This is an odds and ends day! Lots of illness in my family, so I’m just trying to hang in there and get my 750 words written today.

Independent Bookstores Get Branded eBook Reader

IndieBound Mobile APP (only for Android right now, but soon for iOS) was released this week. It is a branded ebook reader, The IndieBound Reader™, that allows you to order shop local bookstores’ websites and purchase books. Read more here.

Children’s Book Character Costumes

Oliver is available to visit your school.

Nominations for Top Writing Blogs

Write To Done is having its “Nominate Your Favorite Writing Blog: 6th Annual Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest”. Would you nominate Fiction Notes for this contest? Or, nominate your favorite blog?

Here’s how:

• Leave a comment with Darcy Pattison’s Fiction Notes at http://www.darcypattison.com. (Cut and paste, if it helps.)
• You must include a comment on why Fiction Notes deserves to be in the Top 10 Blogs for Writers, or the nomination doesn’t count.

DEADLINE: December 10, 2011.
Yes, I need you to nominate this blog, because to be considered, a a blog must be nominated more than once and the more the merrier. Hey–thanks. I appreciate each and every one of you.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Local PBS Feature

Coming August, 2011

Reviews of Prairie Storms

Home School Book Review

Macaroni Kid Torrance

Book Loons

4 the LOVE of BOOKS

Just Our Thoughts

Geography and OLIVER K. WOODMAN

You may also be interested in this just released resource:
Keep ‘em Reading: Finding Their Place, Students and Geography by Judith Snyder. The lesson plans include my book, The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman and Searching for Oliver K. Woodman.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

School Visit Focuses on State Projects

A Celebration of States. Last week, right before Thanksgiving, I visited the El Dorado, AR school for a celebration of the states. The GT classes had been studying the US states: each student made a “suitcase” using a cardboard box the size of a boot box. They painted, collaged, and decorated it with images about and from their assigned state. Inside, they put pictures of famous people, flags, state bird, state flowers, selected items and puppets. In addition, each student had a short oral presentation on their state.

To support their hard work, I was there to talk about The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman, my story about a wooden man who crossed the US to connect a family. It was great fun to talk to these students because they knew the US map so intimately.

Congratulations to all the students who worked so hard on their state boxes!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Halversons Take Oliver to Portugal, Spain, France and London, England

One of the nicest things about working on the Oliver K. Woodman books were my editors at Harcourt. They were smart, efficient and experts in making a picture book’s text and images come together.

Deborah Halverson did most of the editing work on Searching for Oliver K. Woodman. Then — well, her life took an interesting turn: she had triplets. Yes, three sons.

Add to that, she sold two YA novels of her own!
Add to that, she decided to stay home with her sons and enjoy them and write.
Add to that, her DH decided to do a year as an exchange teacher in England.

And you get her fascinating blog about the “Thrills, Chills and Spills of Being a Triplet Mom and Writer. . .” The stay in England has been fascinating to watch through her eyes and through the antics of her boys.

Deborah was kind enough to take Oliver on their recent family trip to Portugal, Spain, France and London. They have posted some photos on Deborah’s blog and uploaded the rest to the Oliver K. Woodman Map Project.

By the way, she also does freelance editing – when the triplets are asleep – so check out her website. Read her books. Read her blog!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

You saw it here first! Oliver has a new website and he’s having lots of fun this summer!

Geotagging: A Social App for Geography Fun

Our knowledge of geography is becoming more sophisticated: If you own a smart phone, like the Apple iPhone 3G or some Blackberrys, the phone will automatically adds geotags – location information – to every photo snapped. But can Americans locate those places on a map? Not likely.

Echoing every major study of geographic knowledge in the U.S. or Great Britain over the last decade, Americans performed dismally on the 2007 Facebook application, “Traveler IQ Challenge.” Out of 193 nations, US players ranked 117th.

2006 surveys indicate that over 70% of US high school graduates couldn’t answer these simple questions correctly (See answers below):

1. What is the most commonly spoken native language in the world?
2. What is the largest Muslim country in the world?
3. What country is the largest exporter of goods and services?

Can Technology Help Teach Geography?

Children’s book author Darcy Pattison says, “I like writing stories for kids that incorporate maps and geography knowledge. I don’t know why I’m drawn to these stories, since I’m not a good navigator. Maybe it’s because maps are a form of storytelling, too.”

The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman, a story about a wooden man who travels across the country to connect a family. In the sequel, Searching for Oliver K. Woodman, Oliver starts cross-country again, but when he’s lost a wooden woman, Imogene Poplar, P.I. searches for him.

It’s not surprising, then, that the main character of her books, Oliver K. Woodman, is the subject of a new Flickr Map Project (www.oliverkwoodman.com/map-project) designed for elementary students.

The Project encourages anyone interested to take a paper Oliver along on their travels and photograph him at landmarks. The key is to geotag the photos and upload them to a Flickr group site: (www.flickr.com/groups/oliverkwoodman).

Geotagging is simply marking a photo as belonging to a specific spot on a map. While smart phones can geotag photos automatically, you don’t need that much technology to participate. In fact, Flickr’s method of geotagging by allowing users to drag-and-drop a photo onto a map is more educational for kids. To correctly geotag, a student must accurately locate a place on a map.

Interactive: Photos + Maps = Better Learning

There are 35 million + photos already on Flickr and even more on GoogleEarth, the other major online photo-geotagging site. Isn’t it enough just to send students to view those geotagged photos? No.

“Geotagging photos is a great interactive tool for learning geography,” Pattison says. “Like other social applications, it depends on the community to generate content. It encourages interest, participation, and facilitates learning.”

Students will be more engaged:

• “Aunt Jane took this picture in Athens, Greece.”
• “I took this photo at the best climbing tree in town.”
• “Our class uploaded and geo-tagged ten photos. Let me show you the one I geo-tagged.”

High interest character. Linking the activity to a favorite children’s book character like Oliver K. Woodman just adds to the fun. Teachers can use the FREE Lesson Plans (zip) available with the project to teach an integrated unit of language arts, math, social studies, art and more. The Oliver K. Woodman Map Project is a small step towards improved geographic knowledge through social apps and is perfect for the elementary school student.

Download the Pattern Now! (pdf)

Answers to Quiz: 1. Chinese, 2. Indonesia, 3. United States.

Resources:

• Kovanich, Kevin. Facebook app shows students’ lack of geography knowledge. Northern Star, Dekalb, Illinois. September 4, 2007.
• LaGesse, David. ‘Geotag’ Your Digital Pictures: Your digital camera can keep track of your travels for you. US News & World Report, December 18, 2008.
• Lipsett, Anthea. Geography: why in the world do we know so little. Guardian.co.uk, November 19, 2008.
• National Geographic Society. Young Americans Still Lack Basic Global Knowledge, National Geographic-Roper Survey Shows. NationalGeographic.com, May 2, 2006.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Revision Notes will be on Spring Break for the next two weeks, with maybe one or two posts in there. In this post, I’m just catching up on some personal things.

Successful Lesson Plans for Picture Books

Lesson Plans for Darcy Pattison’s picture books are available as a free pdf download. Included are over 100 activities for language arts, math, social studies, and art. To date, there have been 873 downloads! Happy reading!

Oliver K. Woodman on Flickr

The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman is coming out in paperback in May. To help celebrate, I’m asking friends to help me launch a Flickr site for Oliver. Why Flickr? Because they have an interactive map! Oliver is often used in schools to teach geography and the map is a perfect tool for that.

Here’s how you can help me out:

• Please download the Lesson Plans above and make an Oliver (and his friend Imogene, if you have time).
• Take a digital photograph of yourself with Oliver. If you can include in the photo something unique about your area, that would be great. Terrie from Florida took her picture at the beach. Karen from Arizona took her picture in front of a huge cactus (Thanks, y’all!)
• Join the Oliver K. Woodman Flickr group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/oliverkwoodman/.
• Upload the picture and geo tag it. The easiest way to do that is to simply drag and drop the photo onto the map. MAP should be one of the navigation options at the top.

Thanks, friends! I owe you one.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

What Do Writers Do All Day?

I’m just back from Illinois where last weekend, I taught a Novel Revision retreat to a fantastic group of writers. One of the humorous things that happened: One writer had a chapter in which a character wrote about a condominium, but the character couldn’t spell, so wrote, “. . . the condom. . .” When the author later decided to cut the whole chapter, it became a password for the retreat: Cut the Condom Chapter!

Then, I did a school visit at a local school yesterday.
Today, I’m trying today to prioritize what needs to be done.

• Speaking. I’ve been asked for proposals to speak at two upcoming events and those must be done today.
• Planning Fall Retreat. I’m still the director of the Arkansas SCBWI Fall Retreat. (The dates are September 25-27 — hold the dates and look for details soon!) Today, I will be talking to the editor we’ve invited to iron out details.
• Writing. Well, I’m still just a couple chapters away from finishing my WIP! And I have plans for another novel mss that I’m anxious to get to. Plus, there’s the odd picture book thrown in here and there. And a structured approach to finding ideas.
• Publicity. The paperback version of The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman comes out in May and I need to do several hours work on publicity for that.
• Life. Oh, yes, I have a life! Besides grocery shopping, cleaning house, etc. there’s also the looming tax deadline of April 15, my daughter’s wedding in May, and my son’s graduation in May.

How do we juggle all this? And people ask me, what do you do all day, since you don’t work?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win