I'm not dead.

Really! See?

I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Toronto (for RA in a day) and Niagara (for fun), with a v. brief stop in Burlington...! So that was 4 days: 2 flights (Porter, I love you), 3 cities, 2x Highway 403, 4x buses, 2x subway, 6 vineyards, 4 rez girls, a dozen ABBA songs, 170 photos, 532 unread Google reader items (*mark all read*), 1 speech, 1 conference, and 1 overnight bag. Whew!

While I vainly trudge through my to-do list (class cancelled for an author visit next week! Staffing snafu! No one to join a book club we paid for! Taking on several of my colleague's booktalks because she was ill! Trying vainly to not push the window guys out the window.... - we're having several windows at work re-done, since they are shabby 1980s broken windows right now. Actually, I love the window guys; they are amazing. It's just never a dull moment around here, and the drilling noises don't help!), please accept this booktalk of a lovely new middle readers title as a pathetic gift to make up for my recent silence. Know that I am somewhere glued to a computer, typing up my RA in a day notes just for you.

Bink and Gollie, by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee
[Prompt:Have you ever been friends with someone different than you? Older / younger? Taller/shorter? More energetic? Quieter?]

This story is about two friends, Bink and Gollie. They like to do things together, like:

• buy socks
• cook pancakes
• go roller-skating
  

They live near each other (here I show the two characters and their homes on pp. 14-15, pictured here).


What is different about them? (encourage the children to notice who is taller, shorter, and so on, plus guess about the characters' personalities based on body language, etc.)

Then I show the author photo I printed out from this lovely online interview with the authors, and ask them what they notice. The kids loved this:

I then read from the first story in the book, the one about socks.