Banned Books Week: Saturday, September 25-October 2, 2010

Image by DML East Branch via FlickrWhen was the last time you read a banned or challenged book?

Pretty recently, probably. If you read SPEAK by Laurie Halse-Anderson this summer in the UB program (or if you read it for school), you read a book that's currently being challenged in Missouri. Those of you who've read it, what do you think? Is it "a novel about a girl dealing with the aftermath of rape"? Or is it, as Wesley Scroggins says, "soft pornography" and should therefore be banned from high school libraries?

You can read Laurie Halse-Anderson's own thoughts on this challenge to her book. Feel free to leave a comment on her blog, or follow her on Twitter!

Want to see which other books have been banned or challenged? You can check out 2009's top ten most challenged books here. Or you can see the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books of 2000-2009 here.

Some of my favorites from the Top 100:

• The Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
• His Dark Materials series (Philip Pullman)
• Go Ask Alice (Anonymous)
• The Giver (Lois Lowry)
• The Face on the Milk Carton (Caroline B. Cooney)
• Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging (Louise Rennison)
• Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
• Whale Talk (Chris Crutcher)
• Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
• The Great Gilly Hopkins (Katherine Paterson)
• Speak (Laurie Halse-Anderson)
• A Time to Kill (John Grisham)
• Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
• Junie B. Jones series (Barbara Park)
• The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
• The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
• The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende)
• Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (Judy Blume)

Thanks to this list, I have a bunch of books to add to my "To Be Read" pile!

How are you going to celebrate Banned Books Week?

August... Back to School!

I hope you all had a great time in Florida! I wish I could have been there... but reading y'all's Faceook updates was the next best thing! (Keep uploading pics!)

So it's August, and school will be starting soon... (hey, if it makes you feel better, your teachers and principals are already back at school.) But before we send you back to class, we want to take you on one more trip!

On Friday, August 20th, we'll be going to see BODIES... The Exhibition at the West End Marketplace in downtown Dallas. If you want to find out more about this exhibit, visit their website, or become a fan on Facebook!

School starts August 23rd (for both Dallas and Grand Prairie students); we'll start after-school tutoring the week of September 13th.

Mark your calendars: MVC UB Orientation and our first Parent Meeting of the academic year will be on Saturday, September 11th.

Looking forward to seeing you on the 20th!

"Man in the Mirror" -- Michael Jackson

My autobiographical poem

This is from the lesson I taught Saturday. I really enjoyed hearing everyone's poem... I know you all read mine, since it was the example on the board, but I wanted to put it up here just because.

Criss

Creative and opinionated

Who likes cats and Hello Kitty

Who dislikes ignorance, arrogance, and apathy

Who needs her laptop, Pandora, and a good book

Who fears global climate change and deforestation

Who dreams one day of being a best-selling author

Resident of Texas

Forshay

Hello Spring 2010!

I spent today working on getting all the students scheduled into their new classes for the spring semester (which starts the day after tomorrow). I had to wrestle a little with Blumen, the computer program we use to keep track of students and classes and all that fun stuff, but I managed to hold my own in the end.

I'm excited about this semester! Last semester I had lots of ideas I wanted to try out, but I was just getting to know the students and getting to know the system, how all this works, so my grand ideas didn't get too far off the ground... kind of like the blogging thing. But this semester? We've got it together :P This semester we'll be rocking the blogging, and I promise to read and leave comment love on y'all's blogs. (Feel free to do the same here! :P )

Are any of you on Twitter? If you are, follow me! @Ms4shay I tweet links to things I think you'll find interesting, and I also share MVC Upward Bound info.

If you have not signed up for our TextMarks updates, make sure you do so! Check the box on the sidebar for more info.

This is me

By now I have met most of you. You've seen me on Saturdays or at tutoring after school. (I'm the one who brings snacks sometimes.)

This is my first year working with Upward Bound. I spent the last 8 years teaching Spanish, at two different high schools and at an elementary school. I grew up in Santiago, Chile, and moved to the US right after I finished 8th grade. I went to high school in Austin, Texas, and graduated from UT Austin with a degree in Spanish Language and Literature.

I love books. I love reading and I also write, mostly novels because short stories are harder! (I can never come up with a good ending. So I keep writing the story... and then it's a novel!) I'm currently editing a novel I wrote in 2004, which I plan to shop to agents in a few months so I can get it published.

I live with my husband, Mr. Forshay, and four cats: Indiana Jones, Princess Vespa, Happy Girl, and Agustus McCrae (two are movie characters, one was named by my ex-step-daughter, and the last one is a book and movie character. Can you identify the movies/book? By the way, I did not come up with any of the names).

There's a lot more to say about me, but that's a good starting point. I've enjoyed getting to know you all this first semester, and I look forward to getting to know the rest of you, and getting to know you better, this next semester. :)

Why blog?

Here's a quick video (click the link) to give you a very quick introduction to what a blog is, and why you want to have one. The first video is meant for a younger audience, but it still has good info for you to know. The video below is more at your age level:

If you would like some help creating your own blog, this link has instructions with screenshots (for you visual learners). Scroll down to "How to start your blog at Blogspot?"

If you need another reason to start blogging and becoming more computer-literate, here's another video. Some food for thought for your generation...