have 5 stars.

If you already have trouble figuring out which wine to have with dinner, now you also have to worry about which beverage goes with the book you are reading. Definitely white wine with Jane Austen, a snooty Pinot Noir with brainy Oprah Book Club selections. Oh - not you, kids.

Finally, Literal Video Version has released another batch of music videos in which the characters sing what they are actually doing. Here's their version of the Tears for Fears 1985 hit song "Head over Heels":

You can compare it to the original on YouTube.

Chair buddy incompatibility

Sarah S. and Milee do their best to oust Sarah H. from her perch.

Book cover artistry

Before author Marc Aronson came to visit, the subfreshmen all read large chunks of his book Race: A History Beyond Black and White. Because we knew the original dust jackets wouldn't survive the experience, Ms. Morford had all the students create their own dust jackets out of brown paper bags and decorate them with themes from the book. Now those jackets are on display in the case outside the art room, much to my delight.



Many of the students chose to highlight what Aronson calls the four "pillars," or the assumptions people have when they think about race, human difference, and organizing people into categories. Here are a couple of examples up close:

Okay, I get it now

The massage machine runs because people are stressing about getting their weekly Computer Literacy 2 progress report done, not just because it's Friday.

A special visit

On Monday we had a visit from Iris Chang's parents, Ying-Ying and Shau-Jin Chang. Iris, who wrote The Rape of Nanking, The Chinese in America, and Thread of the Silkworm, graduated from Uni High in 1985. Her parents were here to present us with a couple of books -- compilations of the best essays from the first two years of the Iris Chang Memorial Essay Contest. An essay from our very own Daniel Pearlstein, now a junior, is in the 2007 volume. We'll get the books hard-bound and cataloged for the library, but they can also be purchased from the publisher. The titles are Iris Chang and the Forgotten Holocaust, and The Denial and Its Cost: Reflections on Nanking Massacre 70 Years Ago and Beyond.

Edit: The Online Gargoyle has published a nice article about the visit.

Pop culture, copyright, Communists, and libraries

Having trouble keeping up with your TV watching lately? Despair not, Hulu.com has come to the rescue {via Joyce}. The advertising business model makes it free and legal to watch entire shows. But if all I want to share is the libraries-are-a-Communist-plot story from the Colbert Report, it's easier to do on YouTube than from Hulu, where you'd have to watch the whole October 7, 2008 episode to find it. Still, a pretty darned viable alternative (not to mention, a higher quality one).

Okay, guess it's Friday

Leah kinda looks like Hoda is squeezing a bit too hard. Tahar is annoyed that no one is giving him a massage. Simeon is just too cool for the whole business, but Sarah isn't.

The folks at ConnectSafely.org have taken a retro approach to teaching web safety with a series of videos featuring "The Webs" (Mr. Web, Mrs. Web, and Kate Web). The videos are perfect imitations of those old 1940s and 1950s instructional life-lesson videos that had titles like "What to Do on a Date," "Shy Guy," and "The Last Date" (a morbid little tome on driving safety). We've got a collection of these artifacts on a video called You Can't Get There From Here: Ephemeral Films 1946-1960 (very popular around here at certain times of the year).



I don't know how effective this approach is, but it's got to beat some of those stuffy stranger-danger lectures. The best part, imo, is that the videos come complete with that canned laughter you don't hear so much any more.

{via}

And -- they're off!

It's project time for the Computer Literacy 2 students. This semester's 11 groups made some inventive selections from the project catalog. Among them are a Uni-themed Candy Land game (Runelle will be Grandma Nut!), a Google Earth map based on the movie Around the World in 80 Days, and a "Learn to Juggle" instructional video. I will be personally supervising the development of a course wiki for Mr. Buck's geometry classes, the creation of a "cultural recipes" wiki, and the composition of an original piece of music that will be recorded by its talented group members. Right now they are deciding which period of music they'd like to emulate - Baroque, Classical, or Romantic. I can't wait. When the time comes, I'll link to these efforts, as I did to last semester's LibraryThing graphic novel project. We're working on getting that one integrated into a new and improved Recommended Reads wiki. Stay tuned.

My brain is full

And so is my stomach. That Marc Aronson guy really makes you think. Today I had the pleasure of watching his presentation to the entire subfreshman class, and then later to the American History Seminar and the Social Advocacy students. The subbies read several chapters from his book Race: A History Beyond Black and White, then wrote him letters with their questions. The two hours he spent with them went by very quickly - so much good discussion! In the middle of the day, the whole school adjourned to the Culture Fair, where there was lots of good food to choose from.

Mr. Aronson was here as part of the College of Education Youth Literature Festival. Here are a few photos from the day.

A day of festivals

Tomorrow is our Culture Fair, and we will also be getting a visit from author Marc Aronson as part of the College of Education Youth Literature Festival. I could write more about Mr. Aronson's visit here, but Revathi already did such a bang-up job that it makes more sense to just link to her article.

More tomorrow, will be on the prowl for good photo ops -

Speaking of banned books...

Time for some link goodness.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, for a brief history of comics and censorship

As If! Authors Support Intellectual Freedom, a blog by authors of young adult literature

ALA's list of the most challenged books of 2007

The NPR story on Rick Wartzman's Obscene In The Extreme, a new book that examines the 1939 banning (then burning) of The Grapes Of Wrath in Kern County, California.

Philip Pullman's views on book banning

The Guardian's quiz on banned books. Check your knowledge!

{via] Young Adult Library Services Association blog; Northfield Mount Herman School library blog :-)