Middle Grade Books

SELI's small library collection covers picture books to what is called middle grade. 

What are middle grade books? They are novels or nonfiction books written for young people between the ages of 10 to somewhere in the teens. However, if the topic, such as historical fiction, is of general appeal and educational, people of any age enjoy reading middle grade books. 

In adding to SELI's collection we also pay attention to the cultural content of a book, because all children are best able to understand and become engaged by a book if they recognise themselves in the story. 

Here is a list of recently published middle grade books. Have a look and let me know which you think we should purchase for the SELI collection.

Can't Wait to Continue Storytelling

 I'm making plans for library services for the SELI library. 

I journaled starting out not just reading books aloud but doing storytelling as librarian at the American International School of Freetown a few (😆) years ago. I'll definitely work this into my plans at SELI.

Journal, April 1993: 

I'm trying to learn to become a storyteller (without a book).  Two weeks ago in my Library Fun club I told the story of Beowulf—the first epic poem written in English in the 8th century.  We have a good book that simplified it, but it was hard to learn and took 40 minutes to tell, partly because the kids all asked good questions. 

Today is St. Patrick's Day and I told an Irish story about a Brownie.  It took about 15 minutes, and they loved it!  It doesn't seem so hard now that I've done it twice, so I'm looking for another to learn.  I have to like the story and the way it’s written myself, but the idea is that you build their ability to think visually for an extended period of time because  right at the end of telling a long story, I read in a library journal, you can launch into a discussion of the highest theoretical kind--atomic theory or anything--and they will grasp it, because you already have them thinking visually.  I want to try that sometime and see.

Writing Makes Better Readers!

 SELI Young Writers Clubs demonstrate that process writing workshops adapted for English learners develop students’ reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, which gives them the self-confidence to keep learning.

However, it is hard to find it stated in any other context that writing facilitates reading. People see it as the cart coming before the horse. I didn’t see this short article when it came out, so I will quote from it now:

“Gene Ouellette, an associate professor of psychology at Mount Allison University, and Monique Sénéchal, a psychology professor at Carleton University, have done a number of studies on how invented spelling plays into literacy acquisition. “What we’ve found over the years is there seemed to be something with kids who are doing invented spelling on their own that’s really helping them learn how to read,” said Ouellette in an interview. “I’d say it’s like the missing piece” in early literacy instruction.” Loewus, L. (May 5, 2017). “Invented Spelling Leads to Better Reading, Study Says.” Education Week online. 

Some of the reading groups to which SELI offers instructional support, administered a gap-fill or cloze exercise using an early chapter in their next book to get an approximate idea of each person’s reading level (you see two here, one in Lunsar and one in Dankawalie). In cloze exercises every fifth word is omitted, and the candidate supplies it or a reasonable substitute. What a wonderful realm with neither carts nor horses, just reading and writing as one activity!

Developing Children's Literature

I am excited about SELI's coming year. 

The SELI Young Writers Clubs program continues to develop the literacy of upper primary and junior secondary students; for some, improving their performance on public exams and for others, revealing their new selves as authors. Their facilitators report ex-club members asking how to move forward into creative writing. 

A real need exists in Sierra Leone for children's literature—good reading books. They need to be culturally relevant. As an advocate of children's literature and ex-school librarian, I make good use of SELI's children's library (see photo here)

as an inspiration for editing.

Increasingly, people in Sierra Leone are writing for children, but a good many are unable to get their work published because they lack editing support. SELI would like to provide such individualized early-stage writing guidance on drafts that such authors are considering submitting for publication. There would be no cost to the author for this service.  It would be provided by email or WhatsApp, or when available, in person. 

SELI is not a publisher. This editing service is intended to help point the authors' way to preparing a more successful draft (and hopefully then, more successful subsequent drafts) for submission to a children's book publisher. 

So let the new year in!