Spring 2025 Newsletter

We’ve had another wonderful year in the library! It’s been busy over here since our last newsletter; here are some highlights:

We saw more than 600 circulations from our new manga section!
We visited EEE for read-alouds on Mondays and Fridays!
8th grader Lukas Maceyka constructed a train display for our library, which students enjoyed during choice time!
7th grade volunteers joined us in kindergarten and 3rd grade on Wednesday mornings to help pick books and facilitate group activities!
Students in K-4 read all ten Red Clover book award nominees and will vote for their favorite this week!
We received dozens of great ideas in our Book Suggestion Box from students in grades 3-6, which have been added to our library collection!

A quick note about returning books: Friday, May 30, 2025 is the last day students can check out books and bring them home. Students’ library books are due back by Monday, June 2, so that library staff can conduct inventory and prepare the collection for Fall 2025. We do not charge for overdue, lost or damaged books! (It is entirely at the family’s discretion if they’d like to replace a book.) Please do reach out if you have any questions or concerns about missing books.

Red Clover in Kindergarten

This spring, I read all 10 Red Clover books to kindergarten students. One of my personal favorites was I Am a Tornado, a story about ways we can help ourselves and others regulate our whirling emotions.

Students in grades 1-4 have already voted for their favorite book, and kindergarten votes this week! The statewide winner will be announced by the Department of Libraries in June.

For more information about Red Clover books, you can visit https://sites.google.com/cvsdvt.org/hcs-library/red-clover.

Over the Falls and Into Space in 1st and 2nd Grade

First and second graders read the true story of Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel! Chris Van Allsburg captured her fantastic feat in stunning black-and-white illustrations, and students were enthralled with this text-heavy story.

After learning that Annie was largely ignored by the public after surviving her daredevil stunt in 1901, students came up with their own questions that they would have asked Annie. These included:

-How long did it take you to build the special barrel, compared to a regular barrel?

-How did you know how to engineer the barrel?

-Did it hurt when you were upside down? How did it feel when you got out?

-What was the speed of the water?

-How do two people go over the falls together? Why did you choose to go alone?

-Why did you choose a barrel over another vessel?

-Why did the illustrator change details about the barrel when he drew it?

We read another book by Chris Van Allsburg called Zathura, the sequel to Jumanji. Students came up with some amazingly astute questions about this book, too!

-Why were there two Dannys? If Danny rolled the dice again, would there be another Danny?

-What’s inside a black hole? Would you be stuck there forever if you ended up inside of one?

-Did both brothers get their memories erased, or just Danny?

-Is there a “fake” Danny now, or did the “real” Danny come back to Earth?

Students in Ms. Patnode’s first grade class even recreated their own barrels during choice time in their classroom after finishing the book!

Queen of the Falls had the longest wait list of any book I read to students this year. It was a truly wonderful experience to share and discuss this book.

Tracking Animals in 2nd Grade

In addition to reading Queen of the Falls and Zathura, second graders followed two Anishinaabe cousins as they hone their tracking skills in The Spirit Trackers. Uncle warns the young trackers of a terrible winter spirit from Indigenous mythology called the Windigo, and the boys soon find themselves in several spooky situations that require them to look for clues in their surroundings to solve the mystery of what’s really hiding out in the woods.

Students got to put themselves in the boys’ (snow)shoes as they searched for animal tracks hidden throughout the library, which they accrued on a bingo card showing which animals had prowled, lumbered, and hopped throughout our space. It was a really fun way to enjoy winter!

Monsters, Science, and Mysteries in 3rd & 4th Grade

After finishing Bunnicula this fall, 3rd graders explored the science behind some of our most popular monsters from folklore, including vampires, werewolves, mermaids, and Bigfoot. Students learned about observable evidence and tested their theories about Bunnicula’s vampirism against the facts.

Our work culminated in a courtroom-style debate featuring our strongest arguments about whether the bunny was a harmless little fluffball or a bloodsucking threat to the entire Monroe household!

A lot of our discussion around Bunnicula and Monster Science focused on differentiating between claims and opinions. Some examples of claims that students gathered from Bunnicula included:

-Garlic kept Bunnicula from getting out of his cage

-Bunnicula is using his fangs to suck the juice from vegetables

-If we don’t stop Bunnicula from sucking the juice from vegetables, things will get worse

On the flipside, some of our examples of evidence included:

-Bunnicula’s fur looks like a cape

-We have observed Bunnicula out of his cage, but we don’t know how he got out

-There are marks on vegetables that look like teeth

-Bunnicula looked sick after Chester put garlic outside of his cage

4th graders read the sequel to Bunnicula and learned about the ways in which authors craft their mysteries, using devices such as setting, dialogue, and “red herrings” to keep us guessing. We frequently made predictions that we backed up with evidence, which led to some fun-filled class discussions.

4th graders also learned new ways to use our library software to find books they’re interested in! We used search limiters and sorting tools to narrow down results to get more specific. You can learn more about Destiny Discover at https://sites.google.com/cvsdvt.org/hcs-library/destiny .

Book Talks and Genre Studies in 5th & 6th Grades

We had lots of book talks this year in 5th and 6th grade, covering many genres, including memoirs and biographies, humorous fiction, realistic fiction, and more. We played a fun genre-based game in which we used clues to determine whether an excerpt was from a science fiction or historical fiction book, and practiced sharing evidence to support our hypotheses.

5th and 6th graders read a few of this year’s Red Clover books, too. Even though they’re too old now to cast votes to the Department of Libraries, they still got to enjoy several of them, including Stranded, the (mostly) true story of how a young man survived two harrowing days on an active volcano.

I always get a kick out of running statistics for our library circulation at the end of each school year. Here are our top most circulated books by category:

Picture Book:

Graphic Novel:

Nonfiction:

Transitional Fiction:

Juvenile Fiction:

YA Fiction:

Thank you so much for your continued support of literacy, curiosity, and inquiry this year. We appreciate each and every time you searched under a couch for a missing book, made sure that it made it into a backpack, or followed up with an email.

On a final note, I will sadly not be returning to HCS next fall due to health reasons. It has been a joy to be part of your childrens’ journeys as learners and readers over the past five years, and I will miss them very, very much.

Best wishes to you and your families, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about library books through the end of this school year!

Jessie Moore

HCS Librarian

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