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Today is Valentines Day—and with Valentines  Day I always think of poems and the silly poems we would write in our homemade valentines.  My mother, carrying on the tradition of her father, wrote wonderful, usually silly poems,  in honor of the big and small occasions in our lives.  Other families also have poetry traditions.  Carolina Kennedy was here in Seattle a couple of weeks ago, and spoke on the role that poetry has played in the traditions of her family.  (Write up in the Seattle Times) Caroline has been creating collections of poetry, at first based on the poetic tradition of their family – and the poems that her mother loved, and then creating collections based on her own poetry traditions with her children.

Caroline has a great passion for poetry and for libraries. Listening to her speak reawakened my own interest in poetry.  For her,  poetry is a way to relate to people and to relate to life.  Caroline was inspired by her own mother’s emphasis on poetry when she was young, and Jacqueline’s request for her children to share a selected poem with her for her birthday.  I came home and personally bought several of Caroline’s poetry compilations. They are delightful;  including not just poems but also some of Caroline’s reflection on her own life and on her extended family. These books will also be available at the Overlake library. Her newest book, Poems to Learn by Heart,  will be out in March.

Today, in honor of Valentine’s Day we have set up a table with all sorts of craft goodies for students to create old fashioned Valentines.  Dare I hope that some of these might also include a poem?

What I have read recently:  I just finished Left Neglected by Lisa Genova.  It was fascinating look at tramautic brain injury seen through the perspective of the patient.  Lisa Genova, with a PhD. in Neuroscience from Harvard, weaves in her scientific expertise  in  her fictionalized books that deal with different neurological conditions, like Alzheimer’s and traumatic brain injuries.  Her other works include Still Alice and Loving Anthony.  Highly recommended.

Thanks so much to all the volunteers who helped out setting up, manning, and packing up the bookfair this year! It was another busy year, and the students got to peruse a wonderful collection of new fiction and nonfiction. Their purchases will also enable us to send a nice collection of books to our school in Uruguay during Project Week.

If you missed the bookfair, you can still help the school earn books for Uruguay if you purchase books at the Bellevue University Bookstore by Sunday and let them know you are connected with Overlake; they will count your totals towards our bookfair totals.

This year, a group of middle school boys, meeting twice a month for book games and competitions, finished out their year with a hotly-contested smackdown between their favorite literary villains. Out of the fourteen dastardly villains, the overall winner was Saint Dane, from D.J. MacHale’s Pendragon series. Saint Dane is a ruthless, shapeshifting, world-hopping spirit who is the personification of cruelty, so evil and powerful he beat out Voldemort and Sauron! In his last smackdown, he crushed the five-headed dragon goddess Takhisis from the Dragonlance series. Now that’s some evil.

This year’s Hoot, the Middle School literary magazine, is bigger and better than ever: 68 pages of stories, artwork, poetry, essays, and more by our talented Middle School students. This year’s staff of twelve students met every other week to assess and vote on the 284 submissions, which were mostly class assignments collected from teachers. Students with work accepted into the magazine were notified before printing, to obtain permission to publish their work. All Hoot staffers and contributors should be immensely proud of their efforts!

The Hoot is offered free to students and parents by pre-order only; we didn’t want to waste any copies as printing is expensive. All staffers and contributors automatically received a copy. Archival copies are available for reading in the Library.

Cover photograph by Christy Oh.

The Library was a hive of activity during Project Week, as we hosted the ‘Written & Illustrated By…’ project for the second time–it’s amazing how fifteen students engaged in writing and illustrating their own picture books can fill up a library capable of seating 100! This project is run by me, Rebecca Moore, librarian, and Karen Mihata, 8th grade English–we have been teaching it jointly for seven years, and never get tired of seeing students’ creativity brought to life. During the projects, students write a story, illustrate it (this takes the longest amount of time!), sew the book together, glue in their text and illustrations, glue on binder board covers, and create a jacket to hold it all together.

We are always amazed with the creative stories the students come up with, and the artistic skills exhibited even by those who claim they have none! This year we had our first pop-up book, our first dystopias (I think we can thank Hunger Games for those!), some steampunk, some nonfiction, a “scrapbook,” a book incorporating both drawings and photos of the author’s adorable pug dog, and so much more! Below are some pictures from our exciting and creative week, and the books are now on display in the library for a short time before their creators take them home.

The Overlake Library is pleased to announce that we will be having two author visits in October. James Dasher, best selling author of The Maze Runner series,  will be at Overlake on October 17th. Maggie Stiefvater, bestselling author of the Shiver series (Shiver, Linger, and Forever) will be coming on October 12th. Maggie’s books have been on many award lists including the ALA Best Books for Young Adults, and the Amazon Top Ten for Teens. Here is the link to her blog http://m-stiefvater.livejournal.com/. Students will be able to attend Maggie’s discussion during the Club period for the Upper Schoolers, and the Study Hall for the Middle Schoolers.  They will be able to buy copies of these author’s works through their school accounts on the day of the visit. Parents please let your student know if that is okay with you.  –Ann Ewel

Project Week 2011 has come and gone, but this year the Library played a bigger role than usual. Karen Mihata and I (Rebecca) jointly run the project “Written & Illustrated By…” in which Middle School students write, illustrate, and bind their own picture books. In past years we’ve used various classrooms, but this year, needing more space, we used the Library. It was a great success, and everyone enjoyed having more room in which to spread out. If you are on campus, drop by and see the results of the project, which will be on display this week and next.

Students offering compliments and suggestions to improve book jackets

Finished books on display in the Library

More finished books ready to be admired

What happens when you find a time machine in your worst enemy’s locker?

The answer to that question will be up to you when you read Jasmine Runs Out Of Time: A Choose Your Own Adventure Story, written by the members of the Middle School Word Lovers Club.

The adventure starts when someone unknown signs Jasmine up for a talent show—and everyone knows she has no talent! Jasmine suspects her arch-enemy Gizz, and her suspicions grow when she passes his locker and sees a mysterious box inside. Will she open the box? Use its contents? Ignore it and go to class? The story from here is up to you! Your choices determine your plot, but be aware, not all endings are happy when you play around with time…

Library Activities
The Library continues to be an active and creative space. Here are a few of our recent/upcoming activities.

In February, we posted the annual Faculty Favorites list; books that had meaning for individual faculty, staff, and administration members over the last year.  

A group of Middle School boys spent many weeks on a YA Fantasy Smackdown. Taking characters from young adult fantasy books, we put them in sports-style brackets. Boys then chose characters to represent in the one-on-one smackdowns, arguing why their character would win over the other. The rest of the boys voted on which character would win, and we continued narrowing the field until we reached a winner. (If you want to know who won, check out the page!) The smackdowns were taped, and you can find the podcasts on the smackdown site. We all had a great time with this, and hope you enjoy it as well.

Every year the Middle School runs a bookfair which earns us credit at the University Bookstore. Last year we spent the credit on books for our school in Cambodia. This year, we spent it on Spanish-language books for our school in Uruguay. Leaders for the Project Week Uruguay trip Bill Armstrong and Marian Sugano, along with two students going on the trip, joined me at the bookstore on a Saturday to choose books. Many thanks to the University Bookstore for being so gracious as we depleted their Spanish collection!

Posted by Rebecca Moore

Bookfair is coming up! October 18^th, Sunday, is our set-up day, and the fair will run from October 19-20. We run the bookfair in the Board Room in the Campus Center, and students will visit with their English classes. They may also visit during lunch and after school on Monday. This year I selected most of the 700+ books that the University Bookstore will bring for the fair, and it was a mammoth undertaking!

I looked at the books that kids had requested and purchased last year, then polled the kids on what books they would like to see this year. I also invited kids to meet me at the Bellevue University Bookstore on either of two September Saturdays to check out the newest books and make additions to the overall list, and several students did take me up on the offer. I collected all the information and somehow came up with a massive database that I sent off for ordering. We’ll see in October how well I planned!

I’m also looking for volunteers for the bookfair, either for setup on Sunday, 10/18 (10 AM tentative start time), or two-hour shifts on Monday or Tuesday, 10/19-20, starting at 8 AM. If you are interested in volunteering, please let me know (rmoore@theoverlakeschool.org). There will also be a request in the ebulletin this week.