Week in Review: 2/5-2/9

What a week we’ve had here in the Matthews Library. The excitement kept rolling in nonstop!

Throughout the week, Ms. Melinson’s advisory helped beautify our campus as part of the Bucket Brigade.

Our 6th grade scientists continued to research careers in science with citation guidance from Ms. Melinson. On Thursday, Dr. Michael Wright spoke to them about his research as a neuroscientist, and about being a professor at Sac State. He brought leeches in to show the students, but don’t worry no one lost any blood they weren’t ready and willing to lose that day!

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The 7th grade historians engaged in an enriching role playing hour this week. Each took on the persona of an enlightenment thinker and debated the hottest button issues of the 1700s. Our favorite moment involved a snarky Benjamin Franklin being put in his place by a profession from Catherine the Great that, “I imprisoned my husband, you know.” Students received extra credit for dressing up like their thinkers.

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At lunch on Wednesday, the Black Student Union and The Glass Knife staff put on a spoken word event. They encouraged all in attendance to read aloud a poem or song by a Black author in celebration of the remarkable contributions Black artists make to our society.

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Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham visited our campus on Thursday as part of their book tour for Lunar New Year Love Story. The author/illustrator duo presented on the meaning of Lunar New Year, their journeys into the graphic novel and picture book worlds, and the importance of the kiss in a romance story at assemblies for the 8th-12th grade students. They also signed a truly remarkable number of books for the Country Day libraries and community at large. Junior Imani is a fan of Yang’s work and an artist herself, so she drew a caricature of Yang to give to him, which he had her sign as well.

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On Friday, we hosted author Lisa Moore Ramée. She presented to our 3rd-7th graders about her story, the power of diverse representation, the importance of perseverance in the face of rejection, the fears she faced, and the magic of storytelling. Ms. Ramée then led a workshop for Ms. Kahn’s Crafting and Culture elective class where she taught the students about how to craft impactful dialogue. Finally, she, too, signed an incredible number of books for our students and libraries.

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Whew! We made it to Friday, Country Day. Just one more week until our midwinter break! Keep up the incredible effort. We’ll see you Monday for even more learning, creativity, collaboration, and reading galore.

Weeks in Review: 1/8-2/1

Happy Groundhog Day! It may be rainy and grey today, but that big ol’ rodent predicts we’ll be enjoying the sunshine soon enough. The past few weeks here in the Matthews have certainly kept us on our toes.

Ms. Melinson provided tea and cookies for students on the rainiest and dreariest days we saw.

On Monday, January 8th, we hosted a Queer Joy Panel moderated by Mr. Hinojosa. Queer students, faculty, and staff spoke up about their experiences of joy. Mr. Hinojosa has organized a similar event for several years now in conjunction with the culmination of his Senior English class unit on The Laramie Project. Each year, he opens the event up to the community at large, and each year more of the the community attends. This year saw a positively packed audience. Next year might be standing room only! 

The Room of Requirement saw quite a bit of club action these past few weeks. The high school restarted the Among Us club and immediately got to business sussing out the imposter. We promise it wasn’t us; in fact, we definitely saw red vent by electrical. Model UN has continued to convene as well. These *model* students sure do impress us! The Glass Knife Staff are ramping up their efforts to complete the school’s literary magazine in time for the Seniors’ last day here at Country Day.

During Finals week, the library pendulum swung between chaos and crickets faster than we could say “good luck!” to those on their way to examinations. Congratulations to the entire upper school for making it through the first semester!

Ms. Perla led several C-Day meetings to help prepare our Juniors for the ever-encroaching college application and high school graduation process. At one such meeting, she asked the students to literally visualize themselves at college through a drawing exercise. How incredible is it that the students have such a helpful guide through this grueling process?

We hosted the Sophomores for another moratorium related to the Sophomore Project. With their research papers in the rearview mirror, they are now embarking on the exciting journey to turn these papers into presentations. Students who did well on their presentations last year stopped by to offer a few tricks of the trade, including Grace who gave presenting tips from Mock Trial. In order to prepare for making the best presentations they could, Ms. Leavy had the students prepare precisely the inverse. These purposefully-horrendous projects gave everyone a good laugh.

The Leadership Lunch series continued on Wednesday, January 31st. Katie and Ishaan conducted an interview with Jenny about her semester spent at Oxbow art school.

Ms. Melinson’s advisory broke from their donut tradition; they had all kinds of other sweet treats. On February 1st, Dr. Pam attended to discuss microagressions and how to respond to them with the group.

Ms. Frandrup’s 6th grade science classes have begun their science careers research projects. They came in on several days to learn how to perform research using databases, websites, and books from Ms. Melinson and Ms. Z-S. They made sure to emphasize proper citation in their research, so these students should be well prepared for academic integrity moving forward. They also got to listen to a real life biology professor from Sac State present to them about the life of a science researcher and professor.

Next week, we’ll have three different authors visiting, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Stay tuned for updates on all our adventures here at the Matthews Library. Cheers and happy Friday! We hope you find some good dogs to pet, beautiful art to enjoy, and a cozy book to read soon 🙂

October Book Club

Ms. Melinson kicked off our meeting this month with a mix of four very different book recommendations. Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball by John Chad is a remarkable example of a nonfiction graphic novel (although it’s nonfiction, calling it a “graphic book” might raise eyebrows unnecessarily) with beautiful color saturation and engaging pages. It is Chad’s love letter to the pinball community. Chad himself has a Country Day connection by way of his wife, Ms. Kahn. Ms. Melinson’s next recommendation, The Woman in the Castello, also has a Country Day connection. The author is an alum! Using the pen name Kelsey James, she writes a cinematic and spooky gothic mystery about an American actress in the 1960s filming a horror movie on location in a crumbling castle outside of Rome. While adults are the intended audience, the book is available here in the Matthews Library for any more mature high schoolers looking to see what incredible things our alum can come up with.

Ms. Melinson went on to recommend Three Dark Crowns, a novel she added to our collection with certain triplets in mind. The gothic fantasy tells of a lineage of queens who birth a set of triplets every generation: magical triplets who, beginning on their sixteenth birthday, must fight to the death in order to determine who will ascend the throne. Upon learning of this book, Jordyn checked it out immediately. Hopefully she’ll have a review of it for us during our November meeting! Finally, Ms. Melinson drew our attention to Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World Shell by Shattered Shell by Sy Montgomery. Montgomery is an author and naturalist many Country Dayers are already familiar with from the Scientists in the Field books she authored. With plenty of pictures by science illustrator Matt Patterson, this book tells the story of two suburban women’s basement turtle rescue operation and with it probes at questions of how we can heal our relationship with time itself. This and many other titles by this author/illustrator duo are available for check out here on our shelves!

Ms. Z-S discussed her current read, Plain Bad Heroines by the author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post. In her adult novel debut, Emily Danforth combines dark academia, gothic horror, and Hollywood satire.

Radha has moved from business books to scientific topics and has now begun her historical journey with The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher (or Guy Dude as Radha likes to call him). She recommends the book for anyone who enjoys narrative nonfiction.

Imani picked up Beast Boy Loves Raven from our new books pile. It is the third installment in the graphic novel series written by Kami Garcia and illustrated by Gabriel Picolo. She enjoyed it so much that she checked out all the other books in the series, tearing through them and returning them the next morning. They are now back on our shelves for anyone else looking for an action-packed graphic novel series about teen superheroes just trying to survive high school.

Chloe has been devouring manga and light novels using the Viz media app subscription service. Any voracious manga and light novel enjoyers might want to look into these kinds of subscriptions. They can be really convenient and save you money and shelf space.

Liam is interested in reading Death by Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson as he finds the notion of dying (and therefore maybe living) forever through the time dilation effect quite intriguing. He isn’t sure if he’d want to experience unending death/life himself, though.

Our meeting this month included a lively discussion regarding banned books. We are saddened (also shocked, horrified, and scared) by these various and nationwide efforts to restrict young peoples’ access to information, especially considering that books which cover LGBTQ+ topics and/or include POC voices have been specifically targeted. Ms. Melinson brought up her concern that librarians in certain places can now be arrested for trying to provide young people with knowledge on diverse subjects. We are also glad to know that many resources across the states exist to help fight this censorship, including the NY Public Library’s program which provides free access to banned books for all teens in the country. The general consensus agreed that parents can absolutely work with libraries to protect their own children from content that would not be appropriate for them to peruse, but this does not give parents the right to make the decision and remove such content for all students.

By the time we ended the meeting, we had consumed all the brownies, but certainly had not concluded these discussions. Stop by next month to join the dialogue!

P.S. Here is a list of all books discussed during book club.

Week in Review: Sixth Grade Orientation, SATs, Homecoming, and More

Happy Homecoming Country Day! The Matthews Library has been as bustling as ever this week.

The 6th graders visited us every day for an ongoing orientation to the library as well as to research. Ms. Melinson led Ms. Frandrup’s 6th grade science classes through activities to teach the Dewey Decimal System, call numbers, access to databases, and website evaluation for research. They spent Wednesday of their library orientation assessing websites out on the quad to soak in the beautiful Fall weather and make the library available to the Seniors taking their SATs.

The students had a blast with the call number scavenger hunt. They learned a great deal about the layout of the Matthews Library and how to find what they’re interested in reading in the process.

These lessons culminated in a Friendly Feud competition complete with our very own Steve Harvey impersonator!

Seniors continued to work towards their post-Country Day futures. They took the SATs here in the library on Wednesday and met with Ms. Perla on Thursday for further guidance on college applications.

Siri ran the first official meeting of Model UN in the Room of Requirement on Friday.

Also on Friday the students created stunning chalk murals just outside our doors in celebration of homecoming. Check out these ephemeral works of art before the rain washes them away forever.

Go Cavs!

First TED Talk of the Year

Our first TED Talk this year featured Brian Greene discussing the theory that our own universe may be one of many that make up a larger “multiverse.”

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Here’s a book to put on your summer reading list: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta, known to scientists as HeLa, was an African American woman whose tumor samples were taken without her knowledge and used as the first immortal human cells. Though the cells helped make the polio vaccine and chemo possible, they have not always been used responsibly. Her own family, many of whom could not even afford health insurance, did not learn of her contribution to medicine until more than 20 years after her death. This was one of the most celebrated books this year, receiving many starred reviews and named by more than sixty critics as one of the best books of 2010. This is an interesting look at bioethics, but also the story of the Lack family. Here are some reviews:

“For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories?” –Tom Nissley, Amazon Best Books of the Month