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"Somewhere on this list is a book that will change your life."

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Mon, 11/08/2010 - 3:52pm
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The personally transformative books of our young lives
From the Fall 2010 Caller

History teacher Pat Walsh recently sent a list to incoming Upper Schoolers of books that had inspired faculty and staff members when they were teenagers. This is just a part of that glorious list, in which J.D. Salinger reigned supreme, with Kurt Vonnegut a close runner-up. Maybe your inspirations will be found here, too.

Deirdre Atkinson, drama teacher

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Carson McCullers, Member of the Wedding
J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
 

Chris Bagg, English teacher

Junot Diaz, Drown
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Tony Kushner, Angels in America
Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
 

“If I were a rapper, I’d freestyle an ode to Crime and Punishment: I like big books. Dostoyevsky’s character arcs and setting transported me in a manner far more profound that any cinematic experience I’d ever had. I went from a child who wore a white bathrobe and braided her hair into Leia’s signature cinnamon rolls, to a young woman who spent an inordinate amount of time at the kitchen sink trying to wash the stain of Raskolnikov’s guilt from her own hands.” —Nance Leonhardt, media arts teacher

Nancy Donehower, college counselor

Robertson Davies, Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonders, and The Rebel Angels
J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey, Seymour, An Introduction, and Nine Stories
Lincoln Steffens, Moses in Red, also his autobiography
Theodore H. White, The Once and Future King
 

Enrique Escalona, Spanish teacher

Issac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
Alan Moore, Watchmen (graphic novel)
Friedrich W. Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra
JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit
 

“In Mr. Blue by Myles Connolly, I was attracted to a uniquely American character who embraced the challenge of living a pure life in adherence to a simple set of altruistic principles. Mr. Blue is a radical idealist, a mystic, a poet, and his example has prompted me to think more deeply about the values implicit in many of the decisions I have made in my life.” —Art Leo, English teacher

Peter Green, outdoor education director & dean of students

Ray Bradbury’s novels
Albert Camus, The Stranger
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
John Knowles, A Separate Peace
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
John McPhee, Coming Into the Country
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
 

“I read Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find with a teacher who was passionate about her work. He introduced me to her writing as a comment on the human condition, and I was both shocked and completely captivated. It was a powerful and formative experience.” —Michael Heath, Upper School head

Andrew Merrill, computer science teacher

Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
David Lodge, Small World
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All The President’s Men
 

Lark Palma, head of school

John Barth, The Floating Opera
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Willa Cather, My Antonia!
John Fowles, The Magus, The Collector
Hermann Hesse, Demian
D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Emile Zola, Germinal
 

Sue Phillips, librarian

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, and all of her novels
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
John Donne, Songs and Sonnets
Nikolai Gogol, short stories
Proinsias MacCana, Celtic Mythology
Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One, Decline and Fall, Brideshead Revisited
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, Jacob’s Room
 

Peter Shulman, history teacher

Pat Conroy, The Great Santini
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
Richard Wright, Black Boy, Native Son
 

Nichole Tassoni, English teacher

James Baldwin, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
 

Becky Wynne, science teacher

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Robert Heinlein, The Door into Summer
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Larry Niven, Ringworld
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand
 
 

 

Mindful Pleasures: Developing Lifelong Readers in the Catlin Gabel Upper School

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Mon, 11/08/2010 - 3:50pm
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By Tony Stocks

From the Fall 2010 Caller

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” —Lemony Snicket 
 
If you read at all— newspapers, periodicals, that purported destroyer of the art of reading known as the internet—you’ve probably come across accounts lamenting the decline of reading in America. A much-quoted 2004 report from the National Endowment for the Arts claimed that less than half of American adults read any literature at all, and the decline was said to be even more precipitous among young people. News like this hits English teachers especially hard. Reading is not only the central focus of our profession—it’s also our passion, and often the only factor that allowed us to survive adolescence. Yet as you may realize when confronted with huge, intractable social problems like the specter of global warming or the rise of Justin Bieber, the only practical response is local. We can’t stuff the internet genie back in the bottle (nor, I suspect, would most of us want to), but we can keep working to develop skillful, enthusiastic, lifelong readers, giving our students in the Upper School the tools to read incisively and professionally, with the maximum of enjoyment and understanding. Here are four major strategies that we use to accomplish that goal.
 
Diverse, Challenging Reading Lists
We challenge our students by assigning them rich, multifaceted texts, drawn from both the traditional Western canon and from those alternative traditions that contemporary academia is thankfully taking more notice of lately. There’s nothing simplified or dumbed-down about the pieces we ask students to read. At all levels of the program, we ask them to read adult texts, almost always in their entirety. And our students tend to rise to this challenge with a maturity and enthusiasm born of being treated like grownups. According to my colleague Nichole Tassoni, our ninth graders remark, at several points in the year, “We read the whole Odyssey” (the epic poem by Homer), at first in disbelief at the task before them, but later with a growing pride as they tackle the book. Last year’s junior class spent part of the spring working their way through Toni Morrison’s Sula, a challenging novel that offers visceral and sometimes disturbing perspectives on race, sexuality, and social class. Despite the book’s difficulty, it emerged as one of the most popular pieces of the year; in large part, I suspect, because it confirmed our students’ feeling that they’re ready to tackle mature subject matter.
 
Active Reading
In order for students to get the most out of their reading, we insist that they always read with a pen or pencil in their hand, and record in the margins of their texts those elements worthy of remark that they encounter. Such a strategy not only ensures that students will retain key points of their reading for the future, but has the larger advantage of shifting the act of reading from passive absorption to active engagement with the text. As American philosopher Mortimer Adler writes in the essay “How to Mark a Book,” which all Catlin Gabel students encounter at the start of their sophomore year, active reading assumes that “learning doesn’t consist of being an empty receptacle . . . and marking a book is literally an expression of differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author.” It’s always gratifying to note instances where students have scribbled “neat,” “beautiful,” “huh???,” or even “WTF?” in their books, as these indicate that students are engaging emotionally with the text.
 
Early in their Upper School careers, many students resist the demand that they read actively. They argue that active reading slows them down too much, or that it spoils their pleasure in reading. But as they move through the program, most come to see active reading as a necessary weapon in their academic arsenal. They realize that the reduction in speed required by active reading is usually compensated for by a greater centering of attention that tunes out distractions and allows them to complete assignments more quickly. They also discover that there is no single formula for active reading, and that students need to develop individualized strategies to match their own mental habits: some will scribble notes in the margins as they read, others will wait to summarize a crucial point or two at the bottom of the page, some will write a short outline or paragraph at the end of a chapter. Most will also come to redefine the pleasure of reading, preferring a harder-won understanding to a facile breezing through the text. At the very least, all will realize that actively reading a text at the time it’s assigned eliminates the need to reread it when exam time rolls around.
 
Reading Through the Lens of Literary Terms
Just as physicists, attorneys, and skateboarders all employ a special terminology that both maps the conceptual territory of their respective fields and marks off the professional from the layperson, so literary critics have developed a jargon for the domains of poetry, narrative, and drama. We certainly want our students to be able to toss around fifty-cent words like “allegory,” “epithet,” and “anagnorisis” in order to impress their future college professors, but our insistence that they learn and wield this vocabulary goes beyond our desire to make them big noises on campus. For in mapping the terrain of literary study, these terms allow us to formulate fruitful questions that might not be possible without them.
 
For instance, for many readers the terms “story” and “plot” are more or less interchangeable. But Catlin Gabel students learn early in their careers that, for professional literary critics, a story is defined as any sequence of events in chronological order, whereas plot refers to the manner in which the author manipulates that sequence to create certain artistic and emotional effects. Armed with that distinction, our students can begin to ask why works like the Odyssey or Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane begin in medias res (“in the middle of things”) and then flash back to earlier actions. Similarly, a student reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar familiar with the concept of “caesura,” a break or pause in a line of poetry, may begin to notice how the poet uses that device as a subtle means of characterization. While the headstrong Cassius tends to speak in lines with few internal pauses (“Now in the names of all the gods at once/Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,/That he is grown so great?”), Brutus’s caution is marked by frequent caesurae that break the forward motion of his speeches (“That you do love me, I am nothing jealous;/What you would work me to, I have some aim.”)
 
Reading as Active Response
Finally, reading is actively integrated with the other elements of the English program. If, as Adler suggests, every encounter with a text is ideally a dynamic conversation with its author, then every text our students read becomes part of a larger dialogue with their classroom community. Whether students are debating the question of racism in Heart of Darkness, or teaching the first act of Waiting for Godot to their peers, they are compelled to become active caretakers of the text, to explore its implications, to take a stand on its meaning and significance, and to convey their interpretation to their teachers and fellow students.
 
There’s nothing particularly innovative or trendy about any of these approaches to reading (in fact, Adler’s article dates from the early ’40s). But graduates still return to campus eager to talk about their recent reading, librarian Sue Phillips reports that non-required books fly off the shelves before winter or summer vacation, and we often overhear the finer points of The Great Gatsby, or Beowulf, or the latest masterwork featuring Northwest teenage vampires, being debated in the student lounges—suggesting that at least at Catlin Gabel, the future of reading may not be so bleak after all.
 
Tony Stocks has been teaching English in Catlin Gabel’s Upper School since 1999. He is the proud father of Clarissa ’16 and Charlotte ’19 Speyer-Stocks.

 

The Unlimited World of Readers

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Mon, 11/08/2010 - 3:49pm
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By Lark P. Palma, PhD, Head of School

From the Autumn 2010 Caller

When I hear teachers talk about the breakthroughs—the aha! moments—when a child makes the leap to linking the sound and letter of a word to its meaning, I am a bit envious. When I worked as a middle and upper school teacher, my job was to solidify and enhance what my students had learned, helping them become more sophisticated readers. What I learned about secondary reading is sound advice: spend almost as much time preparing the student for reading as for the reading itself. My work seeking the hooks on which to hang the reading, finding the deeper meanings and leading my students to discover those meanings for themselves, helped them become analytical readers who came to comprehend texts with depth and insight.
 
However great that was, I never had the opportunity to teach a young child to read. Despite all the methods, the science, and the research, the moment when a child recognizes a word and its meaning still seems magical to me. Recently I discovered a picture of my 5-year-old self in footie pajamas reading the comics. It brought back memories of figuring out from the illustrations what Brenda Starr or Prince Valiant was saying. Eventually, I could pair the repeated words with what I thought was going on. But although I don’t remember much about the moment I learned to read, I was fortunate that someone took an interest in me as a young reader and put wonderful books in my hands.
 
Dick and Jane, Tag, and Through the Garden Gate—the books we were all supposed to read—bored me beyond words. We lived on a tiny coastal island, and the library was the size of a small living room. But the unforgettable Miss Chastain was there, and she kept handing me books to read that she knew would spark my interest: The Five Little Peppers, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Secret Garden, Misty of Chincoteague, The Arabian Nights, Treasure Island, and many others. Her gesture implied “You will love this.” When no one else was there (which was often), she would let me read adult fiction. I gulped down great historical novels by Anya Seton and others, with their thrilling battles and momentous events. I felt like I was right there in the throes of the Puritan Revolution, the Great Plague, the building of cathedrals, and the Viking invasion of Britain. (The truly transformative books came later: the existentialists, Richard Brautigan, John Barth, Walker Percy, John Fowles, Kurt Vonnegut, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf.)
 
Just as I had passed my books on to my brothers, so did I dole out the special books to my cousins and friends. The tradition continues today through two more generations. If you have someone in your life who sets the table and joyously offers you a smorgasbord of books, you will partake with gusto and pleasure.
 
I am so proud to be part of a school whose teachers make the world of reading come alive for their students. They place the right books in their hands, just as Miss Chastain did for me. Our teachers understand how to reach readers of all types of learning styles, so that they too can take part in absorbing and thrilling experiences with just the turns of a few pages. This issue of the Caller is full of stories of the transformative acts of both reading and writing, another area that we teach extraordinarily well. Please enjoy these stories, and don’t hesitate to share a much-loved book with me.

 

 

Poems by Billy Collins in the US Library

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 11:00am
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The marvelous Billy Collins is coming to Catlin Gabel's Upper School on Wednesday, November 17th.  If you would like a taste of his poetry before he arrives, here are a few resources for you. 

• The Billy Collins Poetry Window in the US Library:  We've posted several of his poems on the window just inside the US Library entrance.  Stop by and browse for a brief introduction to his writing.

• Check out a book:  There will be a good selection of titles in the library in a special book display beginning on November 1st.

• Visit the Poetry Foundation's Billy Collins page to listen to audio recordings of his poems, and to read a brief biography. 

Enjoy the poetry!

--Sue

 

Eerie Books & Films for the Dark Nights of October...

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 1:58pm
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As the leaves begin to turn and the nights grow chill, stop by the US Library to find some novels, short stories, and movies to suit your Halloween mood!  We have classic fiction by H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, a great assortment of Hitchcock and vampire DVDs, and plenty of mysteries.  If you're busy and don't have much time, check out a story collection to enjoy your chills in bite-sized bits.  Don't blame us if you have a little bit of trouble settling down to sleep...

Download ebooks and audiobooks this summer!

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Thu, 06/10/2010 - 1:23pm
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Did you know that you can use your Multnomah or Washington County library card number to check out downloadable audio and ebooks?  Now you can read or listen to all sorts of literature on your smart phone, ipod, laptop, etc.  This is a service of the Oregon Digital Library Consortium. 

Here's the link:  http://library2go.lib.overdrive.com
Have a wonderful summer.

--Sue

Summer Borrowing in the US Library Kicks Off on June 1st!

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Tue, 05/25/2010 - 11:29am
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you can check out books and magazines for the whole summer...

Summer Borrowing is your chance to check out books and magazines to enjoy all summer long.  All returning students and fac/staff may participate.  Beginning on Tuesday, June 1st, stop by to browse our big, big displays.  We'll be glad to help you find something of interest, or an armload of good reading.  This is YOUR chance to decide what you want to read. 

See you soon!  --Sue

 

==Historical Fiction==

Do you enjoy novels set in the past?  We have hundreds of good choices.  Whether you like stories from the Civil War era, ancient Egypt, India, or France during the Revolution, we've got something you will enjoy.  Ask Sue for help if you need it!

==Mysterious Mathematics==

If you need a little bit of inspiration from the big names in mathematics, or you love to solve difficult problems, browse these wonderful titles.

 

Prime Numbers:  The Most Mysterious Figures in Math--D. Wells

A look at the math and mystique of prime numbers bringing to life the strange attraction of primes, from their current use in codes and cryptography to the Fermat and Fibonacci numbers, Goldbach's Conjecture, the Mersenne primes, and the number mysticism of old Pythagoras; from prime records and mathematicians' ingenious efforts to find primes (including a 2002 breakthrough algorithm), all the way to the unproven Riemann Hypothesis and the extraordinary zeta function.
 

Knotted Doughnuts and other mathematical entertainments--M. Gardner

Do you like Scientific American?  This book is a collection of Martin Gardner's Scientific American columns including mathematical games, problems, paradoxes, teasers, and tricks.

Rock, Paper, and Scissors:  Game Theory in Everyday Life--L. Fisher

Game theory reveals various aspects of social behavior, with an analysis of how social norms and peoples' sense of fair play can create cooperative--rather than competitive--solutions to problems, and shows how mathematics applies to daily dilemmas.
 

The Jasons:  The Secret History of Sciences' Postwar Elite--A. Finkbeiner

Reveals how a highly secretive team of scientists known as Jason have been working since 1960 to solve highly classified problems for the American government. 

 

The Math Book:  From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics--C. Pickover

If you want the big picture in short entries, check out this anthology of descriptions of 250 significant achievements in the history of mathematics, arranged chronologically from circa 150 million BC to 2007.  Now that's coverage!
 

A Beautiful Math:  John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature--T. Siegfried

This book examines Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash's game theory and the ways it has shaped evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and quantum physics, linking the three sciences in a way that could lead to a science of human social behavior, or "Code of Nature."
  The Millennium Problems:  The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of our Time--K. Devlin

Solving one of these problems is the hard way to obtain $1,000,000.00, but you could try!  The book tells the stories behind seven extraordinarily difficult mathematical problems, the solutions for which the Clay Foundation of Cambridge, Massachusetts is offering one million dollars each, and discusses what they mean for the future of math and science.

 

==Rebels, Pirates, and Gangsters==

Under the Black Flag:  The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates--D. Cordingly

Johnny Depp didn't really give us the whole story.  This book takes a closer look at the real lives of historical pirates.  

Gang Leader for a Day--S. Venkatesh

The author, when a first year graduate student in Sociology,  managed to work his way into one of Chicago's must brutal crack-dealing gangs.  This is the story of learning about gang life from the inside. 

 
The Motorcycle Diaries--C. Guevara

Guevara's book documents his 1952 motorcycle road trip from Buenos Aires through South America.  This is the Che before he became a famous Cuban revolutionary.
--

American Mafia:  A History of its Rise to Power--T. Reppetto

A fascinating account of the rise of the American Mafia from the 1880s to the 1950s, discussing the political, governmental, bureaucratic, economic, and social conditions that facilitated the success of the crime syndicate.

On the Road--J. Kerouac

A fiftieth anniversary edition of Jack Kerouac's thinly fictionalized autobiography chronicling his cross-country adventure across North America on a quest for self-knowledge as experienced by his alter-ego, Sal Paradise and Sal's friend Dean Moriarty--Kerouac's real life friend Neal Cassady.
--

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--K. Kesey

Quite famously made into a film, this story is a classic.  Here's the official description:  The tale is chronicled by the seemingly mute Indian patient, Chief Bromden; its hero Randle Patrick McMurphy, the boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who encourages gambling, drinking,and sex in the ward, and rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorial role of Big Nurse. McMurphy's defiance which begins as a sport-develops into a grim struggle with the awesome power of the "Combine", concluding with shattering, tragic results. In its unforgettable portrait of a man teaching the value of self-reliance and laughter destroyed by forces of hatred and fear.

 

==Graphic Novels & Nonfiction==

The Complete Persepolis--M. Satrapi

The author shares the story of her life in Tehran, Iran, where she lived from ages six to fourteen while the country came under control of the Islamic regime.

Watchmen--Alan Moore

This is an Alan Moore classic, which Time magazine called "a masterpiece."  Two generations of superheroes, including Dr. Manhattan, who deals with the responsibility of his powers, and Nite Owl, who wrestles with letting go of the past, dissect their collective histories while trying to determine who is methodically killing them all off.
 

The Photographer--Guibert, Lefevre and Lemercier

This amazing books documents a visit into Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders.  If you are interested in current events, graphic novel-style storytelling, and or medicine, check it out.

 
   

 

Pat Walsh Reads Poems by Richard Brautigan

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Tue, 04/20/2010 - 11:03am
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Yes, indeed, your teachers love poetry.  As one in our occasional series of poetry readings, here's an audio recording of Pat Walsh, US History teacher, who reads a selection of short poems by Richard Brautigan. Brautigan (1935-1984) is one of those quirky voices who had one foot in the Beat poets' movement, and one foot in 60's counterculture.  He wrote a number of novels and books of poetry, and came to the attention of Kurt Vonnegut in the late 1960s, who helped him find a national audience of readers.

If you enjoy them, stop by, and pick up a copy of his work.  We have Trout Fishing in America, as well as a collection of poems that may interest you.  

--Sue

Audio: 

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audio/mpeg iconPatWalshBrautiganpoems.mp3

April is National Poetry Month

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 12:03pm
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The Upper School Library and Pegasus are jointly celebrating National Poetry Month. 


(Swans on St. Stephen's Green, Ireland.  Photo by Sue)
 

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

--excerpt from "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats (1795-1821)

Come see the transformation of the windows as students write their favorite poems on the glass. Pick up a volume of poetry from one of our book displays, and revel in the beauty of poetry. 

--Sue

What to Read During Winterim & Spring Break

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Tue, 03/09/2010 - 2:21pm
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We’ve got some great new titles…

At last!  You’ve got some free time, and we’ve got some great new titles as well as some old friends.  Here’s an overview of just a few of the new arrivals:

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
If you followed the Obama/McCain election with interest, you’ll love this zippy read.  Described by a reporter for the Associated Press as “the hottest book in the country,” (http://tiny.cc/dXAYC)Game Change will make the members of the History department giddy with excitement.  The book is based on numerous interviews with the political teams and candidates, with some dialogue invented to help get inside the heads of the participants.  It’s a book that falls somewhere between fact and fiction, and it’ll feed your curiosity.

Food Rules, by Michael Pollan
At last, a wise, commonsense little book by a well-respected writer about food. Pollan's advice is at times hilarious: "It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car."  Another chapter quips, "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."  This is a quick, bracing little book.  

Secrets of Eden, by Chris Bohjalian
Do you relish a good murder mystery?  According to a reviewer for Booklist, Bohjalian "drops bombshell clues...and weaves subtle nuances of doubt and intrigue into a taut, read-in-one-sitting murder mystery." ( http://tiny.cc/zSP5M )

Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld
Into Steampunk lit?  School Library Journal writes,"This is World War I as never seen before. The story begins the same: on June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated, triggering a sequence of alliances that plunges the world into war. But that is where the similarity ends. This global conflict is between the Clankers, who put their faith in machines, and the Darwinists, whose technology is based on the development of new species. After the assassination of his parents, Prince Aleksandar's people turn on him. Accompanied by a small group of loyal servants, the young Clanker flees Austria in a Cyklop Stormwalker, a war machine that walks on two legs. Meanwhile, as Deryn Sharp trains to be an airman with the British Air Service, she prays that no one will discover that she is a girl. She serves on the Leviathan, a massive biological airship that resembles an enormous flying whale and functions as a self-contained ecosystem. When it crashes in Switzerland, the two teens cross paths, and suddenly the line between enemy and ally is no longer clearly defined. The ending leaves plenty of room for a sequel, and that's a good thing because readers will be begging for more. Enhanced by Thompson's intricate black-and-white illustrations, Westerfeld's brilliantly constructed imaginary world will capture readers from the first page. Full of nonstop action, this steampunk adventure is sure to become a classic." (http://tiny.cc/YdHr3 ).

Cheever, by Blake Bailey
This new biography is receiving enthusiastic reviews from a wide range of critics.  John Updike writes for the New Yorker, "A triumph of thorough research and unblinkered appraisal."  Publishers Weekly exclaims that "This Ovid in Ossining, who published 121 stories in the New Yorker as well as several bestselling novels, has probably yet to find a definitive position in American letters among academicians. This thoroughly researched and heartfelt biography may help redress that situation." ( http://tiny.cc/dBBkw)

Get Me Out!  A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank,by Randi Hutter Epstein
The cover will make you laugh, but the contents will give you the shivers.  Health care and obstetrics have come a very long way over the centuries.  Kirkus Reviews describes the book as “[A] sharp, sassy history of childbirth…. The author’s engaging sarcasm, evident even in a caption of an illustration of an absurd obstetric contraption—’Nineteenth-century Italian do-it-yourself forceps. The fad never took off’—lends this chronicle a welcome punch and vitality often absent from medical histories. Roll over, Dr. Lamaze, and make room for Epstein’s eyebrow-raising history.”  (http://tiny.cc/IsMzt)

 

 

Stop by, and we'll help you find something to enjoy over the break.  --Sue

New Photo Exhibit in US Library

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Tue, 03/09/2010 - 12:47pm
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 Handsome Pet Portraits, People, and Places…

A sampling of the pet portraits from Lauries' Photography class.

Laurie Carlyon-Ward’s photography class has posted a few dozen photographs on the bulletin boards in the US Library.  Just inside the foyer you’ll find some marvelous pet portraits.  On the bulletin board near the elevators, and behind the reference desk you’ll find lots more gorgeous photos of people and things.  Stop by and take a look at this beautiful work!

 

 

How do I Cite that?

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Tue, 03/09/2010 - 12:44pm
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How Do I Cite That?

Now there’s a question I hear often.  Save yourself some time and hassles by going to some very helpful links, and choose from the MLA or Chicago options.

We subscribe to Noodle Tools. You can set up a free account, and as you write your essay, Noodle Tools will prompt you through the process of citing every book, article, DVD, speech, or soup can you discuss.  Not sure how to use it?  Stop by and ask Sue or Margy to show you how to get started.  Noodle Tools is great for both MLA and Chicago styles!

–Sue

Zombies, Schools, and Artists...

Submitted by Sue Phillips on Tue, 03/09/2010 - 12:39pm
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Zombies, Schools, and Artists!  New Books Keep Arriving.


We've got lots of new books.  Why not choose what YOU want to read and think about during your free time?  Here are a few good suggestions:

Letters to a Young Artist, by Anna Deavere Smith 
Those of you in Chris Bagg’s Modern Drama class have encountered this brilliant author’s work.  School Library Journal writes:  ”From a role on the popular TV show The West Wing to a MacArthur Foundation Award, Smith has attained success as an actress, a playwright, and a director. Her letters are filled with anecdotes and stories about her own successes and failures, giving the book an accessible, conversational feel. While the author primarily focuses on the joys of an artistic life, she also points out how much hard work, persistence, and even luck are necessary to succeed. She gives especially tender advice for those times when progress seems slow or when the review is bad. The book reads breezily front to back but is also divided into categories so it can be easily used as a reference when needing inspiration in specific areas.”  (http://tiny.cc/BNeKB)


World War Z:  An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks

Thanks to Toby Alden for the recommendation.  Here’s a snippet from a Booklist review:  

”Brooks (son of Mel Brooks and author of The Zombie Survival Guide, 2003) has taken it upon himself to document the “first hand” experiences and testimonies of those lucky to survive 10 years after the fictitious zombie war. Like a horror fan’s version of Studs Terkel’s The Good War (1984), the “historical account” format gives Brooks room to explore the zombie plague from numerous different views and characters. In a deadpan voice, Brooks exhaustively details zombie incidents from isolated attacks to full-scale military combat: “what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t!” With the exception of a weak BAT-21 story in the second act, the “interviews” and personal accounts capture the universal fear of the collapse of society–a living nightmare in which anyone can become a mindless, insatiable predator at a moment’s notice.”  (http://tiny.cc/KsRBP)

Image from Random House website:  http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307346605

The Help:  a Novel, by Kathryn Stockett
This was recommended by two faculty members.  This segment of a review was printed in the Washington Post:  ”Southern whites’ guilt for not expressing gratitude to the black maids who raised them threatens to become a familiar refrain. But don’t tell Kathryn Stockett because her first novel is a nuanced variation on the theme that strikes every note with authenticity. In a page-turner that brings new resonance to the moral issues involved, she spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide.  Newly graduated from Ole Miss with a degree in English but neither an engagement ring nor a steady boyfriend, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan returns to her parents’ cotton farm in Jackson. Although it’s 1962, during the early years of the civil rights movement, she is largely unaware of the tensions gathering around her town.”  (http://tiny.cc/sHF0w)

Stones into Schools:  Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by Greg Mortenson
One of the Upper School Library’s most popular nonfiction titles in recent years has been Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea.  The book jacket explains, “Just as Three Cups of Tea began with a promise-to build a school in Korphe, Pakistan–so too does Mortenson’s new book.  In 1999, Kirghiz horsemen from Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor rode into Pakistan and secured a promise from Mortenson to construct a school in an isolated pocket of the Pamir Mountains known as Bozai Gumbaz.  Mortenson could not build that school before constructing many others, and that is the story he tells in this dramatic new book.”  Here’s a link to Mortenson’s website if you want to learn more about his work.

 

 

 

Reader's Paradise

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 3:24pm
posted in
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How the Upper School library contributes to a great education
From the Fall 2009 Caller

By Sue Phillips

Before school on a foggy fall morning several students enter the library and gather quietly at their favorite table. Others are tucked away at study carrels near the windows, reviewing their notes for a quiz, or reading a chapter before the busy day begins. By 10 a.m. the room has long been humming with activity as waves of students enter and exit, use the copy machine, track down a short story, or ask the librarians for help in citing a source for their essay draft. A shy freshman approaches to ask whether the library has any good books set in the Middle Ages, and while the librarian helps her with some recommendations, teachers trickle in to find a quiet place to scan the New York Times or write comments on students’ recent in-class writing assignment.
 
Librarians are collaborators who know that the key to success is rooted in a thorough understanding of the academic life of the school. We must be curious and persistent to seek out the information that we need to reflect and enhance Catlin Gabel’s intellectual climate. The process begins with a solid knowledge of the curriculum, and we engage in regular conversations with colleagues and departments to establish a firm understanding of what the faculty is teaching, and how their assignments change from year to year.
 
New programs provide opportunities to enhance the collection. When Peter Shulman and Dan Griffiths began teaching their interdisciplinary environmental studies class, we added a substantial number of titles to our collection on topics such as recycling, alternative fuels and energy, habitat preservation, and environmental ethics. Sometimes new areas of knowledge emerge in a discipline and receive thought-provoking attention in the classroom. Students learn about nanotechnology, for instance, and come to the library for help finding a book or an article to feed their interest. The arrival of the outdoor program several years ago led to a surge of interest in books on outdoor survival and adventure, and we make certain that these books are prominently on display at least twice a year. When the new Chinese language program begun, the library began purchasing classics in translation as well as a good range of bilingual titles on Chinese art, social issues, and culture.
 
Sometimes an assignment presents a perfect opportunity to collaborate. The English department has worked closely with the Upper School library for years to enhance student learning. When the English faculty introduces their students to the poetry of William Butler Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, or the British Romantic poets, they inform the library, and we place a selected group of books on reserve for the students to consult. Gradually, as students become more sophisticated and independent learners, we offer them more complex and powerful tools. Students in senior electives in English work with their English teachers and a librarian as we show them how to use academic databases such as JSTOR to find journal articles on a closely defined topic. While the initial classroom visit is a small group experience, many of the students later visit the library to consult one-on-one with the librarian, and to obtain feedback on their search strategies. This spring, many of Patrick Walsh’s students in the U.S. Constitution course sat down with a librarian to locate electronic and print information on case law for a classroom debate. Many of these students had already had exposure to database searching through their fall English electives, and they were able to rapidly translate those skills to another discipline. The goal of this teaching is to give students the confidence and specific skills they need to locate reliable information on any subject of interest to them.
 
Librarians firmly believe in the importance of independent reading for information and pleasure as part of the private intellectual life of a student. We know that during the academic year it can be difficult to make time to read for pleasure, so we create busy and varied book displays throughout the year, with particular emphasis before the school holidays and summer break. Our summer borrowing program, introduced several years ago, helped get books and magazines off the shelves and into circulation over the summer for students, faculty, and staff to enjoy. This June, hundreds of titles were checked out, and we spent a considerable amount of time consulting with students and adults to fill their arms with summer reading. To our delight, the staff of the school are regular and energetic participants, making summer borrowing a truly schoolwide program enjoyed by students, parents, bus drivers, development staffers, faculty, and many others.
 
Everyone knows that Catlin Gabel students are intellectual and inquisitive. Over the years, as we welcome students daily in the library, we begin to gain their trust, and they tell us more and more about their interests. A few years ago, one student expressed an interest in game theory, and we bought several books on the topic that have checked out regularly ever since. Several students have acquired an interest in classic British mysteries, so our collection is growing. Students can and do request specific titles and authors, and smile with delight when they see that we are listening, and that we frequently make purchases on their behalf. The Karl Jonske ’99 endowed fund, established in memory of a Catlin Gabel alumnus who was a prodigious reader, permits us to purchase more than a hundred new titles each year that are chosen specifically to enhance the library’s selection of books for independent reading pleasure.
 
By the time our current students graduate from college and begin their professional lives, the specific search tools they are now using will change, and new technologies will alter the appearance and function of traditional sources of information. Books in print are very likely to be around for a long time, but we will continue to see developments in ebooks, the electronic dissemination of news, and the digitization of millions of pages of print materials available through searchable databases. New ways of packaging information, electronically and otherwise, are not values-neutral. Fortunately, Catlin Gabel students are well prepared for these challenges. They have learned how to evaluate online sources for commercial advertising and bias, and have the skills to think critically, define their questions, and make competent and ethical choices. It all begins with a shy freshman visitor who thinks the library is just a good place to read, and culminates in an assertive, thoughtful, sophisticated senior who knows how to research a topic, defend an assertion, cite a source, and recommend a favorite book to others. This makes being a librarian a great and interdisciplinary joy.
 
Sue Phillips has been Upper School librarian since 2004.