In a Cheerios Box Near You - Finally!!

Well, I finally got the green light to make this announcement:

The Cheerios boxes with my book inside are in a grocery store near you NOW!! 

As of today, spottings have been reported at Walmart, Jewel, Cub Foods, Safeway and Wegmans, but they should be in most grocery stores by the end of the month.  The picture on the left was taken by my son at his Walmart by ISU.  It's a very surreal thing seeing my book on the front of the box and even more surreal seeing my picture on the back - yikes!!

The book is written in English and Spanish - I actually like the Spanish title better - 1 Zoo Loco!  Next time you're shopping, check out the cereal isle :-)

A Comedy of Errors #2

 This one's a quickie:  I took my son to his first job fair this morning and I was worried he'd be late.  We were waiting to turn left out of our subdivision and that light always takes forever.  It was 6:45 on a Saturday morning and not a car in sight.  My son told me to turn through the red light.  I said I didn't want to go through a red light so I turned right and made a quick u-turn (also illegal because of the double yellow lines - but not as blatant as going through a red light).  What I didn't realize was, while I was making my u-turn, the light changed, so I ended up driving through a red light anyway!

New widget - Ideas For Change In America

I added a new widget - it's over there, below my profile picture.  Right now they're in 16th place and need 329 more votes to be one of the ten winning ideas! 

While you're there, check out the other great ideas - once you sign up, you get 10 votes.  There are some amazing ideas - I'll post my other favorites when I find them.

Read Aloud - Think Aloud To Improve Comprehension

This great site, Reading Rockets, was suggested in an email from Anastasia Suen.  The whole site is great but the particular articles she recommends are about  "Reading Aloud" and "Thinking Aloud" to help students increase reading comprehension.   Both articles discuss the power of reading and show how to model strategies typically used by thoughtful readers.

I have several students with whom I work on reading and listening comprehension and I'm going to try these techniques ASAP!

I'll report back about how it works for my students - if you use these techniques too, let me know how it goes.

Congratulations to Jamie Weiss Chilton!!

My agent, Jamie Weiss Chilton, has been received a well-deserved promotion from associate agent to agent at Andrea Brown Literary Agency, inc.!   I'm so happy for her!