Carmen Oliver Joins Us For A Very Special Capstone Virtual Book Club....Join It Here, Friends

I am excited to share the third interview in our NEW Capstone Virtual Book Club. 

This time I had the honor to talk with my dear friend and amazing author and storyteller, Carmen Oliver. 

As shared on the Capstone site,  Carmen Oliver founded the Booking Biz, an agency devoted to bringing award-winning children’s authors and illustrators to schools, libraries, and special events. She blogs regularly for ReaderKidz, a website that provides teachers, librarians, and parents with the resources and inspiration to foster a love of reading in kids, K-5, and judges children’s writing contents for the Texas Book Festival and Austin Family magazine. Bears Make the Best Reading Buddies is her debut picture book. Carmen grew up in Canada and now lives in Texas with her family.

To kick off our time together, Carmen read her book, Bears Make The Best Writing Buddies, from her Bears Make The Best....series. 

We wanted to share this book to celebrate our children as writers as we kick off a new school year. This book is the perfect conversation starter for young writers as they talk through the process of being a writer. 

Carmen and I spoke about how she was inspired as a young girl to be a reader, writer and explorer.  She wants to help children instill those qualities and feelings too.   

You will find the recording of the book club above. 

I also wanted to include this sweet little book trailer for Bears Make The Best Reading Buddies and...

...the Bears Make The Best Writing Buddies poster from Capstone.  You will find it here. 

We hope you enjoy the third in our series and join us for the next Capstone Virtual Book Club coming later this month.  

Thank you, Carmen for being part of the Capstone Virtual Book Club.  Please join us again. 

Oh, and you will find and can subscribe to all of our Virtual Book Clubs here. 

Author Carmen Oliver Celebrated & Shared Her Books With Our 2nd Graders For World Read Aloud Day

Last week, we celebrate World Read Aloud Day a little early with several special friends who joined us at Van Meter on Skype in the Classroom.

One of the authors was one of our favorite Capstone authors, Carmen Oliver!

Carmen is the author of the wonderful Bears Make The Best Series that are so loved in our library and classrooms.  There are three in the series, with the fourth coming soon, and each one tells a sweet story that encourages young readers around different learning themes such as writing, reading, math and science.

Let's take a look at the books and resources that go along with each one.

First, there is Bears Make The Best Reading Buddies.  

You must share this book trailer and...

...look at all of these resources!

I love the educator/activity guides by educator, Debbie Gonzales.  Here is a link to this one, where you will find several other activities around this book.

And this poster!  How cute is this! You will find it here. 

Her second book of the series is Bears Make The Best Math Buddies. You will find all of the resources around this book here.

Bears Make The Best Writing Buddies is her third in the series and the resources for this one can be found here. 

 

This is the ones that Carmen read to all of our 2nd graders for our World Read Aloud Day celebration. All of the students in Mrs. Braun, Mrs. Ferguson,

Mrs. Warwick and Mrs. McCombs students...

...loved listening to Carmen show all of her books and talk about...

...the writing process and being an author. 

After she read Bears Make The Best Writing Parters, 

the students took turn asking Carmen questions about bears, writing,

reading, science,

and more.

They loved hearing there would be a fourth book in the series coming on August 1, 2020!  It is called Bears Make The Best Science Buddies and you can read about it here. 

As you can see, every one of Carmen's books about this sweet brown bear will inspire every reader and learner to try their best and know they can do it too.

I found this beautiful poster Bears Make The Best Writing Buddies poster here on...

...Capstone's Reading is for Everyone site.  I printed this one off for a special reading and writing treat for every classroom.  It was a great surprise!

And Carmen surprised us as she shared the Caldecott Award winning books that were announced earlier last week. She shared our enthusiasm so that was such a FUN part of our Skype too.

Thank you Carmen.  We loved our virtual visit with you. Our 2nd graders and their teachers enjoyed you so much and they hope you will come to our school someday, friend.  

You will find Carmen's site here.

Perfecting The Picture Book II With Carmen Oliver...A Writing Barn Online Course To Check Out!

 

My friend and author, Carmen Oliver, has a very exciting online course coming up. It's for anyone who would like to learn how to write picture books. 

Perfecting the Picture Book II With Carmen Oliver, A Writing Barn 6-Week Online Course, runs from August 17-September 21, 2022 from 7:00-9:00pm CST. 

You can register for the online course here. 

A New Twist To Our "You've Been Book'd" Program!

One of our most successful reading promotion programs at Van Meter has been You've Been Book'd, which brings several new picture books to our students, teachers and school community every month throughout the year. 

I saw this adorable idea during Read Across America Week last year from Weaver Elementary on Twitter called You've Been Book'd! 

I love this program. It's such a special way to get more books into classrooms and the hands of teachers and students.  

One bag starts out in each of the grade levels kindergarten through fifth grade...

....with a different picture book in each.  These books will be new to our library collections and ones that haven't been shared in the library with our readers yet.  This will make them super special and new for teachers to share and read aloud. 

I have so much fun picking out the You've Been Book'd all year long...even though it sure is hard to narrow down the list. 

You can read the first post about this program at Van Meter here. 

On Monday, I am sending the newest list of 15 amazing picture books.  I love focusing the books on different topics and celebrations that are timely to the month and year. This new list will focus on more for Black History Month, Digital Learning Day which is on February 27 and Read Across America, which we will celebrate the week of March 2-6. 

But this time...I have added a little surprise to the You've Been Book'd books!  

Inside the book, the teachers and students will find a QR code that will take them to something special for each.  

Take a look at a few of the things I included with the QR codes for each book. 

For Help Wanted Must Love Books written by Janet Sumner Johnson and art by Courtney Dawson, 

I found the cutest book trailer...

...on Capstone's YouTube Channel. 

For Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry and illustrated by Vashti Harrison, 

 I included the Oscar-winning Short Film, Hair Love, from Sony Pictures Animation. 

 

For Bears Make the Best Writing Buddies by Carmen Oliver and illustrated by Jean Claude, 

I included the book trailer to another title from this series, 

Bears Make the Best Reading Buddies. 

For Parker Looks Up, An Extraordinary Moment, by Parker Curry and Jessica Curry, illustrated by Brittany Jackson, 

 

I included a short interview from NBC Nightly News with Parker Curry herself. 

 

 For My Footprints by Bao Phi and illustrated by Basia Tran,

I included the book trailer, again from Capstone's YouTube Channel.  

 

And for one that I just had to include for Read Across America, The Incredible Book Eating Boy, 

 I included an interview of Oliver Jeffers drawing the Book Eating Boy himself. 

I hope that these little additions will make the You've Been Book'd selections even more meaningful and inspire our readers and teachers to visit the books, author, illustrators and publishers for even more of their wonderful books and experiences.