April Meeting: Animaker PSA Videos

We had a slightly smaller but still very animated group for this month's meeting. Most of us seemed to have enjoyed It Ain't So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas. No one had been familiar with the Iranian hostage crisis so we watched a brief History Channel clip to get some more context for the prejudice and hatred that Cindy experiences in the book. We talked a little bit about what's it like to be a new student in middle school and new to America.

Then, I showed a few sample PSA videos made using Animaker, the free, online, animated video creator that we would be using to make our own PSAs, preferably something that might have helped Cindy adjust to her new school. In spite of a few technology hiccups and time constraints that prevented some from completely finishing, the Bookshoppers created some very unique videos, as you'll see below!

Our next meeting will be on Monday, June 4th, and it will be our last meeting of this school year. We will be taking a break in July and August and will start up again at the end of September. For our last meeting, we didn't pick a book because I asked everyone to read one book and bring it to the meeting with them to booktalk it to the group. This will provide us with lots of great book ideas to read over the summer! Our activity is a surprise, but it will involve food so come hungry...