Caroline’s Blog

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Darius Daniels: Game On! is a book with endless teaching and learning possibilities

Guest blog by ELA Inclusion 4th Grade Teacher Christay Johnson

Darius Daniels: Game On! is a middle grade verse novel with more than 10 forms of poetry.

As an ELA inclusion teacher with a passion for poetry, sharing Darius Daniels: Game On! (by Author Caroline Brewer) with my class was a breath of fresh air. The book targets and challenges every level of reader in my 4th grade classroom, while giving students a character they can relate to.

We started the book with Vocabulary BINGO (a game provided by the author) to address new and challenging vocabulary they might encounter.  Then, as a whole group read-aloud, with a couple of copies available for students to take turns following along, we read a chapter or two a day. To my surprise, the entire class remained actively engaged. I would stop throughout the text and pause, giving them an opportunity to guess the next word. There were big smiles across the room with every correct guess, and chuckles for every one that was wrong.

Over the years, a common trend among my students on the autism spectrum has been struggling with interpreting concepts that are figurative. The riddles within Darius Daniels: Game On! helped in that aspect, turning the challenge for one of my students this year into fun. He was able to solve many of the riddles that the rest of us couldn’t and was proud to experience success where he normally struggled.

After reading the first book (in the three-book series), the author donated us a class set. Having a book in each hand gave us the opportunity to do even more. There were times we would read as a class, and then some days, I would have everyone partner-read. I let the students perform some of the raps aloud. Partner reading made practicing fluency and expression exciting.

There were days where I was able to use the book in place of some of the curriculum assignments (especially for poetry, vocabulary, and fluency). Our curriculum lessons for fiction and non-fiction are all based around read alouds. My students had already read some of our classroom books in previous grade levels. Instead of using them, we used Darius Daniels several times. We discussed making inferences, drawing conclusions, and themes.

It is a great book to read with students that do not enjoy reading. Many of my students who told me they did not like reading were the ones jumping ahead. We had huge gains this year.  I’d like to think it was from the exposure to Darius Daniels: Game On! I did notice that students were able to be actively engaged with or without the book in front of them, which was always a challenge with (previous) read alouds.

The possibilities with Darius Daniels: Game On! were endless and left us with many opportunities to expand on the book before we started reading, during, and after.  With half of my students receiving Special Education services, I found the book to be great for any level reader in the classroom! I’m already making plans to use it again next year.

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First Classes in the U.S. Give Enthusiastic Video Reviews to Darius Daniels: Game On!

Darius Daniels: Game On! is a certified hit with students in the classes taught by Virginia English Language Arts Teacher Christay Johnson. Her 45 students in two classes are first whole classes in the U.S. to read the book and share video responses. Click here to see what the students have to say about the poetry, imagery, challenges, and adventure provided by 11-year-old Darius and his experience getting sucked into a game world and told that he can’t get out until he hurts somebody.

Click here to order copies for your children or students or email: caroline@carolinebrewerbooks.com

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Black Joy! Books that empower children with love of self, strength, and ingenuity

Black children are beauty, intelligence, ingenuity, resilience, and spontaneous joy, peace, power, and so much more. So in that spirit, I offer the following books that are devoted to true and positive identities of black children and adults. I offer books that are in some ways Afro-futuristic, embodying parallel and fiercely optimistic tales of who we are, who we want to be, where we’ve been, where we’re going, and how we plan to get there, against the backdrop of racism, oppression, rising, uprising, and rising again. These are tales of how we and others have found ways to stay lifted and to lift up others even in the deepest, darkest, and even hopeful times like… now. Enjoy!
Kara Finds Sunshine on a Rainy Day is a picture book about hope, healing, and discovering heroes around us and within, as experienced by 9-year-old Kara, whose plans for a fun-filled day get disrupted when it rains cats and dogs. Her mom responds by sharing rhyming stories about historical figures and ordinary people, of a wide variety of races and backgrounds from across the globe (including Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez and Andre Trocme) who found or made “sunshine” in difficult times. This special edition, illustrated by children from the Harlem School of the Arts, was written to support children and families who survived the devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A child psychiatrist has called Kara Finds Sunshine “a voyage to resiliency.” A cultural historian suggests it’s a powerful education in the “habit of love.” (This book includes an extensive parent and teacher guide and comes with FREE downloads.)
Barack Obama: A Hip Hop Tale of King’s Dream Come True is a picture book is a humorous, satirized and fictionalized account of the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Its swift-moving rhymes, rhythm and drama entertain while educating children about one of the most important events in world history and the social movement that made it possible. The brightly-illustrated 32-page book ultimately reveals President Obama’s powerful connection to the enduring legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement he so honorably and courageously led. (This book includes an extensive parent and teacher guide and comes with  FREE downloads.)
Darius Daniels: Game On!  – An anti-racist verse novel about identity, black boy joy, family, community, disabilities, moral questions, told movingly through more than 10 forms of poetry.Darius Daniels: Game On! is a middle-grade rhythmic novel about an 11-year-old boy, a video game, and a great and scary adventure the boy cannot escape – until he hurts somebody. D was his name, you see, and he was on the Edge. Family and friends on one side, Getting together at his home. Him on the other, sometimes feeling alone, In a game world that made his head swirl. Jammed up his brain and rained Karate chops and knocked him for a Loop. He didn’t see it coming that Morning. Should have been a warning, but No. Oops. (This book comes with FREE downloads and opportunities and numerous Language Arts learning standards applications.)
Click here to learn more: https://carolinebrewerbooks.com/books/
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The Infinite Magic of Stories

The Infinite Magic of Stories

How to Engage Children without a Computer (Series)

During last Sunday’s Parent Teacher Power Hour, we took a deep dive into the Infinite Magic of Stories, 
and discovered a whole new world! Please click the link to learn more about how you can help stimulate intellectual, social, and emotional development in children by understanding what it takes to create stories and the vast world of stories that you can share.
Sunday, April 26, at 7:05 p.m. Eastern time, join us as we keep going with stories and investigate folk tales, fables, and fairy tales from around the world. We’re going to ask participants who would like to share to share the name of a favorite fairy tale, folktale, or fable, such as the Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Cinderella, Anansi stories, Jack and the Beanstalk, and, of course, many more – and what you learned from the tales and what you hope students will learn.

Links to hundreds of fairy tales, folktales and fables are on the 8 Ways to Engage Children Without a Computer handout.  Email caroline@carolinebrewerbooks.com for your invitation to the Parent Teacher Power Hour.
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Hear Stories, Tell Stories, Learn how to Create Stories – This Sunday at 7 pm!

Some words. Maybe it’s just one, such as: Love. Hope. Fire. Fear. Music. Tears. That’s all you need to tell a story. Some words you speak. Some words your write. Some words that come to your mind and end up as a picture. You know the saying: a picture is worth a thousand words, and a thousand words is plenty enough for a story.

This Sunday, as a follow up to last week’s discussion of The Higher Way, and my new release of 8 Ways to Engage Children Without a Computer, we’re going to talk about stories.  It’s Way #1 on the download. We’re going to tell you some stories, ask you to tell us some stories (in one minute or less!), and we’re going to talk about how you can support children to create and publish their stories and how you can do the same.

We’re going to have a good time with good old-fashioned StoryTime. You know, once upon a time, or Back in the day, or Honey, let me tell you kinds of stories. And music! We Love stories with instrumental music. So, come along, bring family, friends – all ages are welcome!

We’re going to have a story good time!

Sunday, April 19 – 7 -8 p.m. via Freeconferencecall.com Video or Phone.

Email caroline@carolinebrewer.com to receive the link!

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8 Ways to Engage Children Without A Computer

8 Ways to Engage Children Without a Computer
and support their intellectual growth and development

I love being offline much more than being online and I know how important it is for children to spend time growing and developing without devices. That’s why 8 Ways to Engage Children – mentally, physically, and intellectually  — without computers. This list could have included 80 Ways, or even 800. But I think this list of 8 is pretty substantial, so take a look, try some out some of these ways and let us know what you think.

And, of course, have fun!

Email caroline@carolinebrewerbooks.com with your stories and thoughts. And join us tomorrow at 7 p.m. to learn more about how to have fun with the 8 Ways.

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How to Keep Children from Plucking Your Last Nerve during #Covid-19 Times or Any Time

How to Keep Children from Plucking Your Last Nerve during #Covid-19
Home-Schooling, Distance Learning, & Literacy Engagement

Home-schooling and distance learning offer new opportunities to bond with our children and students – and also for us to snap on one another.

As an 18-year veteran of teaching and learning in classrooms, through literacy activism, and as an author, I have come to understand that the best way to succeed with children — at any time — is by adhering to The Higher Way.

The Higher Way means responding in a way that allows children to easily get back on track without feeling pressured, chastised, or humiliated. Importantly, it means responding in a way that gives them a say in how to proceed.

For instance, When Jared is not paying attention, drumming his fingers on the table, or tapping his feet; when Kayla is twisting her hair or making sucking sounds instead of focusing; this is the time to let your love and patience wrap around their sweet little souls like cotton candy on a paper stick.

Responses to nerve-plucking behavior could include: “How can I help you? You can do this. Would you like me to read today, and you just listen?  It seems as if something is bothering you. Would you like to talk about it?  Thank you for trusting me to help you. You’re doing great.”

Please understand how much power there is in your words and actions designed to open the door to a Higher Way.  Without preaching, condemning, and often without even mentioning the challenging behavior on display, I have stopped elementary, middle-school and high-school students from cursing like sailors, from fighting every day, and from throwing tantrums using The Higher Way. Using The Higher Way, I’ve seen children go from refusing to read or write to reading and writing, and declaring their love for it.

Working lovingly and patiently with children means that we seek, always, to understand the child. We put ourselves in the child’s shoes. Empathize. Learning to read or write for children who have not yet grasped how is often painful. Understand that they are suffering almost every moment they sit with you and the work before them. Your extraordinary display of love and patience will ease that suffering, bit by bit, and slowly turn it to joy – which is critical to children’s success, the development of confidence, and their trust in you and themselves.

If we create children or students who do work but are miserable,  we have failed. Because failure is not an option, we must stay on the love and patience track. Swallow our tongues. Sit on our hands. Breathe. And smile – smile a lot. Whatever it takes to let love and patience pour forth like the morning sun when inside we are a bit rattled, irritated, concerned, even annoyed.

We have everything to gain if, when they seem to go low, we go high.

 

 

 

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FREE BOOKS and Author Visit for a DC Public School

FREE BOOKS & Author Visit: Are you a teacher or librarian at a DC public school with students in grades 3-5?
Thanks to the generosity of some dear friends in D.C., I have 40 copies of Darius Daniels: Game On! to donate to a school, along with an author visit. I need you to work with your students to submit via email written, illustrated, audio or video responses to three questions:

Why would you like a set of Darius Daniels: Game On! books for your classroom or school library?
How have you used other classroom sets of books in your classroom or school library?
List three ways you would use a set of Darius Daniels: Game On! books in your classroom/school library.

Submit entries by midnight Thursday, March 12. I will select up to two classrooms and/or school libraries and we will arrange a visit for up to 300 students in your school. News media and photographers will be invited to help us celebrate your winning project.

I’m looking forward to interesting and creative ideas!
Listen to my interview with Gravity Bread to learn more about the book.
Learn more about activities you can do with the book here: https://carolinebrewerbooks.com/ddgo-activity-set/
Use the Contact Me page to submit your application or Email: caroline@carolinebrewerbooks.com

Have fun!

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Fort Wayne Born Author offers “Book Tastings” of Book She Calls a ‘Handheld Revolution’

Fort Wayne Born Author offers “Book Tastings” of Book She Calls a ‘Handheld Revolution’

Pontiac Library| 2215 S Hanna Street| Fort Wayne, IN 46803
Saturday, March 7, 2020 * 3:30 – 4:30 PM
REGISTER at this LINK

Wunderkammer Company| 3402 Fairfield Avenue| Fort Wayne, IN 46807
Wednesday, March 11, 2020 * 6:30 – 8:00 PM
REGISTER at this LINK

I love books like kids love candy.
I love books like beaches love sandy.
I love books like corn loves to pop.
I love books like hip loves to hop!

Fort Wayne, IN – On a cool winter afternoon March 7, and on an evening March 11, two institutions in Fort Wayne will come alive with the sounds of music and love for language.  Two women, bodies outfitted in black from head to toe, will lead the singing, rapping, and reciting of songs and texts from a new children’s novel, Darius Daniels: Game On! They will also talk about a revolution as part of the Let’s Talk About It!: Hueman Stories project initiated by Ketu and Rasamen Oladuwa.

The musical rendering of the new novel is part of what the author calls a “book tasting,” and it’s central to a growing movement they are pushing to help change the literacy game for children they call “hungry readers and writers.”

Fort Wayne native Caroline Brewer, author of Darius Daniels: Game On!, has been quietly leading the movement since becoming a children’s author in late 2001, after leaving her job as a newspaper columnist at The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey the previous summer.

The other woman and partner in word artistry, Karen Wilson-Ama’Echefu, is a Harlem-born singer, storyteller, and cultural historian who has studied the poetry flow of African Americans shaped by the language legacy of 400 years of living in the United States.

The book tastings (samplings of the story through readings, reciting of poetry and rhymes, raps and songs) are centered around Darius Daniels: Game On!, a 256-page verse novel about an 11-year-old boy who gets sucked into a video game and is told he can’t get out until he hurts somebody. While the premise is tantalizing to children – and adults — what makes the book especially compelling is that it’s chockful of rhythm, rhyme, rap, and more than 10 forms of poetry, plus history and cultural touchstones, which make it ripe for “tasting.” 

I Love Books is one of the featured raps. The story is set in a fictional town based on Fort Wayne and is meant to inspire a revolution that frees children from literacy failure, so they are more likely to escape the mass incarceration trap that the Hueman Stories project is determined to destroy.

Brewer says the fact that the book is “a handheld revolution,” is what inspired the gatherings, which are part of a book tour across the United States. “I challenge anyone to read this book and remain unchanged. It is within and of itself a revolution. I’m getting reports from teachers already that children are being changed because of this book,” says Brewer, the author of 11 other books, a literacy activist and former teacher. “Every child I’ve ever met has been hungry to be a more capable reader or writer. And yet, for more than 30 years, the majority of American children have entered and exited school reading below grade level. This tour will give children and adults the information, ideas, and inspiration they need to tap into cultural legacies that will allow them to feed their literary appetites and imaginations, overthrow decades of failure, and free them from the snare of incarceration.”

Wilson-Ama’Echefu, an inter-disciplinary scholar who has written on cultural and intellectual history in the 19th and 20th centuries, has just released her first solo book, Christmas Was Just Breakin’, a black Twas the Night Before Christmas.  She notes, “Esteemed scholars, such as Lorenzo Turner, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Geneva Smitherman, who wrote Talkin’ and Testifyin’ 40 years ago, long ago established that African American communities develop linguistic skills that are formidable in both style and substance. Their work and my scholarship document the fact that our people (African-descended people) are natural poets whose facility with language and depth of intellect make them some of the world’s finest thinkers and readers.”

The authors contend in a society where reading and young people are constantly under attack, there is, instead, much to celebrate. “We’re talking about paying homage to children’s brilliance,“ said Brewer. “Whether they come from low-income or no-income homes, whether they have one parent, or are forced to be their own parent, we’re saying pay homage to every child’s ability to thrive. Let that be the foundation for the ways in which we connect with them. Let’s be prepared to leverage their assets for their beautiful, productive, and fantastic futures.”

Brewer cited a few cases of revolutionary experiences with students and literacy:

  • A Virginia teacher said the rhymes in Darius Daniels: Game On! have given her new ways to assess students’ growth in real time; she said students designated for Special Education services, including a boy diagnosed with autism, are demonstrating – just from her readings of the one copy she has– the ability to analyze language in ways that she was told they didn’t possess.
  • A boy entered 3rd grade still learning the alphabet. By January, his school in Prince George’s County, MD had become the third he had attended that year. His teacher helped him learn the alphabet and also taught him and the entire class all the Language Arts state standards using a rhyming book written by Brewer as the textbook. In three months, the boy tested at 3rd grade level and the top of the class. A number of other students had moved up at least one grade level or more in just a few months.
  • Brewer’s 4th grade student in an independent school struggled to read on a first grade level. She preferred picture books and was reluctant to participate in class. She also regularly argued with other students and had difficulty staying in her seat. After Ms. Brewer introduced an early version of Darius Daniels: Game On! and offered exciting ways to engage with poetry and rhymes, the student began to open up, participate, and push herself to complete assignments. She took Darius Daniels home and, on her own, began reading deeper into the book. In a matter of weeks, she surprised Ms. Brewer one day and asked if she could read some of the book to her. She read Darius Daniels fluently, confidently, and with understanding. It was a huge triumph that underscores the truth about every student’s potential and hunger to achieve. The student also transitioned socially and emotionally and became a leading peacemaker in the class.

Excerpt and EARLY PRAISE for Darius Daniels: Game On!

“This is a masterpiece!”

  • Michelle Ajebon, Age 10, 4th grade

“I would tell other kids to read this book because, “Who wouldn’t love going into a video game?”

  • Joshua Ajebon, Age 11, 5th grade

“Darius Daniels: Game On! is a unique, beautiful blend of prose and poetry.

The book will not only entertain children, but educate them as well.”

  • Glenn Brewer, Teacher and Award-winning Artist, Illustrator,

  Author and Comic Book Publisher

“Caroline Brewer has written a book that provides the tools that our children need in the language that they can encompass now. Ms. Brewer’s work captures poetic language in all of its rich array of poetic possibilities…not only the rap, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning form. It celebrates haikus, limericks, sonnets, blues, and spirituals, the acrobatics of language rhythm and movement that we showcase in our communities every day. Darius Daniels: Game On! should be in every classroom. I look forward to that day.”

  • Karen Wilson-Ama’Echefu, PhD, Storyteller, Teaching Artist and Singer

“Caroline is a master storyteller; her voice and style are a breath of fresh air! You are going to love Darius and the rest of his crew (including his little sister, Ashanti!) and laugh out loud at all the fun, silly jokes here. Yay for Caroline! Game on, indeed!”

  • Amy Tipton, Former NYT Bestselling Agent, Editor of Feral Girl Books

“Caroline Brewer’s Darius Daniels: Game On! is definitely the power-up that re-energizes the idiom, ‘Life is a game.’ Which it is for Darius, who takes on the pixelated world of his imagination to battle monsters both on screen and internally. This easy-to-read series moves quick. The language is playful and sure to get young people excited about reading.”  – Alan King, author of POINT BLANK and DRIFT

“I don’t usually read books without pictures. But I wanna read this book! I think it’s gonna be very good.” – Zion, 1st grader, who confidently read a page of the 4th grade level book out loud.

“The book was really good and entertaining and I loved it!” – John, 8th grader, who said earlier in the day that he didn’t really like to read.