By Kristin Baker
A junior kindergartener celebrates her 5th birthday with a gift to her school library. She presents her gift–the picture book Little Green Donkey (Allepuz, 2020)--and her first public booktalk to her learning community at Hanahau‘oli School.
My name is Emma.
I’m in JK [Junior Kindergarten].
And this is my birthday book, [reading/looking at the cover] Little Green Donkey.
The story is about–the donkey likes to eat grass, but he ate too much, and he becomes green.
And his mommy told him to eat other things.
My favorite part of the book is…this page!
It shows him eating oranges….watermelon.…broccoli…. and finally, carrots.
And he loved carrots and he ate too much, [turning the page] so he becomes orange!
Thank you for your time. I hope you enjoy this book like me. Bye!
Emma’s audience includes all of her junior kindergarten through sixth grade schoolmates, teachers and administrators at the school, and any family members who are able to tune in remotely to the all-school gathering. At five years old, she seems keenly aware of the purpose of her booktalk, demonstrated by her brief summary, a peek at the pages she found most intriguing as a reader, and her implied invitation for other readers to pick up her birthday book from the library and enjoy it as much as she did. And even if her awareness is more nascent than I am assuming, she is “learning by doing”--jumping right into an authentic experience that real readers in the real world engage in: book-talking.
HOW IT WORKS
The Birthday Books tradition began in the 1970s at Hanahau‘oli School, an elementary school with a 103 year history of progressive education serving junior kindergarten through sixth grade learners in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Each year, every child (and adult) at the school has the opportunity to choose a book to give as a gift to the school library for their birthday. Children with summer birthdays can choose a book before summer starts or when they return in the fall (or even on their half-birthday which would fall during the school year). Typically children choose from several shelves of books that are recent purchases by the school librarian, however, any book already on the shelves that has not been designated a birthday book is fair game. Once chosen, the child transforms a square of white art paper into a “birthday plate” with illustrations inspired by the book, sometimes a quote, the child’s name, birthday, and the year it became an official birthday book. This birthday plate is attached to the inside cover of the library book. The child then decides to deliver their own booktalk to the school community or opts to have the school librarian (who is also an author herself and an alum of Hanahau‘oli School) “book-talk” at the weekly Birthday Book sharing.
Each booktalk (delivered via video during pandemic times) is sandwiched by photos of the child who chose to adopt it and a moment of recognition and celebration for the child at the center of the book-sharing. As a newcomer to the school this year, a progressive educator of 19 years, and a literacy scholar, I quickly developed a love for this tradition’s simple yet powerful way of simultaneously building community, a school library, and a school-wide culture of literacy.
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS AND A LIBRARY COLLECTION
The Birthday Book tradition embodies the long-held belief of Hanahau‘oli School and the wider progressive education community that children become intrinsically motivated to learn when they see themselves as an integral part of their school community. This tradition is one of many ways Hanahau‘oli School builds community, and a beloved one that the children look forward to (and look back on as alumni) with joy and excitement. Shared interests (literary and otherwise) naturally emerge from the process, opening up the opportunity for deeper connections between individuals in the community. When Nahina turned 8 years old, she chose the book Camp (Miller, 2019) as her birthday book. During her booktalk, she explained: “I chose this book because I want to go to [sleep-away] camp someday–roast marshmallows, sit by the fire, tell spooky stories.” With this brief introduction, she spotlighted the way books can take you places you have never been before; lured in other readers who might be curious about sweet, cozy, and potentially spooky outdoor adventures; and opened up the possibility for new connections at school (“Guess what? My family loves to camp!”).
This tradition not only builds the school community, it builds the collection of books within the school library; these two on-going construction projects build upon and support each other. Gabby Holt, the Hanahau‘oli School librarian, estimates that about one-third of the fiction collection in the library are birthday books. The presence of birthday books within the collection adds a noticeable, personalized flavor to the school library experience. There is a magical connection that happens when one goes browsing, pulls out a book, and discovers a birthday plate inside. Someone who has spent years at Hanahau‘oli School might see the name of the person who was once their 6th grade buddy but has since graduated from the school. A cascade of wonder might unfold from there: I wonder where he is now and how he is doing? I wonder why he chose this book? I wonder what this book is about? This child not only found a new book to read, but a little waterfall of memories, too.
As a new teacher at the school, I remember bringing a copy of Crab Cake: Turning the Tide Together (Tsurumi, 2019) home from the library. My four-year old son fell in love with it, so we read it at least twelve times. We also spent some time looking at the birthday plate inside, wondering who the child was and how old he would be now that a few years had passed. Back at school, I had a concrete reason to seek out Sully, whose birthday book it happened to be, so I could let him know how much my family loved it, how it made us think about what we can do to keep trash out of the ocean, and to share a funny connection I have with the title, having just moved to Hawai‘i from Maryland, where crab cakes are a beloved food. As Sully and I were talking about the book, I also found out that he chose it several years ago because of his love for sea creatures. We hadn’t said much more than “aloha” to each other before, but now we found ourselves with a handful of topics to discuss.
At Hanahau‘oli School, several teachers are also alumni, so a wonderful surprise ensues when a student happens upon a birthday book that their teacher chose back when she was a student–and a sudden connection between that child and the inner child of her teacher. And when a birthday book goes full cycle and is removed from the collection for whatever reason, it isn’t discarded. Ms. Holt does her best to track down the person who once gifted the book to the library and sends it to them as a treasured keepsake from years past.
LEARNING BY DOING
Progressive educators know that children are more engaged and build deeper understanding when interacting in real-world contexts that have authentic purpose. Within the Hanahau‘oli School community, children and adults alike sum up this idea with three simple words: “learning by doing.” When I use my progressive educator’s lens to reflect on my more traditional schooling experience as a child in contrast with the educational experience I strive to create for my students now, I can identify a key difference: “doing school” versus “doing life.” A traditional book report is a great example of “doing school”: the main audience is the teacher and the purpose of the task might include proving to the teacher that the student read the book, showing knowledge of story elements (like setting, character, plot), or demonstrating a reading skill like comprehension or the ability to summarize. The birthday book tradition at Hanahau‘oli School, on the other hand, is a simple, yet wonderful example of “doing life”--readers engaging in real interactions with other readers, learning to use important skills and building critical understandings in the process.
There are many contexts in real life when readers talk-up a book they love to another reader or an audience of readers. The book section of the newspaper, lists of book award-winners, reading platforms on social media, and book reviews often provide written versions of a booktalk. Librarians and book-store employees are often solicited for their expertise and part of the way they match a reader to a book is by telling the reader a bit about the book, building intrigue by sharing what they like about the book, its plot, characters, or the new and exciting way the information within is presented. And readers book-talk with friends, during a book club meeting when trying to “sell” the group’s next possible read, or more casually as part of their everyday catch-up conversations, “so what are you reading these days?”
In my mind, “learning by doing” is also tightly connected to the element of progressive education that Alfie Kohn describes as “taking kids seriously” (Kohn, 2015). The Birthday Book Tradition at Hanahau‘oli recognizes that even the youngest of readers–whether they can decode text independently or not–are quite capable of delivering a compelling booktalk, and that their active participation in this and many other authentic learning experiences is mutually beneficial for their individual education and their community. I certainly consider myself one of the beneficiaries of the joyful work of the Birthday Book Tradition; I keep a pencil on hand at every sharing to write down new titles introduced to me by the five to twelve year olds at Hanahau‘oli School, and I follow these leads to discover wonderful new experiences in the world of children’s literature. In fact, I often recommend that parents tune-in to the weekly Birthday Book sharing to get ideas for new series that their children might like.
LITERACY SKILLS IN ACTION
The power behind this practice doesn’t stop there. As I watch the weekly booktalks, I see the foundations for salient literacy skills being strengthened. Literacy is language-learning in all of its forms, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and in the 21st century especially, the process of making meaning from graphic or image-centered language. The tendency for mainstream media, parents, and educators alike to become hyper-focused on independent reading alone as a literacy indicator can make us lose sight of the actual multi-modal nature of literacy. The weekly booktalks at Hanahau‘oli School employ multiple modes of literacy development–speaking, listening, reading, and writing–rolled into one authentic, shared, and repeated experience.
Whenever children are engaged, they are learning; and they are certainly engaged during Birthday Book sharing. Children are speaking–practicing articulation, how to express ideas clearly, succinctly, and in an order that will be easily understood–while others are listening to each other, gaining information that will inspire them to engage in more reading experiences. Listening and speaking are foundational literacy skills, and while they typically precede reading and writing, these core skills also need to be continually developed throughout a child’s literacy education. The creation of the birthday plate inside of the book is a form of writing–children are using pictures and words to convey a message to those who will discover it–making the Birthday Book tradition a rather wholesome literary experience, as it embodies the four major modalities of literacy.
Shelby shares Pilu of the Woods (2019) a graphic novel by Mai K. Nguyen that she chose to celebrate her 9th birthday:
“This book is about when Pilu…runs away from home and Willow helps her find her way back. I really like this book because it has a good friendship in it and the main character is Willow, and my name means ‘patch of willow trees.’ This is my favorite page. I like this page because I like the pictures and also it has a good phrase. It says: ‘Promise that you’ll always show strength through kindness and compassion.’” Shelby then revealed her birthday plate to her audience. Pointing out a yellow vertical banner with three Japanese characters, she explains, “this is my name.” Between her name, the nature-inspired illustrations, and the quote inscribed within Shelby’s birthday plate, it becomes an autobiography of sorts itself.
As progressive educators observe in their classrooms and as described by Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory, “children learn through observation and interaction with knowledgeable others in social contexts” (Vygotsky, 1978 as referenced in Niklas, Cohrssen, & Tayler, 2016). The children at Hanahau‘oli School are lucky to have a skilled and passionate book-talker as their librarian. When Gabby Holt talks about a child’s birthday book, she glows. No matter the genre or style, new or old, Ms. Holt looks for all of the parts of the book that shine, treating the book as a cherished extension of the child who chose it. She builds up the authors and illustrators, making connections with other familiar books they may have created and speaking about particular aspects of their style she appreciates. She names the genre of each book and other academic vocabulary like “series,” “trilogy,” and “hybrid novel”; this vocabulary becomes an important part of children’s schema for understanding the world of literature and is often replicated by children in their own booktalks. Ms. Holt often gives children credit and gratitude for introducing her to a new series or a new book, reinforcing the potency and authenticity of children taking this active role in the literary world. She also includes lots of statements that encourage children to reflect on and broaden their identities as readers: “If you’re someone who loves ___, you’ll love this book.” Kai, a fifth grader, demonstrates how this modeling is transferred by students into their own booktalks: “For my birthday book, I chose The Sea of Monsters (2006) by Rick Riordan and it's the second book in the Percy Jackson series. This book is about a boy who goes on a quest to find a golden fleece…and I recommend this book to people who like action and fantasy.”
The children’s booktalks also demonstrate critical thinking and comprehension skills like making connections, identifying the theme of a story, summarizing, and retelling. As one of my graduate professors of literacy education once pointed out, the ability to retell a story is not simply a reading skill, but a skill with many applications in life: “when the ambulance arrives, it is critical to relay the key details of what happened so the patient receives appropriate life-saving care moving forward.”
THE HEART OF THIS STORY
Nine-year old Kigen describes his birthday book: “I chose Kid Spy: Top Secret Smackdown (2019), by Mac Barnett. This book is about a kid named Mac solving all these cases for the Queen of England. I like this book because it's funny and enjoyable. And I also like the illustrations.” This little light goes on and spreads across his face as he moves from talking about the author’s illustrations to the illustration Kigen drew: “...and this is my birthday book plate.” He reveals a drawing clearly inspired by the illustrations in the book. Only Kigen knows just what set that spark off, but if I were to guess, this child likely identifies as an illustrator–perhaps a secret agent, too.
At the heart of this story are the same things that are at the center of Hanahau‘oli School and progressive education: children. Practices that honor and give children time and space to discover who they are and what they love (including books, reading, connections, and many other things). Educators being so in-tune with children’s natural inclination and motivation to learn, so they can turn sparks of curiosity into fire and set them on a journey of shedding light on the world around them as lifelong learners. Also at the center is a sense of belonging–creating real opportunities for every child to be seen and to see themselves as part of their school community.
Perhaps this love-story about the Birthday Book Tradition at Hanahau‘oli School might inspire you to create similar traditions in your school or classrooms, or it might inspire you to share a story about a simple, yet powerful practice in your classroom or school with other progressive educators in this space.
Works Cited:
Allepuz, A. (2020). Little green donkey. Candlewick Press.
Barnett, M. (2019). Kid spy: Top secret smackdown. Scholastic.
Hanahau’oli School. (2022, April). Mission and beliefs. Retrieved from: https://www.hanahauoli.org/mission
Kohn, A. (2015). Progressive education: Why it's hard to beat, but also hard to find. Bank Street College of Education. Retrieved from https://educate.bankstreet.edu/progressive/2
Niklas, F., Cohrssen, C., Tayler, C. (2016). The sooner, the better: early reading to children. Sage Journals. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016672715
Nyugen, M.A. (2019). Pilu of the woods. Oni Press.
Miller, K. (2019). Camp. Etch/Clarion Books.
Progressive Education Network. (2022, April). Educational principles. Retrieved from:
https://progressiveeducationnetwork.org/mission.
Riordan, R. (2006). The sea of monsters. Miramax Books and Disney Hyperion.
Tsurumi, A. (2019). Crab cake: Turning the tide together. Harper Collins.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kristin Baker is a teacher, parent, scientist, literacy scholar, writer, activist, artist, athlete, and language-learner. She has spent the bulk of her 19 year teaching career working with lower elementary students at two independent, progressive elementary schools, one on each coast of the continental United States. Kristin holds a Bachelor of Science in Molecular and Cell Biology from U.C. Berkeley and a Masters of Education in Literacy from Loyola University Maryland. She is currently working as a Teacher Scholar on the faculty at Hanahau‘oli School in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.
