The Final Four

The Final Four will be:

Wimpy Kid, unsurprisingly, crushed Alice (by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor), 81-8.

Harry Potter squeaked by Wonder, 49-44.

Wimpy Kid will face Harry Potter in the semifinals.

Big Nate clobbered Ramona, 61-20.

From the Mixed-Up Files... overwhelmed Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, 43-25 .

This semifinal match-up will therefore be Big Nate versus From the Mixed-Up Files...

May the best book win!

First-Round Winners!

I tallied up the results of our first round and read them out loud to a bunch of my kids' friends yesterday before announcing them in the library.  It was fun to hear them cheer when their picks won and groan when they didn't.

The discrepancy in the number of votes is because the students weren't supposed to vote unless they'd read both books in a particular pair. I knew neither Alice nor Anastasia wouldn't be super-popular but I was hoping including them might get some more kids to pick them up.  Plus, I just love them both!

Without further ado, the winners:

Wimpy Kid beat out Smile,90 votes to 57

Alice (by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor) defeated Anastasia, 30-18

This means we have a second round match up of Wimpy Kid v Alice.  Next year I have to plan better as that one's a foregone conclusion!!

Harry Potter triumphed over Percy Jackson, 76-49

Wonder trounced Out of My Mind, 89-21 

In the second round Harry Potter will face off against Wonder.  That one should be interesting.

Big Nate bested Captain Underpants, 70-49

Ramona overcame Clementine, 55-21

Our second round will pit Big Nate against Ramona. 

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle prevailed over The Worst Witch, 39-18

From the Mixed-Up Files... won over When You Reach Me, 47-24

So Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle will face From the Mixed-Up Files... in round 2.

(Yes, I used a thesaurus!)

May the best book win!

March Madness, Bibliophile-Style!

Inspired by the literary takes on March Madness proliferating online, I decided to do our own March Madness competition at the school library.

Although we got off to a rocky start (one child asked, confused, "Wait, the books are going to play basketball?!?"), once the kids got the hang of things, they voted enthusiastically, with some even adding notations to their ballots ("hardest choice EVER!!!!" - for Wonder v Out of My Mind).

Our bracket:

Which books would you choose?

Which do you think will win?

Stay tuned for our first-round results...

Elephants Don't Need to Go to the Gym!

The version I own

Every summer, when we went to our country house, I would read The Saggy Baggy Elephant, a story about a lonely young elephant, Sookie, who is made to feel bad about his wrinkly skin by the other jungle animals.  The book ends with Sookie meeting a whole herd of elephants and realizing that elephants are supposed to have saggy, baggy, wrinkly skin.

The version I saw at the book fair

So I was excited to see the book at my school book fair.  Yes, the cover looked a little different than the one I remembered, but I figured that was just marketing, tapping into the huge market for beginning readers.

Unfortunately, I failed to notice the little "adapted by" notation on the cover.

I opened it and skimmed it until I got to this spread:

Whereupon I was horrified.  The tiger is not saggy because he "stays fit"?  No, the tiger is not saggy because he is a tiger!  Not only is the book now body-shaming elephants and implying they need to exercise and "stay fit," but the ending of the book remains unchanged, thereby making no sense!  If elephants are supposed to be saggy, then they are not saggy because they do not "stay fit." Elephants do not need to go to the gym (although it conjure up a funny image in my mind of a class of elephants jazzercising! - perhaps there's another picture book, right there!).

Why, oh why, do publshers tamper with perfectly good books?  Why?