0:01

Welcome back everybody. I am so excited.

0:03

I am getting to talk to a sort of a surprise guest almost.

0:08

So I am very excited about this.

0:10

Lori, thank you so much for joining me today.

0:12

Why don't you take a second and tell everybody who you are, where you're at.

0:17

So I'm Lori Stansberry. I'm here in the Knoxville, Tennessee area and I'm so excited to be here.

0:24

Oh my goodness. I'm so excited to have you.

0:27

There's a little bit of schedule shuffling and I was looking for someone to help me

0:31

fill a little hole in the recording schedule and Lori was so kind to offer to

0:35

take some of her time while she's on vacation to share a lesson.

0:39

And it's a really, as she was telling me about this lesson, I am very excited,

0:44

interested to hear about how this plays out.

0:46

So before we dive into it, let's just take a second and maybe set the stage.

0:51

How did you end up getting into school librarianship?

0:53

Sure. So I've been an educator for 18 years.

0:57

And when I started, I was an English teacher in high school.

1:01

And it was very quickly.

1:04

Wow. I don't particularly care for grading.

1:08

This is not quite what I signed up for.

1:10

And it was 14 years before I finished library school and made that transition.

1:18

And so now I'm in an elementary library and I absolutely love it.

1:23

been there four years. So. That's a day and night transition from high school down to the little ones.

1:28

Boy, more power to ya. They got a lot of energy down at the lower.

1:36

So where did this lesson come from?

1:40

Before we get into the lesson itself, like what was sort of the genesis of it?

1:43

So my first year as a librarian was the COVID year.

1:47

Oh my goodness. And I'm new to elementary, I'm new to all these kids.

1:54

So I leaned hard on my strengths.

1:57

And one, I was very comfortable with Canvas.

2:00

That was the learning LMS that our school district used because I used it in college

2:05

and I used it a little bit when I taught high school.

2:08

So I knew I could use that as a comfort zone.

2:12

And the second thing was I grew up in the Southwest and I moved around a little bit,

2:18

not too much, but I had this deep appreciation for all things culture and

2:24

community because I lived around a military base.

2:27

So I thought, well, what can I do to make my library better?

2:32

Well, we had 19, we have 20 different spoken languages at our school.

2:38

Yeah, so I thought, oh my goodness, what if I got bilingual books for my students

2:46

that were in their native languages that they could share with others, they could

2:50

practice their English, they could practice their native language.

2:54

And our local education foundation that supports our school district loved my idea

2:59

and they gave me $5 ,000 to start up a book club that was virtual with Canvas.

3:07

and with RLMS and I also taught languages and my library lessons.

3:13

So some of them were a little bit bilingual and it was a phenomenal way to

3:18

introduce myself and get the kids excited and this is one of the lessons that came

3:23

out of that. That is so great.

3:26

Wow. I mean, I'm not surprised that they wanted to give you money for this program because

3:29

this is a brilliant idea. But like that's a nice little chunk of money they gave you for this.

3:34

So all right.

3:37

We know where the lesson came from. Now tell us a little bit about the lesson.

3:40

Like how is how does this unfold? Maybe I'm a student and I come into the library.

3:44

What am I going to see? How's this going to go? Well, if I started it traditionally as a unit, I would introduce the concept of

3:51

language learning and being comfortable with not understanding everything.

3:56

When I originally taught it was the fourth lesson that I gave to my students.

4:00

They would have already heard a made up bug language from the book, Do His Talk by

4:05

Kirsten Ellis. They would have heard a bilingual story by Yuyi Morales.

4:11

We had taught dreamers and they got to hear it in English and Spanish.

4:16

Nice. we talked about tone and how the meaning and then my Spanish students could share

4:20

that yeah, there was a slight difference in meaning, but it is a picture book.

4:25

So the complexity and depth of language, maybe not as strong as say reading two

4:30

novels. And then we got into the Arabic quilt, which is by Aya Khalil.

4:37

And I'm pretty confident I'm saying that right.

4:41

She is from the Ohio area.

4:44

And she, this was her debut picture book and in it she, she explores the idea that

4:51

this Egyptian American has come to a new school and she's unsure and she's sharing

4:57

her loves and her love is her Egyptian culture, her grandmother, her quilt, her

5:03

grandmother made her and the little girl writes poetry.

5:07

And as she gets into her classroom,

5:10

She encounters a student who's not open to new culture and doesn't understand that

5:16

there's cultural differences. And they end up doing this amazing school project where every student in the class

5:23

gets an Arabic name from their mother, from the student's mother's, with a clean

5:27

spizz. And they make their own Arabic quilt of names in Arabic with beautiful designs and

5:35

put it on the bulletin board. And I thought, oh my gosh, we have to do this.

5:40

That is a beautiful story, wow.

5:42

Is that, it's not a title that I've heard before, is that like a newer title?

5:48

um, I'd have to look up.

5:52

Yeah, it's, I'd say in the last, well, obviously, I taught this first four years

5:58

ago. So it's definitely within that under 10 years.

6:02

And the author has since wrote a follow up.

6:04

And it explores the idea of banned books in elementary and middle school and the

6:12

main character in her story, Kenzie.

6:14

which I didn't mention her name earlier, Kenzie, Encounters, the community has just

6:22

banned her favorite book and its characters just look like her and there's

6:27

why are they being in the book if it's just multicultural, a different culture.

6:33

So it's a nice follow -up to that, something that's very relevant that the

6:38

author saw on the news and felt compelled to write about.

6:41

Yeah, boy, well, now I've got two new books to add to my list of books to bring

6:44

to my library. I love that.

6:47

Wow, okay, so you read the story with the students and once they've heard the story,

6:54

I'm assuming that there's some, maybe some conversations they're going about how this

6:58

might connect with them in some way.

7:01

Right. Before I read the story, I introduced the concept of being bilingual.

7:05

I asked the kids, what does bilingual mean?

7:09

And usually someone in the room knows.

7:12

The first year I taught it second to or third through fifth.

7:17

And then I've been teaching it to third grade ever since.

7:20

And usually they know what bilingual means.

7:23

Especially there will usually be someone in there.

7:26

And if you don't know, quite a few don't know.

7:30

And we talk about how exciting that is.

7:32

Now I found an amazing audio recording of this book on YouTube and librarians, I

7:38

know you want to read this book with your kids and you can, but there are two parts

7:42

of the YouTube video I'm going to share with you that you want to share with your

7:46

students. And the first part is the narrator begins her video in Arabic and then she

7:54

immediately translates into English. So the kids get to hear Arabic.

7:59

hear that English translation. I always replay it.

8:02

I said, let's hear that again. Isn't that a beautiful language?

8:05

And so they get to hear that beautiful greeting in Arabic.

8:09

Wow, that's awesome.

8:11

Oh, that's that's such a great resource to add to this lesson to like on top of just

8:15

a great lesson Here's a great little additional piece that you can throw in

8:18

there. Okay, okay And then later on in the story, there is a moment where the classroom teacher in the

8:27

picture book connects four words that were introduced to English from Arabic.

8:35

And the narrator of the audio recording does a quick little aside and not only

8:42

says, you know, that's right, but she pronounces each of those words in Arabic.

8:47

Hmm. And what I love is I ask my kids who speak other languages, are you hearing?

8:54

Does it sound like a word in your language?

8:57

And my Spanish students are like, yes, yes.

8:59

Am I Ukrainian? Yes, yes. I think even one of my French students got excited.

9:04

And they'll tell us that native word that connects to the Arabic word that connects

9:08

to the English word. And then my students get to see how all the languages connect.

9:14

Yeah. that idea of introducing the kids this idea of like the cognates of various

9:18

languages because that's for me, I am not great at languages other than English, but

9:24

the one hook that usually got me through when I had like a Spanish class was at

9:29

least there's some words that are sort of similar to English or like I know the

9:33

Latin route that goes to the Spanish route, like getting the kids to realize we

9:38

may have separate languages, but there are connections between them.

9:40

That's such a great thread to be.

9:44

That's so cool.

9:47

Hmm. Okay. So awesome.

9:49

Two great resources built in as you're going as you're sharing the story with the

9:53

students. Okay. And they're thinking about bilingualism, which is excellent.

9:58

It's funny that you bring up bilingualism and I'm going to go off a little bit of a

10:01

tangent and I apologize in advance, but it's so funny because today for some

10:05

reason it was in my head that we refer to bilingual and we kind of think of

10:12

If you speak more than English, you're bilingual.

10:15

And we know that the root of bilingual is two languages.

10:18

And so the default is, I think, and this is maybe just my own preconception, but in

10:23

America, we tend to think of it as you speak English and you maybe speak one

10:27

other language. And like we talk about, we used to talk about our students as English as a second

10:31

language students, but now we'd refer to them as ELL, English language learners,

10:36

because so many of them have so many more languages than just their home language

10:41

and... English and I think we've got this sort of bias that we were sort of amazed and

10:50

surprised when people can speak more than home language and maybe one other language

10:55

and yet some of these kids are so multilingual it's just it boggles the mind

11:00

so to introduce the kids to these concepts and get them thinking about the fact that

11:06

yes there may be people who speak and other language but there's also

11:11

people who are gonna speak so many more than just one other language.

11:14

And we can take part in that. We can become part of those different languages and take part in those

11:20

conversations. That's so wonderful. Hmm.

11:23

I introduced the word polygott right behind bilingual.

11:27

Yep. great word. That's so cool.

11:31

So they're getting the idea of bilingual and polyglot and multilingual.

11:36

They're hearing some, I love that they're hearing some Arabic.

11:38

I think that's something that probably isn't particularly familiar for a lot of

11:43

kids. That's so wonderful.

11:45

And then, so they're reading the story or hearing about the story of how they're

11:49

going to the students in the school get these Arabic names and then they, they,

11:54

I imagine that they maybe stitched them into the quilt.

11:57

Is that, did I get that right? more of a bulletin board with different shapes of colorful pictures of

12:05

construction paper and designs the kids all do.

12:08

And then you assemble it into a bulletin board quilt.

12:12

But yeah, it's beautiful because we take the Kenzie's grandmother's quilt that was

12:19

personally made for her. And then now they've shared their culture, both their language and the quilt with her

12:25

classmates, which is just beautiful. It is it really is.

12:29

So I'm going to apologize because I think in my head I have combined a couple of

12:33

things that are separate. So in the story the kids learn about Kenzie's grandmother's quilt and then you

12:41

discuss with the students making a poster board quilt that's going to involve their

12:46

names. So in the story there's not a section about the students creating quilts with

12:51

their other language names.

12:54

Oh OK OK. Sorry, sorry, I thought I was blending things together incorrectly there.

13:00

Okay, okay, cool. So I love that they're, I mean, anytime you can bring your grandma in, that's just

13:08

a win. Every kid's gonna think about their grandparents, so that's great.

13:12

And the story itself just sounds so wonderfully uniting and just helping kids

13:20

to see beyond what may seem like a really major difference.

13:26

to understand that, well, maybe that difference is not as big as you think it

13:29

is, and maybe there's ways we can think about how to get past it with each other.

13:33

Yeah, the author also explores the idea of a classmate who, as I said before, is not

13:40

understanding and is confused and kind of makes fun of our main character, Kenzie,

13:47

and there's some great opportunities for conversation about compassion and kindness

13:53

and friendship. So there's some opportunities there as well.

13:58

So great. So you, at this point, having finished the story with the students and had these

14:05

wonderful conversations, what is the next step for the students to engage in?

14:11

As class time allows, I might roll into the second part, but usually I spread this

14:18

between two libraries. We have 45 minutes and my third graders tend to take an extraordinarily amount, a

14:25

long amount of time to check out, which is a good problem.

14:30

So the next time we meet, they would come in and I would introduce them to what the

14:38

concept is of translation versus

14:40

transliteration and I don't hit on that word too hard with my kiddos I just use

14:46

the word translate but translate is when you take a word and find out the meaning

14:51

of it and then find the connecting word whereas transliterate would be to take

14:58

your word and just pronounce it in the second language the same way you would in

15:04

your original language. Interesting.

15:09

Okay. I'm trying to wrap my mind around that.

15:13

Okay, so in other words, I just wanna see if I've got this right.

15:16

If I was reading a passage that was in Spanish, let's say, if I'm reading it, if

15:22

I'm reading the words in Spanish, then I'm transliterating?

15:29

No. so you're just, so my name is the best way to do this.

15:33

Um, my name, um, in Arabic sounds almost, Lori sounds almost exactly the same.

15:41

That's transliteration.

15:44

Translation is when you find out Lori actually means Laurel from in the crown of

15:53

Laurel, the, the Laurel leaves that Julius Caesar and all the Romans were.

15:57

Yeah. So I take the word laurel, which is a noun, and translate that into Arabic, and

16:04

then I get my Arabic name. Ah, okay, I see.

16:09

sound, it expresses the meaning of my name.

16:12

I see. Okay. Oh, wow.

16:15

Okay. Huh.

16:17

Honestly, I don't know how long I've been in education now.

16:21

I never understood. I never would have realized there was a difference between those ways of looking

16:27

at the language. That's so great. Thank you for teaching me something.

16:31

I had to do research about this.

16:33

And before we met today, I had to re -research to make sure I would explain it

16:39

correctly. Great, okay.

16:42

Oh, I love it. Okay, so we talk about the difference between translating and transliterating,

16:48

and then where do the students go with that?

16:51

So I use a website called Behind the Name and it's a pretty good robust resource.

16:56

Now there's going to be a lot of language that your students, if they're third

16:59

graders, will not understand.

17:02

But essentially there's a clear heading that says you type in your name and if

17:07

your name is a diminutive or it originates from another name, there'll be a link.

17:13

So Lori, I click on Laura, and then it gives me Laura or Lawrence, and I click

17:18

Laura because I tell them I'm a girl and my parents didn't name me after Lawrence,

17:23

even though Lori is a nickname of Lawrence.

17:25

And I get to Laura, and then I get to the meaning, which fortunately behind the name

17:31

puts in quote marks. So it'll say meaning in history, and you can direct the kids to the quote mark

17:39

part, and they can ignore all the rest of the language.

17:42

And so hopefully it's one word, but sometimes it's more than one.

17:50

And so we have to finesse and play around a little bit to figure out what we're

17:54

going to translate. So we take that meaning, and laurel meant nothing to my kids.

18:00

It means nothing to me. So I went to dictionary .com and looked up all the definitions, and that still didn't

18:06

mean anything. So I took the kids to Kittle.

18:09

And honestly, if I did this again, I would look up a kid -friendly dictionary to do

18:13

this. So I need to do that.

18:16

Although, kind of a nice lesson in like, here's how we can do research.

18:21

Like if we don't find what we need, let's try a different source.

18:23

But absolutely, like if for time's sake and for this lesson, it absolutely would

18:27

make sense to, okay, we've got our resource lined up.

18:30

So I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. So you're going to Kittle?

18:33

I take them to dictionary .com. We look at the definitions.

18:36

We're still scratching our heads. We need a picture.

18:38

So I kiddle because the images are curated for children.

18:42

And now we've got some images that make sense.

18:45

So there's a picture of three of the different definitions that connect to my

18:49

name. And then there's a picture of the laurel wreath and crowns.

18:52

And I pointed it and I say, this is what everyone says my name means.

18:56

And they think that's really cool that I'm named after this crown.

19:00

Yeah! from there we finally go to Google Translate, pop in the word Laurel and

19:07

select Arabic and we get to hear it pronounced, which is the best.

19:12

Yeah! Oh yeah, that's such a great feature.

19:15

And then we move from Arabic, we can quickly click into other languages.

19:20

So know your room. If you have a Russian speaker, you're translating into Russian.

19:25

If you have, and in this story, I didn't mention this earlier, but they, a

19:29

classroom across the hall does the same project in Japanese.

19:33

So I translate to Japanese and, you know, we translate to Spanish.

19:38

It's fun. They get to hear it. The kids don't even care about putting their names on a quilt or on a piece of

19:44

paper or Google slide at this point. All they want to do is keep clicking and listening to their names in different

19:48

languages, which is a cacophony of noise, but it is joyful and excitement.

19:54

absolutely. I mean, that's all I would want to do.

19:57

I'd just be playing around and seeing what my name sounds like.

19:59

Oh, that's really neat. So having heard their names, in theory, now that they've got a translation,

20:07

they're going to try and take that and make that part of a quilt that they're

20:13

going to work with. I have a simple Google slide with different little boxes and it says this is

20:19

my name, this is what my name means, this is the language and here's the letters,

20:23

the script, not a link to the pronunciation or anything.

20:27

And then from there the directions are ticker with pictures and shapes, whatever

20:32

you want. And I never give them enough time to do all of that.

20:35

I know they would have so much fun, but just in terms of thinking of my third

20:41

graders, I don't think they have a stamina all the time for that.

20:45

So. yeah.

20:47

Yeah. Yeah.

20:50

I mean, I could almost see that even just being an additional day of like, okay,

20:54

we've learned what our words are and we've heard them in different ways.

20:57

Take it home, think about it. What would you do for designs?

21:00

And then like, we'll come back and we'll do that some, you know, another time.

21:03

But that is so, I can, I am not a lower grades teacher, but I can see in my head.

21:10

the excitement and the activity as the kids are engaging with all of this.

21:16

It's just, oh boy, that's gotta be so wonderful.

21:19

Oh, it is. The kids, they get so excited.

21:23

They share with me the words that they can say in other languages, even if it's only

21:27

two. They tell me all about, my grandmother speaks this language, or I can, my family

21:33

speaks this language. And then the next visit, they're checking out my bilingual books, left and right,

21:41

trying to learn new languages. It's amazing.

21:44

That's awesome. Wow. And I mean, I've said it before and I'll say it a million times, I'm sure, but when

21:50

you can get the kids authentically engaged with anything, they are going to dig into

21:56

it so much more than we can do as like sage on the stage or even guide on the

22:01

side. Like when they are authentically with it and into it and inquiring, oh my gosh,

22:07

what a powerful learning tool that is.

22:09

Oh boy, I am so excited for your students that they get to do this.

22:13

Oh yeah, the very last thing I show them is I will take them back to the website

22:18

behind the name. And at the top, there is a tab that says related names where they've already pulled

22:24

the common versions of your name in several languages.

22:27

And so you can see, I mean, Laura is Laura in almost every language.

22:34

And I said, look Icelandic, it's Lara.

22:36

That made me think of the golden compass every time.

22:40

Like, oh. That was me! I did not know that.

22:46

That's so fun. I bet that a bunch of kids then are going around and saying, call me, call me

22:52

Ishmael. Well, probably not that, but.

22:55

Oh boy. This is, there's so much.

22:57

What I love about this is there's so much fun for the kids and what the, and how

23:02

they're going through this. Like it's such a, a joyful learning experience.

23:07

It sounds. Oh yeah, especially that anticipation.

23:11

We read the story, we saw the project, the class across the hall did it in Japanese

23:15

too, and we get to do it next week?

23:19

So the next week, they are in their seats, ready to go.

23:26

Challenges I ran into. Some kids have names with non -traditional spellings, so you have to show them to

23:35

type in a more traditional spelling.

23:37

And some kids have some very unusual names that are unique, which is beautiful.

23:43

You may need to do a quick Google search on the side, or you may need to switch to

23:48

transliteration for that friend. Okay, those are great points to bear in mind.

23:54

And I was gonna ask you how you sort of differentiate for this, but I think the

23:58

differentiation is completely built in.

24:01

Like, this lesson is all about differentiating, because we're helping

24:03

kids, whether there's a language issue or not, like we're helping them find ways to

24:10

sort of overcome barriers that might be there.

24:13

I definitely use table partners quite a bit.

24:16

If a friend finishes early, I'll ask them to help their table friends or move on to

24:23

another table and help everybody get caught up to the same step.

24:27

I'll run around with my phone and have Google translate if I need to give the

24:31

directions in another language. Yeah.

24:35

Hmm. That's, I have relied on, last year I was relying on Google Translate a lot.

24:40

We had some students who were very limited English proficient and I did not speak a

24:46

lick of Portuguese and I was trying to communicate with this student and we just

24:50

would pass my phone back and forth with Google Translate going so that we could

24:54

have conversations. That's such a great tool.

24:56

Hmm. That's a nice one to have literally in your back pocket.

24:59

You can have it ready to go. Yeah.

25:06

So clearly the students love this lesson.

25:09

This I have. Have you had students come back to like later at some point later talk about this

25:15

lesson and kind of like mention it as something that they remember or something

25:19

that is sort of sticking out their minds as something fun that they did.

25:23

So I've taught it several years. So at this point of the year, I put the Arabic quilt out on display and my fourth

25:29

graders and fifth graders will come in. I remember that book.

25:33

Yeah, yeah.

25:36

Okay. years later and talk about, oh yeah, I remember that.

25:40

Have there been any reactions from the teachers?

25:43

Are there any ways that the teachers have mentioned that it might be getting brought

25:48

into their classes or is there any collaboration you do with the teachers as

25:52

this goes along? Well, I was doing a huge unit my very first year and I can tell you that first

25:57

year because it was such a huge emphasis.

25:59

We had a fourth grade classroom that did a homeroom study club to learn Spanish for

26:05

their friends. Yeah.

26:08

that's awesome.

26:10

Huh? make language and culture a focus for a unit, you will see the kids want to teach

26:16

each other. They want to learn and they want to share.

26:20

And what a great way to put some of the agency in the hands of the kids who might

26:24

be limited English proficient to give them that authority and that ownership of some

26:31

learning going on. Oh, for sure. And the other thing that is huge is my Arabic culture students or Arabic

26:39

speakers, Ms.

26:41

Stansberry, do you have any more books that are like this?

26:44

So the answer is yes.

26:46

I've got plenty of English. I've got plenty in Arabic.

26:49

The majority of my students who are Arabic speaking are not Arabic reading.

26:53

And it's a question of time and access and...

26:58

And that's not unique to Arabic.

27:00

There are other languages where the students may speak it quite fluently, but

27:05

just haven't had access or the opportunity to learn how to read it in its written

27:09

form. Yeah, no, I mean, that's completely understandable.

27:12

But that's really great that they are interested in finding out more about their

27:17

own language and culture in this way. That's such a nice, a great way for them to sort of engage further with their own

27:24

culture. And I mean, what a great reflection for the, let's say the...

27:32

English native English speakers to be able to say look we can all learn more about

27:39

our language and our culture and wear this you know even though we may think we know

27:44

a lot there's always more to learn.

27:46

I've had requests to add languages every year since.

27:51

Greek was the one that surprised me.

27:54

They wanted a friend had a Greek ancestry and you heard his last name and yes, he

27:58

was Greek. So I had to add Greek.

28:02

And then Korean.

28:05

I don't have any English language learners who speak Korean, but I have families that

28:10

do speak Korean, even though their children.

28:13

came to us speaking English.

28:15

And so that was one we had to add as well, which was pretty awesome.

28:26

Parents and students.

28:29

So some of our book fair volunteers, you know, get to see the collection.

28:35

They're like, when are you going to add Korean?

28:41

Mm -hmm. Mmm, boy. yeah, our local Friends of the Library found out that I have an extensive

28:49

collection because I made a post and I haven't seen it as yet but they're doing a

28:54

feature in their local newsletter about our collection and how I found French

28:58

books at their local Friends of the Library bookstore.

29:03

Yeah, I mean if you need the resources you can find them.

29:07

You just have to do your homework and get in there.

29:11

Well, that's one area that we tend to excel at, our school librarians, so we'll

29:16

track them down. So it seems like, I mean, there's so many amazing pieces to this.

29:23

Are there any particular pieces of advice, I mean, you've given so many great ones,

29:27

but are there any particular piece of advice you might have for somebody who's

29:30

gonna try this out for the first time that they might wanna kinda have in mind as

29:33

they get ready to... Well I would say that the antagonist in the Arabic quilt can be a little snotty

29:44

and snowy and really be prepared for how you want to deliver it and discuss it.

29:50

The narrator on the YouTube video does a great job and I often find myself pulled

29:54

away helping a kid make final checkout selections or I might have a teacher come

29:59

in so I do hit play sometimes other times I will read the story myself.

30:04

Okay, that's great. That's good to know.

30:07

Oh man, oh, I love this lesson and you're doing it with a really young group and

30:14

it's really amazing that they are connecting with it so well and I'm already

30:19

starting to imagine ways you could even like age this up or use this in different

30:23

kinds of ways or even exactly the same way with older populations too.

30:28

I will say back in my high school teaching days, many, many years ago with juniors, I

30:33

had a component of a research project we put together that used behind the name

30:38

where the kids were asked to look at the history of their name.

30:40

And they lived it just as much as a third graders do.

30:44

They were very fascinated to find out not only what their name meant, but they could

30:48

understand and appreciate the history of, oh, this famous person had this name or it

30:53

comes from this language or this culture country.

30:56

So. Absolutely, yeah, I mean, aren't we all that self -centered?

31:01

I wanna know everything about me.

31:03

But that's really cool, that's really cool.

31:06

Ah, love it, thank you so much for sharing this lesson.

31:10

We're now gonna go in a 90 degree turn and we're gonna go to our book break.

31:15

So, anything you wanna share can be for school, for personal, for kids, for

31:20

adults, whatever you like. What's a great book that we should know about?

31:24

Well, all of our kids enjoy making videos and YouTube and the Partition Project by

31:32

Sadia Farooqi and my deepest apologies.

31:36

I practiced that name. I think I've got it correct.

31:38

Is a fun little story.

31:41

It's a middle grade novel that the main character, Maya, is in a class where she

31:50

wants to learn about journalism and they're going to make documentaries.

31:56

Hmm. with their classmates to see which classmate will get the most views.

32:02

So our main character, Maya, is also having a concern.

32:07

Her Pakistani grandmother has just moved into her home.

32:11

And while her grandmother is bilingual, she's feeling a little put out because her

32:18

grandmother took her bedroom. Ah.

32:20

And she's been asked to spend time with her after school like she's babysitting

32:26

grandma. And so there's some tension there.

32:29

But it turns out grandmother was a girl, 12 years old, the same age as Maya during

32:37

partition. So you get to learn about a little bit of the India and Pakistan formation post

32:47

World War II and the story of partition.

32:49

Farooqi mentions other books, both for adults and middle grade readers that

32:57

explore the idea of partition in a, in its, in its in the narrative in such a

33:02

beautiful, beautiful way.

33:04

It's just laid out like, hey, here's the night diary.

33:07

Here's, and I can't remember the name of the other book, but I added it to my to be

33:11

read on good rates. And it's just beautifully done.

33:16

And the history, very appropriate for our elementary readers.

33:20

And if they want to know more, the Night Diary, which I also have in my school

33:24

library, it gets a little bit heavier, more into the middle school reading.

33:31

But I think the Partition Project with that 12 -year -old narrator definitely

33:35

appeals to that middle school age. Yeah, and that's an area I've got to admit that I am woefully ignorant about the

33:43

actual history of partition and I love the idea that we can, that there are some

33:49

great books out there that are enjoyable to read on their own but also you can

33:53

learn something from them and this sounds like one that I need to move higher up on

33:56

my TBR list because it's on my list but it's a little further down so now I gotta

34:00

bump that up. I gotta say thanks, Nick Galley, because I got to read it before it came out.

34:06

So. That's awesome.

34:10

Wow. So that is definitely, I mean, that sounds like something I need to not only have in

34:14

my library, but I need to get it into my own hands as soon as I possibly can.

34:19

Awesome. That is great.

34:22

Laurie, I cannot thank you enough for coming and sharing a great lesson, a great

34:26

book for taking your time during your vacation to share with us, to help me fill

34:31

in. I mean, it has just been so wonderful.

34:33

I'm so glad that we got to do this.

34:36

So thank you. Thank you. thank you a million times.

34:38

If people want to track you down online to find out what you're up to, I know you're

34:42

always doing awesome stuff, clearly.

34:45

Where should they go? Where should they be looking for you?

34:49

at Laurie Stansberry on Facebook, Twitter, Now X, and Blue Sky.

34:55

And then on Instagram, I'm Laurie Stansberry Librarian.

34:59

And then on Facebook, because that's where my parents are, I have a school page,

35:05

CBES, for Cedar Bluff Elementary School Library.

35:09

Yeah. head when you said that's where my parents are, I thought your personal parents were

35:13

there and that, and I didn't make the connection at first that that's why you

35:17

had the school library one, but that totally makes sense.

35:20

That's just me having a real brain fog there, but thank you again.

35:28

I really truly appreciate it. And hopefully we'll get to talk to you again sometime soon.

35:32

I would love to do that if you want. You bring so much joy to Library Lessons and Library World.

35:38

And so thank you for putting this podcast out there and sharing so many amazing

35:43

connections so we can all be stronger and better together.

35:48

You're welcome.