{"id":6790,"date":"2012-01-12T06:00:37","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=6790"},"modified":"2012-01-12T06:00:37","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T11:00:37","slug":"when-a-classroom-calls-the-bookstore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=6790","title":{"rendered":"When a Classroom Calls the Bookstore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Stein teaches third- and fourth-graders in South Burlington, Vt., at a great little parent-cooperative school called The Schoolhouse<\/a>, which both of my nephews have attended. Mark’s class just finished reading A Wrinkle in Time<\/em>, and the kids were debating which genre\u2014science fiction or fantasy\u2014best fits the book. When they reached an impasse, Mark suggested calling The Flying Pig.
\n“I told the kids we would call a local independent bookstore because, in addition to keeping our money in Vermont when we shop there, we can be certain of reaching people who are passionate about books.” You have to love a teacher who instills in nine- and ten-year-olds an appreciation for the value of community and the deep love of books.
\nAfter the kids decided what questions they wanted to ask a bookseller, Mark put the classroom phone on speaker and called the bookstore. There was no call ahead, no set-up, just the real-time, real-world experience of calling a store for information. This is a great experience for kids, by the way; there is, as you may imagine, a huge range of competencies when it comes to children phoning commercial establishments\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014 but that’s another blog post.
\nWhen one of our staffers answered the call, the children asked her where we choose to shelve Madeleine L’Engle’s novel. She replied that we shelve the series in our middle grade Fantasy\/Science Fiction section (we combine the genres for middle-grade books, but we give adult and YA science fiction a separate section). She added that we also carry A Wrinkle in Time<\/em> in our Newbery Award section, and that sometimes, the series can even be found in our younger Classics section, especially when we have the boxed set on hand. That gave the class a lot to chew on, both broadening the number of book categories and not settling the initial question with finality.
\nThe kids had one more question for us: Did we have the next book in the series? Mark said, “The kids are so excited about A Wrinkle in Time<\/em>. And now they’re excited about being part of the process of getting hold of the next book. It’s a powerful thing,” he added, ruminating, “to be part of the acquisition of a book.” I’d never really thought about it that way, but I understand what he means \u2014 and I really admire that he’s deepened the way the kids are thinking about where and how they decide to add a new treasure to the classroom library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Stein teaches third- and fourth-graders in South Burlington, Vt., at a great little parent-cooperative school called The Schoolhouse. Mark’s class just finished reading A Wrinkle in Time, and the kids were debating which genre\u2014science fiction or fantasy\u2014best fits the book. When they reached an impasse, Mark suggested calling The Flying Pig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}