Teacher Awards for Literacy – I won one!

I received some genuinely cool news a few weeks ago that I wanted to share with y’all – I recently found out I am one of three winners of Penguin/Random House’s Teacher Awards for Literacy! I’m going to get to build a program to teach using graphic novels in my classroom with some of the monies from the award and I get to go to the National Council of Teachers of English convention this November in Minneapolis!

So, I nominated myself for this award and I drew a comic to go along with my application. I thought I’d put it up for y’all to check out.

I’m sure I’ll talk more about the award and what it means to me in upcoming weeks but for now… Woohoo!

thrift store finds: movie storybooks

Let’s talk about movie storybooks, shall we?

The format still exists, but in this day and age of home entertainment and instant access to everything on the internet, it’s in a somewhat weakened state. These are oversized picture books filled with production stills, movie storybooks were somewhat elaborate retellings of hit movies.

The appeal of these books was the same as for movie novelizations and photo novels – in the days before you could look up an image on Google or read a recap on a movie news website, these books let kids experience the films they loved without having to beg their parents to take them to the same flick a second time.

Here are three storybooks I’ve run across in the past few months, with limited commentary.

thrift store finds: a teenage mutant ninja turtles puzzle

The key to shopping at thrift stores is knowing you need to buy something the moment you clamp your eyes upon it. Thrift stores are not the type of establishments that forgive the wishy-washy. If you see a hat that you like… you damn well better buy it, rather than putting it back on the rack and giving it a night to think it over. For all you know, that hat will be gone by tomorrow and when it comes to secondhand shopping, there is no reordering. One it’s gone… it’s gone.

This is why I did not hesitate to buy today’s thrift store find, a 100 piece Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles puzzle. According to the copyright information, this was made in 1987 by Random House.