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Inspiring inquiry through picture books. — Kath Murdoch

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Inspiring inquiry through picture books. — Kath Murdoch

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"The bridge will only take you halfway there, to those mysterious lands you long to see. Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fair, and moonlit woods where unicorns run free. So come and walk awhile with me and share the twisting trails and wondrous worlds I've known. But this bridge will only take you halfway there. The last few steps you have to take alone."
Well before I became interested in inquiry-based learning, I was passionate about the role of literature - particularly picture books - in the classroom. I will never forget a lecture given by Walter McVitty when I was in my first year of study at teacher's college here in Melbourne. I think he planted the seed for what would be a life-long love affair with children's books. In one gentle, poignant moment in the lecture he modeled the way one might read to a baby, snuggled on its parent's lap, having its head softly stroked while the book was read aloud. Years later, when I found myself doing that exact thing with my own babies - I was grateful to McVitty for the fire he sparked in me as a wide-eyed, young student teacher. There is a magic in books that remains unsurpassed by any other medium. Story is one of the most powerful ways we can find out about the world - and the best stories leave us with more questions than answers. To be honest, I think not a day should go by without the joy of sharing literature as a class. A great book is hard to beat as a vehicle for building community.

So I am always taken aback when teachers with whom I work struggle to name a picture book or novel they have recently shared with their children - let alone how they plan to use literature to help students make deeper connections within an inquiry . Perhaps we are simply overwhelmed by the volume and diversity of available texts (youtube clips, memes, infographics, slideshows, images...) so it becomes harder for the humble picture book to find its way into our planning and teaching. Or perhaps we place too great an emphasis on gathering 'information' in order to answer questions - which naturally leads to a stronger focus on non fiction texts.

The inquiry classroom needs to be a habitat for story. The compelling pull of narrative can often lead us to understanding the world more deeply than any 'data' ever can. I think literature serves 3 key purposes for the inquiry teacher:

As 'mentor texts' for inquiry thinking itself...there are so many beautiful books that are structured around questions or whose central characters ask questions and demonstrate an inquiry stance.

To PROVOKE inquiry - stories that confront our thinking, that introduce us to ideas we had never considered, books that are so delightfully complex or ambiguous that we just want to keep asking and delving deeper.

To contribute to students' understanding of key CONCEPTS being explored. Fiction itself is, of course, born of life-experience. Using literature to help children make connections to themselves and to the data being gathered across the whole inquiry can be a very powerful way of deepening understanding. This is a far cry from the days of simply reading any old books about the 'topic'... stories need to be carefully selected for their resonance with the key concepts underpinning the inquiry.

Here are just a few favourites that reflect these purposes - with an emphasis on modelling and inspiring the act of inquiry itself. I would love to hear yours!

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Inspiring inquiry through picture books.

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"The bridge will only take you halfway there, to those mysterious lands you long to see. Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fair, and moonlit woods where unicorns run free. So come and walk awhile with me and share the twisting trails and wondrous worlds I've known.

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The Maps We Wandered Into As Kids - The Awl

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The Maps We Wandered Into As Kids - The Awl

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The Maps We Wandered Into As Kids

If I ruled the world, or at least a publishing company, all books would contain as much supplementary information as possible. Nonfiction, fiction - doesn't matter. Every work would have an appendix filled with diagrams, background information, digressions and anecdata. And of course, maps. Lots and lots of maps. This predilection probably sprang from the books I read as a kid - books like The Phantom Tollbooth, The Hobbit and The Princesss Bride - all of which feature engaging maps that serve as gateways to imaginary lands. Here, say these maps, you're in this other world now.

Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth
In the beginning of The Phantom Tollbooth, listless youngster Milo wakes up one morning to find a tollbooth has appeared in his room. He also finds a letter that includes "[o]ne (1) map, up to date and carefully drawn by master cartographers, depicting natural and man-made features." The "master cartographers" here is, actually, the book's illustrator, cartoonist Jules Feiffer (with some author assist). Feiffer's involvement with Phantom Tollbooth came about incidentally - he and Norton Juster were neighbors in a Brooklyn Heights apartment bulding. Soon they became close friends,roommates and collaborators. As Feiffer remembers it, he would illustrate passages as Juster read them aloud. But the map was a bit of a sticking point. Feiffer hated to draw two things, horses and maps, and The Phantom Tollbooth included both. Juster sketched out the map's basic dimensions, which Feiffer then traced and made over into his signature style. If Juster made him draw a map (and at least a few horses), Feiffer was able to sneak in a jab in return: the Whether Man's appearance, a bald doughball in a toga, is based on Juster. In the 50th-anniversary edition of the book, the author jokes, "This was quite unfair, since everyone knows I never wear a toga."

As a map: It's a perfect example of where hand-drawn aesthetics work best in maps - across a small area mapped specifically for visitors, as the exaggerated landmarks are given weight over exacting spatial accuracy. In this way the unfamiliar can be easily spotted and identified. It's a style commonly seen in attraction maps, like Anika Mottershaw's Map of London or theme-park maps, like this one of Walt Disney World.

A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh
The map of the Hundred Acre Wood appears in the first Winnie-the-Pooh book entitled, wait for it, Winnie-the-Pooh. Created by E.H. Shepard (who also illustrated The Wind in The Willows), the map is meant to appear drawn by Christropher Robin, with "Drawn by me and Mr Shepard helpd" written at the bottom and the cardinal directions on the compass marked as P-O-O-H. The storybook woods are based on the actual Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest, near Milne's country home in Sussex. The original sketch for the map was owned, curiously enough, for a long time by Pat McInally, known in some circles for having the only perfect Wonderlic Test score and also being the first Harvard grad to play in the Super Bowl, which he did for the Cincinnati Bengals in 1981 (zing at you, Ryan Fitzpatick). McInally's collection, including that preparatory sketch, is currently up for sale at Peter Harrington's rare book shop in London, yours if you happen to have a spare £115,000 - that's $182,241.73 - to burn.

As a map: The key difference between a map like this one and the one from The Phantom Tollbooth is purpose. While Feiffer's map is intended for exploration, Christopher Robin-E.H. Shepard's map is a documentation of a known land. In an imaginary world, what's beyond the borders doesn't matter so much. Here the only indication of the world beyond is the "To North Pole" note, an obvious sort of landmark for a child's map. With its focus on the "here" and elision of the "there," a map of an imaginary world is not unlike early maps, such Hecataeus' map of the world, drawn in approximately 500 BC, with its amorphous borders of "ocean." Both Hecataeus and Christopher Robin are making the same point - sure there's probably other stuff, but this is what's important.

William Goldman's The Princess Bride
The Floren and Guilder kingdoms described in The Princess Bride are located "between where Germany and Sweden are today." For any other geographic particulars about the countries, the reader has to consult the map found in the endpapers (in some editions, a fold-out map in the center), drawn by William Goldman (if other illustrators made the map, I haven't been able to find a reference to them). The map is a doozy - jammed full of details, landmarks, labels, and with no perspective whatsoever. I mean, the Sun is on this map. The trees are the same size as the ships.

As a map: The map is deliberately evoking the feel of a Medieval illuminated manuscript, as this is an exaggerated version of how many maps looked around the times of princesses and feudal castles. Though examples of these kingdom-level maps are abundant and accessible, I'd like to particularly draw your attention to collection of sixteenth-century maps of Jerusalem, made available by The Jewish National University Library. The gallery beautifully illustrates the diversity to be found in this type of region-specific map. While none of them include the Sun, like Goldman's map, they often use multiple perspectives to show the mapped lands.

L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz
All told, Baum drew forty individual maps of Oz to accompany his novel. This is the major one, though, showing the entirety of the land and its surrounding areas. The Emerald City, in the center, is surrounded by four distinct countries. The countries are bordered by deserts (Great Sandy Waste is the obvious winner here and a great potential new name for the litterbox). Beyond the deserts like a number of intriguing countries that make at best a passing appearance in the story, such as Merryland and the Country of Gargoyles. "Kansas" of course appears nowhere.

As a map: A straightforward map if ever there was. One thing to note, though: the compass is reversed, East and West are switched. This is an L. Frank Baum original error! The first copy of this map was on a glass slide, when Baum went to make a paper copy he traced it backwards. It's a great example of a political map - it's easy to imagine it as a pulldown over the chalkboards of Oz classrooms. I'd direct you to a political map to look at for comparison, but we all know what those look like. Instead, let's take a peek at the map drawn for Gregory Maguire's Wicked. First of all, while there's no North arrow, the cardinal directions have been corrected from Baum's original. This map gives a more nuanced view of Oz, complete with a legend and some topographical definition. If the first map was a classroom pulldown, this is the map on the quiz at the end of the chapter on which you have to label all the features.

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
Like The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit contains many, many maps. Most of them were drawn by Tolkien's son, Christopher, but Thror's Map was drawn by Tolkien himself. In the story, Gandalf gives this map to Bilbo at the beginning of the story, the impetus for our hero's "unexpected journey" to recover the dwarves' treasure from Smaug, the dragon of Erebor.

As a map: Drawn more or less to scale, Tolkien's map shows locations in relation to each other with only sparse detail - only what you absolutely need to know to get where you're going, no hints of what else is out there. A modern example would be something like this charming map called " Getting Drunk on Passyunk." Only the information you require, all of the in-betweens omitted. It's the sort of map you might draw on a napkin for a friend from out of town who isn't sure where she's going. "Oh, sure, once you leave my house, you take a left. When you get to the donut shop make another left, then veer right at the house with the spaceship mailbox. If you get to the traffic circle, you've gone too far. Presto: you're at Erebor!"

Ellen Raskin's The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)
Okay, so this one isn't a map of an imaginary land - the United States wasn't conjured out of Raskin's imagination - but it is a lovely chapter title page. I include it here because a) Ellen Raskin is the bee's knees and b) this was one of my favorite books as a young girl (I borrowed it from the library so often that the librarians finally just gave it to me one day). In this case, the map serves as a symbol of what's happening in the book: Protagonist Mrs. Caroline Fish Carillon's search for her missing husband is centered on her only clue, a half-heard phrase from a drowning man, "Noel(glub) see (blub) all... I (glub) new...". The power of words, right? Anyway: she takes the final word as an indicator of location and crisscrosses the country to check every town that starts with "New."

As a map: This typographic style of map has become incredibly popular over the past few years, particularly as a way to show a city by its neighborhoods. But a map made completely of words is nothing new. Edwin Morgan's Chaffinch Map of Scotland, a poem published in 1965, uses the regional variations of names for a common songbird to create a map of his country. Howard Horowitz's poem "Manhattan," reproduced here, appeared in The New York Times in 1997. Flickr user amapple has created a small but impressive set of maps focusing on such linear features as the Mississippi River and the Silk Road. Typographic mapping makes an impact even when the words aren't locations. National Geographic included a type map of US surnames in its February 2011 issue, and an an interactive viewer is available on their website. My last name is everywhere.

On a final note, I'll point out a notable map omission from recent literature: I couldn't believe The Hunger Games didn't include a map of Panem!!! This is exactly what I meant when I said that books should have as much supplementary information as possible. But evidently, there are a lot of us spatial types out there, and an assortment of reader-drawn maps have popped up. My favorite belongs to Livejournal user "aimmyarrowshigh," who describes the process she used to determine national borders and each district's location. The result is a spectacular map that would make any cartographer proud.

Previously: Blame It On Volcanoes and Pictures Of You From Space

Victoria Johnson is The Awl's resident cartographer. Hobbit and The Princess Bride maps via .

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If I ruled the world, or at least a publishing company, all books would contain as much supplementary information as possible. Nonfiction, fiction - doesn't matter. Every work would have an appendix filled with diagrams, background information, digressions and anecdata. And of course, maps. Lots and lots of maps.

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Blog: On maps in children's books (and how much we love them) · Readings.com.au

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Blog: On maps in children's books (and how much we love them) · Readings.com.au

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On maps in children's books (and how much we love them) by Emily Gale

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What it is about maps in children's books that we love so much? For me it's the very immediate suggestion that this author has created an entire, detailed world for the reader. They've thought of everything, from the twists and turns of a river, to...

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The Unsung Delight of a Well-Designed Endpaper | Atlas Obscura

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The Unsung Delight of a Well-Designed Endpaper | Atlas Obscura

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When you open a book, an endpaper is the first secret hiding in between the covers, and a good one can deliver a jolt of wonder. "One of my favourite ways that designers provide surprise is through creative endpapers," writes Holly Dunn, a book cover designer, "where the viewer opens the book and finds something entirely unexpected and delightful inside the front page."

Endpapers are often overlooked-an over-eager reader can breeze by even the most striking-but they're an art form with a history all their own. For centuries, designers have taken the formal necessity of joining a book's pages to its cover and turned it into an opportunity for creativity. Not every designer is excited about endpapers, but those who are can use it to elevate the beauty of any book.

"I'm always surprised at illustrators who don't take the opportunity to do some lavish endpaper," says Bob Staake, an illustrator and the creator of The Art of the End, an as-of-yet unpublished book celebrating the teeming variety of endpapers. "When you find an illustrator who's respectful of the art form and wants to celebrate its tradition, you see it as something that really stands out."

When a book is made, one side of an endpaper (sometimes also called an endpage or endleaf) is pasted into the inside of the book's cover; the other side is the first page of the book. "Endpapers quite literally hold a book together," says Staake. Originally, they were made of white paper, sometimes scrap leftover from other uses, or of more sturdy vellum, a thin parchment made of animal skin. But in the 18th century, after techniques of marbling had come to Europe from Turkey and Iran, European bookmakers started decorating them with French curls, Dutch combed patterns, classic Turkish stone motifs, and a swirling varieties of other patterns.

When block printing became possible in the 19th century and bookbinding was mechanized in the 1830s, the style of decorative endpapers changed. Now these pages were covered in wallpaper-like, repetitive patterns, "often made from printers' ornaments," according to the Salem Athenaeum. Those images developed into softer, more ornate patterns of flowers, ferns, and other natural themes.

It was only toward the end of the 19th century that endpapers started to be illustrated with images that teased at or complemented a book's subject. Around the early 20th century, children's books started carrying illustrated endpapers as well, and today they contain some of the most vivid and creative endpaper examples.

Endpaper space might be used to publish a map of the place where a book takes place, whether real or fictive, or it could be used to illustrate a book's theme. Tucked inside, endpapers can also be bolder than a book's outside: "They aren't thrust into the limelight like the cover and spine, and therefore can push the boundaries more," writes Dunn. Sometimes limited run editions of a book will have hand-painted endpapers; some rare books are snapped up primarily because of their endpapers.

Endpapers can contribute to telling a story even if they're not illustrated: a red endpaper at the front of a book might communicate the heat of the sun, and a blue endpaper at the back, the cooling rain that ended the drought. And if the endpaper can include an image, the creative possibilities are as varied as books themselves, as this collection shows. Endpapers can be titillating, they can be bright and bold, they can draw you in with a wealth of detail.

When Staake creates endpapers for his own books, he likes to riff on the tradition of repetitive wallpaper patterns, drawing in themes and characters from the books themselves.

"I'm always thinking at about the halfway point, what are the end papers going to be?" he says. "I think they're very poetic."

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The Unsung Delight of a Well-Designed Endpaper

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When you open a book, an endpaper is the first secret hiding in between the covers, and a good one can deliver a jolt of wonder. "One of my favourite ways that designers provide surprise is through creative endpapers," writes Holly Dunn, a book cover designer, "where the viewer opens the book and finds something entirely unexpected and delightful inside the front page."

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9 Fascinating Cult Literary Traditions - For Reading Addicts

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9 Fascinating Cult Literary Traditions - For Reading Addicts

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You know you're a die hard fan when you get Dumbledore or Gandalf references into every conversation, but some bookworms take things one step further bringing events from literature to life with things that become literary traditions. These cult movements celebrate events in books by dragging them from the pages and celebrating them and they really show bookworms to be a breed apart when it comes to sheer dedication to the cause.

Today I've collected some of these weird and wonderful literary traditions together in one fascinating list, some of them are brilliant, many plainly weird but they all show the love that bookworms have for their fictional friends.

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9 Fascinating Cult Literary Traditions - For Reading Addicts

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You know you're a die hard fan when you get Dumbledore or Gandalf references into every conversation, but some bookworms take things one step further bringing events from literature to life with things that become literary traditions.

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Welcome to the WebJunction Course Catalog, where library-specific courses and webinar recordings are available for free to all library workers and volunteers. Through the generous support of OCLC and many state library agencies across the US, WebJunction provides timely and relevant learning content for you to access anytime, from anywhere.

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Many of you have asked about my Nonfiction Video Game Level Up day - all the details I have to give are below. This will review text features, nonfiction comprehension, context clues and text structure. Students will have to complete each level before moving on.

I was mainly inspired by this Periscope by Hope King - a Mario room that she used for reading! I watched the video to get some great ideas! The only room items I purchased were some wall clings since I already had some tablecloths to hang up - just didn't have the funds for any other purchases.

We are using this day to wrap up our study of nonfiction which started at the beginning of the year.

Students will need to complete 4 levels to save Princess Peach! Student will work in pairs and have a recording sheet (above) that needs to be complete.

Students will use this link to play the "Scatter" game on text features 3 times - teacher will initial after each time. This will review definitions of text features. We will see and use text features in more articles coming up on different levels.

Level 2:

Students needed to complete a context clues sheet and check their answers with "magic" markers - color changing markers. Here is the worksheet we used and the answer key - these are not made by me but resources I found.

A video posted by Amber Nicole (@sssteaching) on

Level 3:

Students will pick out of a "tunnel" an article in which they will analyze the text structure and defend it with evidence. They will have to choose the articles randomly for this. I created an answer key for the ones I chose.

***I picked articles specific to my students' interests and searched EBSCOHost Primary Search - most are Scholastic, Boy's Life, or Girl's Life***

I'll list some I chose but can't give out links to them - if your school has access ask your librarian to help you search:

1. Fast Friends - Animal Companion Story

2. Crayon Maker Job

3. The Girl Who Discovered Dinosaurs

4. Extreme Hotels

5. Go Pro with Legos

6. Gymnastics

7. Meet the Cyber Chefs - a kid's online video cooking show

8. Treehouse Masters

9. The Perfect Pitch - analyzing a pitch

10. Meet the Stars - video game characters introduction

the first group to reach level 4 will reach up and "punch" out the bottom of our box like on Mario and this article from Newsela like Hope mentioned will be inside. You can choose the level of complexity depending on your grade level or to help differentiate!

I coded the answers to have numbers instead of letters and the numbers from the answers (just nonfiction comprehension) will unlock our Breakout Box!

A photo posted by Amber Nicole (@sssteaching) on

The Breakout box will contain our Mario flag that the first group will get to raise and the save Princess Peach sign. It will also have some Mario tattoos for us to wear in celebration! I did print out small flags to write our names on and put in the hallway as well. I plan to play Mario music while they are working.

Let's pretend this is a great picture of our makeshift flag pole - right now it is in mystery mode:

Here is a link to some of the printables with levels and the recording sheets for each level for students and the flag and signs.

Mario had to have some chocolate on plan time after all the excitement :)

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Many of you have asked about my Nonfiction Video Game Level Up day - all the details I have to give are below. This will review text features, nonfiction comprehension, context clues and text structure. Students will have to complete each level before moving on.

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Mrs. ReaderPants: What's Your Genre Personality? Quiz: A fun way to recommend genres to students!

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Mrs. ReaderPants: What's Your Genre Personality? Quiz: A fun way to recommend genres to students!

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UPDATE: I am resending this quiz today because I have added an elementary version! Last week, I had two requests for an elementary version of the quiz, so now this product now includes TWO versions--elementary and middle/high school. The elementary version has more images, simpler language, and I have changed "The Romantic" genre personality to "The Bestie," which focuses on friendship rather than romance. I also removed two questions from the elementary quiz to make it a little shorter.
You can use either presentation with almost no preparation--it's all ready to go!

If you already purchased the quiz on TPT, go here and re-download the file. Voila! Two versions!

Both of these slides are from the new elementary version:

Download both elementary and MS/HS genre personality quizzes at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Remember those Teen magazine personality quizzes we took in middle school? Or more recently, the Buzzfeed quizzes about "What ice cream flavor are you?" or "What's the best state for you to live in?" Well, I'm took a page from that playbook and developed the "What's Your Genre Personality?" quiz for school libraries and classrooms!

I give a genre personality quiz every year to my incoming sixth grade students. It's a fun way to introduce genre and give the students an idea of what kinds of books they might be interested in reading. Since our library is genre-fied, students are easily able to find and select books based on genre.

The quiz is clearly more fun than scientific, but I do think that it helps give students direction. If nothing else, it gets them thinking about choosing books based on their interests. The genres featured correspond with my library's genre sections. Once downloaded, you can edit the quiz and change the genres to suit your library as needed.

Please note: If you have bought the What's Your Genre quiz from me previously, you can download this updated version free of charge on the product page on TPT.

Recommended for: Grade 5-9
Number of slides: 27
Technology requirements: computer, projector, screen
Student supplies: pencil + paper
Number of questions: 12
Number of genre personalities: 8
Time: 40 minutes

Each genre personality is described on its own slide at the end. Multiple genre recommendations are given for each genre personality (this slide is from the MS/HS version):

The Questioner

The Escapist

The Innovator (formerly The MacGyver)

The Realist

The History Buff

The Thrill-Seeker

The Class Clown

The Romantic

Download both genre personality quizzes at Teachers Pay Teachers

Like this library idea? Check out my Library Lessons board on Pinterest:

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What's Your Genre Personality? Quiz: A fun way to recommend genres to students!

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UPDATE: I am resending this quiz today because I have added an elementary version! Last week, I had two requests for an elementary version of the quiz, so now this product now includes TWO versions--elementary and middle/high school.

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So that the staff, both teaching and admin, were aware of the library's services and procedures I created The Library Book which became a ready reference for them. It took the form of a folder with sleeves so that updates and additions were made easily. Each page had a similar heading and was presented in the same font and colour scheme to give it a professional, corporate look.

I also included a treat or two and a book voucher for our Book Fair for a personal purchase.

I surveyed staff to see what it was they particularly wanted to know so that I had a prioritised list to start the process.

Because all schools are different, I've just listed the contents here to provide a starting point for your thinking but where applicable I've added a brief explanation.

1. to ensure staff made the connection between the library and their teaching programs, I called it Title Page - The Library Book: linking literacy and literature for lifelong learners. There was also a welcome message encouraging them to come to me or my Library Manager if they needed any assistance at all. I wanted to make it clear that we were there to support their teaching and our services weren't limited to those in the book. Diana Rendina has crafted a letter that personalises this relationship especially for those new to the school or new to teaching.

2. Official Documents - this page listed the official documents under which we worked. These not only demonstrated that we were professionals but that our practices were founded in official best practice. In our case these included...

3. Introducing Dr Booklove - Dr Booklove was in charge of the library. He set the standards and expectations for everything. Children related to him very well. His picture adorned posters, certificates, bookmarks and a host of other notices so the children were very familiar with him.

4. - This included an outline of theRole Statements Standards of Professional Excellence, an introduction to the library staff and their various and differing roles.You might like to create or include some of the many infographics about the scope of the role of the teacher librarian. Use this one from Naomi Bates , this from Tiffany Whitehead or this from Mia McMeekin to personalise one that describes you.

5. The A-Z of a Librarian -a fun look at all the hats we wear

6. - a thumbnail sketch of the most popular and important services we provided. These could also be in the form of a customised Our Services bookmark.

7. a list of the most commonly asked questions including opening times, staffing, numbers of loans, overdues, using the circulation system and so on.

8. Collaborative Planning and Teaching - an explanation of what this is and the benefits it offers as well as the role the TL was expected to have. It included a form which covered these questions...

What are the key concepts, knowledge, understandings, skills, values and attitudes do you want students to acquire as a result of this unit?

What are the key information literacy outcomes you want your students to achieve from this unit?

What are the specific information literacy skills that you want the TL to target when working with your students on this unit?

What sorts of resources do you particularly want students to use during this unit?

9. a list of the services such as the National Digital Learning Resources Network (accessible via Online services -Scootle) and ABC Splash which provide free resources for teachers as well as those subscription services such as encyclopedia and databases that the school pays for (including instructins and passwords for accessing them)

10. Collection Development - a brief overview of the collection development priorities including general selection criteria

11. - a copy of the Challenged Materials Challenged Materials policy as well as forms to hand to parents if required

12. Collection Evaluation - teachers were invited to choose one unit they had taught throughout the year and evaluate the supporting resources held in the collection as well as make suggestions for new acquisitions

13. - an explanation of copyright as well as a table showing how, when and why resources may be copied for class use under the licences purchased by Australian educational jurisdictions. Links to critical pages of the Copyright Smartcopying website were provided for easy and quick access

14. - an explanation of why stocktake is so important to the quality of the collection and why it needs to be undertaken regularly so teachers understand why resources have to be returned and why the library may be closed during the process.

15. - an outline of the library's student community service program

16. Information Needs Audit-a questionnaire to discover the library users' needs so we can prioritise the services we offer

1. Benchmarks - in Australia, national literacy testing takes place in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 so the literacy benchmarks for the appropriate years were summarised.

2. - the Readers Rights poster by Daniel Pennac and Quentin Blake that is widely available but there are several versions and students might like to construct their own for display in the library

3. - instructions for the Matchmaking Five Finger Test and Can It Be For Me. A Book and a Hug can help students work out the sorts of readers they are and the books they might like to read.

4. Reading Challenges - suggestions for setting personal reading challenges

PART THREE - INFORMATION LITERACY

1. Introduction to Information Literacy -why we need to be information literate; what it means to be information literate and appropriate outcomes for the various levels

2. The Information Literacy Process - if you use a different scaffold or a pedagogy such as Guided Inquiry an outline of that could be included with links to sites that provide more information

3. Project Planner - a template for stepping through an assignment that could be printed and given to students to help them with both research and time management

4. Research Rating - a self-assessment tool for students to rate themselves as researchers. Questions included

What did I learn from this assignment?

Did I achieve what I set out to do?

Which parts did I do well?

Which parts do I need more support with?

Did I have a clear understanding of what I was supposed to do?

Did my questions help focus my research?

Did my concept map have enough ideas?

Was I able to locate and use a variety of relevant resources?

Were my resources useful? If not, what was the main problem with them?

Did I have enough information to meet my needs and that of the assignment?

Was that information authoritative, accurate, current, objective and relevant?

Was I able to sort fact from opinion?

Were my notes and graphics useful in sorting and organising my information for presentation?

Was my presentation the best I could do?

Did it meet the needs and interests of my audience?

Did I demonstrate my learning, my opinion or an action plan?

Did I manage my time well?

Am I satisfied with the results of my efforts?

What would I do differently if I were to do it again?

The skills I need assistance with are...

My new knowledge and understanding confirmed / challenged/ changed what I already believed.

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So that the staff, both teaching and admin, were aware of the library's services and procedures I created The Library Book which became a ready reference for them. It took the form of a folder with sleeves so that updates and additions were made easily.

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12 Must Read Books for Librarians ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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12 Must Read Books for Librarians ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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June 3, 2016
In this week'sBooks for Teachers series, we are sharing with you this collection of some of the most popular books for librarians. These works cover some state of the art topics in library science including: insights on the rapidly changing environments of information retrieval services, library research techniques and management methods, library 2.0, developing scholarly writing projects in library science, the ins and outs of working with online database, learning about the best tactics in doing online research, learning the art of successful grant writing for libraries and many more.

1- Collection Management Basics, 6th Edition, by G. Edward Evans (Author), Margaret Zarnosky Saponaro (Author)
'Now thoroughly revised for today's 21st-century library environment, this title provides a complete update of the classic Developing Library and Information Center Collections―the standard text and authority on collection development for all types of libraries and library school students since 1979.'

2- Management Basics for Information Professionals, 3rd Edition, by G. Edward Evans (Author), Camila Alire (Author)
'Reflecting the rapidly changing information services environment, the third edition of this bestselling title offers updates and a broader scope to make it an even more comprehensive introduction to library management. Addressing the basic skills good library managers must exercise throughout their careers, this edition includes a completely new chapter on management ethics. Evans and Alire also pay close attention to management in "new normal" straitened economic conditions and offer updates on technological topics like social media'.

3- Handbook of Academic Writing for Librarians , by Christopher V. Hollister (Author)
'The Handbook of Academic Writing for Librarians is the most complete reference source available for librarians who need or desire to publish in the professional literature. The Handbook addresses issues and requirements of scholarly writing and publishing in a start-to-finish manner. Standard formats of scholarly writing are addressed: research papers, articles, and books. Sections and chapters include topics such as developing scholarly writing projects in library science, the improvement of academic writing, understanding and managing the peer review process including submission, revision, and how to handle rejection and acceptance, assessing appropriateness of publishing outlets, and copyright.'
4- Library Management 101: A Practical Guide, by Diane L. Velasquez (Author, Editor)
'Knowing the principles of general management is both useful and necessary for LIS students, but it s no less important to learn management techniques specific to the world of libraries. Created to fill a surprising educational void, this edited volume focuses on best practices from library management experts teaching in LIS programs across the country. Among the many topics discussed are: Classic and modern theories of management, and how they apply to the library, human resource planning, marketing and public relations, negotiations, mediation, and financial management of the library, facilities management'.
5- Librarian's Guide to Online Searching: Cultivating Database Skills for Research and Instruction, 4th Edition, by Suzanne S. Bell (Author)
'This groundbreaking textbook and guide for library school students and librarians will help you―regardless of experience level or environment―learn the ins and outs of working with online databases, the best tactics for effective research online, and the methods for conveying these search skills to others.'

6- Foundations of Library and Information Science, Third Edition , by Richard Rubin (Author)
'Rubin explores the ever-growing impact of the World Wide Web, the impact of blogs, wikis, and social networks on services, electronic publication including e-books, digital libraries, digital preservation, mass digitization, and digital repositories, and Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). His unique insights into these technologies and their impact on library services, policies, and legal standards are all part of why this book forms the essential foundation one needs to succeed as an information professional.'

7- Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs, by AASL (Creator)
'Guiding principles for school library media programs must focus on building a flexible learning environment with the goal of producing successful learners skilled in multiple literacies. Defining the future direction of school library media programs is the purpose of the newest set of guidelines from the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), entitled Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs.'

8- Collection Development and Management for 21st Century Library Collections: An Introduction 1st Edition, by Vicki L. Gregory (Author)
'Practical and to the point, here's an authoritative guide to collection development and management that covers the entire gamut: Chapter 1: The Impact of New Technologies on Trends in Collection Development and Management; Chapter 2: Needs Assessment in Collection Development; Chapter 3: Collection Development Policies; Chapter 4: Selection Sources and Processes; Chapter 5: Acquisitions; Chapter 6: Budgeting and Fiscal Management; Chapter 7: Assessment and Evaluation of the Collection, including Deselection (Weeding); Chapter 8: Cooperative Collection Development and Resource Sharing; Chapter 9: Marketing the Collection and Outreach to the Community; Chapter 10: Legal Issues in Collection Development; Chapter 11: Diversity and ADA Issues; Chapter 12: Gifts and Exchanges; Chapter 13: Professional Ethics and Intellectual Freedom; Chapter 14: Preservation; Chapter 15: Future of Collection Development and Management.'
9- Basic Research Methods for Librarians, 5th Edition , by Lynn Silipigni Connaway (Author), Ronald R. Powell (Author)
'This thoroughly updated introduction covers the major issues involved in designing and conducting original research relevant to the fields of library and information science. Library and information science examples to explain research methodologies and techniques,explanations and examples of sampling procedures, a table for determining sample sizes and a random number table, notes at the end of each chapter, plus a list of more than 400 research-related references at the end of the book.'

10- Grants for Libraries: A How-To-Do-It Manual (How-to-Do-It Manuals for Librarians) , by Stephanie K. Gerding (Author), Pamela H. Mackellar (Author)
'Expert grant writers Gerding and MacKellar have created a "do-it-yourself" book and CD-ROM for fundraisers. They carefully outline the grant-writing process and provide a proven step-by-step strategy for getting your grant. More than 15 success stories from a variety of institutions and for various funding purposes are provided on the CD for you to model, adapt, or incorporate into your own winning proposals.'

11- Library: An Unquiet History 1st Edition, by Matthew Battles (Author)
'Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved but also shaped, inspired, and obliterated knowledge. Now they are in crisis. Former rare books librarian and Harvard MetaLAB visionary Matthew Battles takes us from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries and on to the Information Age, to explore how libraries are built and how they are destroyed: from the scroll burnings in ancient China to the burning of libraries in Europe and Bosnia to the latest revolutionary upheavals of the digital age.'
12- Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval, 3rd Edition , by G. G. Chowdhurry (Author)
'The recently revised third edition of this highly regarded text blends traditional theories, techniques and tools with coverage of cutting-edge advancements and sophisticated new technologies in information retrieval (IR). Unique in its scope, author G.G. Chowdhury s exhaustive guide spans the whole spectrum of this rapidly expanding field'.

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June 3, 2016 In this week'sBooks for Teachers series, we are sharing with you this collection of some of the most popular books for librarians.

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eCROP Blog: Maker Schools and Makerspace

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eCROP Blog: Maker Schools and Makerspace

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"We learn by doing" Aristotle

"To understand is to invent" Piaget

"Constructing solidifies learning" Papert

Invent to learn" Martinez & Stager

"The Makerspace in the library is an oasis for student self-directed learning. It serves as a rejuvenation center for inspiring love of both formal and informal learning. In my opinion, a space like this should be a priority for all schools in the twenty-first century; and you do not have to break the bank to create one." Eric Sheninger, award-winning Principal at New Milford High School, Bergen County, NJ.

Maker Schools and Makerspace

For over 30 years the personal computer revolution has expanded cyberspace into our homes, businesses, government, the globe and our pockets and purses and ever so glacially slow into 1 to 1 computer-to-student-technology for our public school classrooms. Meanwhile, technology races on ahead, transforming and giving rebirth to long dormant ideas. Sprouting out of the advanced sensor and robotics areas of the cyberspace cloud, a makerspace uprising of 3D printers and more drives what many call a new industrial revolution. The maker movement is not just a digital transformation of our country's strong heritage of inventive making; it is also a potential trojan horse hiding deep intellectual, economic and school change ( Brynjolfsson & McAfree, 2014; Rifkin, 2014).

To over-simplify, a makerspace ( zoomable international map) is a room, often a community center, with tools and collaborative people that encourage making. There are other titles for the makerspace movement that are variations on this theme, titles like Fablab which come with slight distinctions. Makerfaires ( zoomable international map) are events in which makers share the works and ideas that emerge in their makerspaces. At present the makerspace movement is a fertile mix of the interests of the arts and crafts, science, hobbyists, digital composers, the Internet of Things, sensors, citizen scientists, industrial designers and entrepreneurs.

As our North Carolina schools take advantage of their move to 1:1 computing to innovate further, they should look closely at makerspace developments. Many interesting discussions center around the #makered and #pbl hashtags. Readily visible for those who have ever read the seminal work of John Dewey is the reinvention by other names of his progressive education movement. His book on Interest and Effort in Education should be considered a primary supporting document to the makerspace movement manifesto. Unfortunately Dewey's hands-on, project based learning door to creativity and innovation did not quite match the needs of his 1900's factory centered time like they do of our exponential 21st century age. Early makerspace movers and shakers are surfacing that are revitalizing their communities and libraries and Dewey would not be surprised to note that they are beginning to re-imagine the methodology and curriculum of public schools as well.

Makerspace is just the latest phase of our evolutionary layered literacy. This new direction does not conceptually leave cyberspace skills behind, though in practice it is sometimes hard to see the rich digital heritage of compositions for computer screens being hailed in makerspace communities. At the same time its reweaving of digital tools with hands-on making and thought in building objects draws on the very earliest literacy, the hands-on composing and communication skills of the first signs of human intelligence that emerged in the stone age. Given the deep digital foundation that is already in place, makerspace advance will happen much faster and perhaps with even greater impact than any of the prior ages of literacy. A digitally inclusive makerspace cloud would have the opportunity to expand and integrate all that has gone on before it. As a new kind of space for community learning, makerspaces of physical tools in libraries or community centers also become 21st century role models for a new approach to the meaning and methodology of schools.

As librarian Jeff Sturges of Detroit's Mt. Elliott Makerspace said "this is about creating creative people". MakerFaires show that creativity in events held all over the world. One was held just down my highways in Raleigh on June 7. One cannot help but feel the footsteps of Dewey's Chicago School in the 1890's and the project based learning and inquiry groups of today (#pbl, #pbi). Much more recently Papert's ideas about constructionism pulls together Piaget's "building knowledge structures" with Dewey's experiential "learning-by-making" ( Wikipedia; Papert papers).

The desire to make is so universal that the makerspace movement also raises the question as to whether separately tracked college-bound courses and vocational courses involved with physical design, creating, building and maintaining should have ever been distinct tracks for students over our long educational history. The emerging digital fabrication palette of makerspace has re-ignited the deep American frontier spirit so thoughtfully described by the Pulitzer Prize winning work of Frederick Jackson Turner in 1933. It has also raised a storm of interest around the globe. There will be many competitors to American global leadership in manufacturing. For example, Barcelona, Spain (once home to Gaudi, Picasso and Dali) is revitalizing their spirit through plans for many makerspace centers around the city for public use. It is in this need for revitalization that makers and makerspace provide such an opportunity for everyone around the globe. In an age of rapid change and exploding knowledge, everyone in every culture has a need for what Sheninger called a " rejuvenation center for inspiring love of both formal and informal learning".

Exemplars

Many schools are at the forefront of establishing makerspace basecamps for further exploration, including equipment with specialized rooms, after school programs, library spaces and in-classroom time. These are school makerspaces within a school and classroom that tack such activity on to the current school model. Some are thinking about building a "maker school" and transforming the educational pedagogy from top to bottom. The "thinking about it" effort of West Michigan in Detroit has come to my attention. Another, the National Inventor Hall of Fame School in Cleveland, Ohio, was designed as a STEM school. It has been in operation for a couple of years beginning as a 5th - 8th grade school with nearly 300+ students and feeding the approximately 100 students in 9th & 10th grade at the National Inventors Hall of Fame® Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics High School. Their mission statements sound close to the goals of the makerspace effort but an analysis of their methodology and operation are not available at this time.

Only one (to my knowledge), Bricolage Academy of New Orleans has entirely erased the board and reimagined a school from scratch.

They've gone far beyond schools that are beginning to provide maker space in a library or spare room, tools, resources and time in the schedule; they've planned an entire multi-graded school from Kindergarten on up, building one year at a time. Bricolage has built an entire charter school around the thinking of the maker movement; they began with kindergarten in the fall of 2013. They are growing and moving to new space this fall (link to school below), expanding to include first grade. They also gave great leadership to New Orleans' first MakerFaire, held, Saturday, April 5. I took this photo of the the marble ramps their kindergarten classes invented, replete with QR code for each that showed a video of the "engineer/designer" talking about their work.

But change also occurs in other ways. Albamarle Schools in Virginia have spent more than a dozen years building project based learning, so makerspace was a natural progression. And moves to 1:1 computing only rev those engines further.

I would also claim that Montessori schools have had a similar mission since their inception in the late 1800's, but have not given sufficient leadership to digital age thinking using their methodology. So, who and where are the other Maker Schools that are in process or who have begun a "maker school"? Comment space below!

I was privileged to attend the entire day of this "first annual" event in NOLAland (New Orleans, LA), April 5, 2014. It was especially rewarding to also hear, meet and discuss why the maker revolution matters with Sylvia Libow Martinez, co-author with Dr. Gary Stager o Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, a book on my Kindle that has long been well "thumbed". She was presenting at the National School Board Conference ( conference ; events ; #NSBAConf) there and made the extra effort to also present at this MakerFaire. Kudos to Sylvia for her talk on "Why Can't School Be More Like MakerFaire". Josh Denson, founder of Bricolage and the rest of the event team deserve a special Kudos for a highly successful first makerfaire and to the graciousness of so many in responding so thoughtfully to my queries throughout the day.

The third annual Burlington, NC maker faire that I also attended April 12 was impressive in that a much smaller city could provide a much larger and more significant set of exhibits from their community.

There is a difference between viewing a virtual object (e.g., computer screen, web compositions) and holding an object, whatever the composition is. Both are forms of composition are important. However, I've been concerned that maker movement efforts tends to leave cyberspace out of the focus of their thinking or at least underplay it. Compare this image on the left of the cyberspace digital literacy palette (click for an infographic loaded with clickable hotspots) with the makerspace palette above to see similarities and differences.

It was especially heartening to see that cyberspace for computer displays (image on left) was not excluded from maker exhibits at state and regional fairs; unfortunately this is not true of the world faires. Elements of this cyberspace palette that were in the exhibits of NOLA's and Burlington's MakerFaire include: cardboard marble ramps with QR code linked to digital video story telling; image capture manipulation to study plant photosynthesis; video/image/audio with visual dj software using Arena and remote video viewing and capturing with a camera mounted on a drone; sound composition and manipulation with made instruments; and digital animated story telling with a wide variety of props which certainly could be 3D designed. This is how it should go with makerspace, the creation of real world objects and events intimately integrated with the power of computer screen communication.

A final exemplar for now is the Maker Education Initiative which is busily and productively engaged in creating a national youth movement of maker activities and locations. Not directly engaging and challenging the system of schooling currently in place has enabled it to grow dramatically, not impeded by past practice. Unfortunately this also means that a large, capable and interested professional work force is not contributing at its scale to makerspace advance.

To gain a better idea of what he makerspace movement is producing in enthusiasm and learning, Google Search "maker faire OR makerfaire" for your state or country and attend some this year. For North Carolina folks, this means April 12 for the MakerFaire in Burlington and June 7 for Raleigh; otherwise, visit http://makerfaire.com/map/.

It is interesting to watch the maker movement seek to invent from scratch some persistent but long marginalized educational ideas long promoted by Montessori, Dewey, Piaget, Freire and Papert, among others. For example, Piaget's thinking, To Understand Is To Invent ( entire book online). It goes much deeper than that. For a great study of the real genius behind the invent to learn idea and the science on which it is based and practiced for a century, see A.S. Lillard's work, Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, 2005, Oxford University Press. Her book and related thinking is a tour de force of Montessori's thinking and the research that continues to uphold the value of the key elements of her methodology. Perhaps at last the many disconnected yet historical allies of the maker movement can be networked to a tipping point that takes us beyond the obsolete notions of "the school as factory and the child as a blank slate" (Lillard) that "are firmly ensconced in the standard operating procedures of today's schools" (Lillard citing Resnick & Hall).

As Lillard has shown of Montessori's work, there is an effective evidence-based world of choice, personal interest, intrinsic reward, learner centered boundaries, inter-age grouping, context learning and order. Makerspace is redefining this evidence based world as both digital and physical constructivism and constructionism. Dewey made a good run at this with the Progressive Education movement at the beginning of the 20th century before its star was driven off the road after WWII by a growing national addiction for the promise of "measurement driven efficiency". That only 24% of high school seniors rated proficient in the last national writing assessment is one more indication that the current measurement efficiency model fails, in this case failing to sufficiently lift 3 of 4, 75% of our public school population. An even smaller percent graduate from college in four years. Too many see digital technology as the "at last" savior of what in reality has been revealed as a negligent and inhumane model for both teachers and students. Education has lingered long enough in trying to resuscitate this increasingly obsolete system.

Digital technology can be used to assist many causes. The makerspace movement is offering one more new-day alternative in the educational firmament of the 21st century. Which one do we choose? Will makerspace sustain itself over the long haul? Can it continue to transform the traditional school model? What allies might collectively work with it to do so? Will colleges of education lead or ignore such practices in the preparation of new teachers?

Below are some additional high interest resources for Makerspace developments in public libraries, school libraries and classrooms.

***Library concepts
http://www.ubmfuturecities.com/author.asp?doc_id=526566
http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2012/12/what-is-a-makerspace-creativity-in-the-library.html
"the emphasis is on creating with technology ...teaching our patrons to think for themselves, to think creatively, and to look for do-it-yourself solutions before running off to the store."
Jeff Sturges of Detroit's Mt. Elliott Makerspace said in ALA TechSource's December 3 makerspace webinar, "Beyond engineering and STEM, this is about creating creative people."

***Schools
-Bricolage Academy, charter school, New Orleans, founded 2013. http://www.bricolagenola.org
- Albamarle Schools in Virginia

***Public libraries
http://library-maker-culture.weebly.com/makerspaces-in-libraries.html
http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/a-librarians-guide-to-makerspaces/
http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2013/10/make-it-your-library-website-launches-connecting-librarians-makerspace

*** School Libraries
http://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com/2014/03/thinking-about-our-new.html
http://www.pinterest.com/cari_young/library-makerspaces/
http://makezine.com/2013/09/17/school-library-to-makerspace/
Leslie B. Preddy ( ). School Library Makerspaces: Grades 6-12, $45.00. http://www.abc-clio.com/product.aspx?isbn=9781610694940

*** North Carolina Libraries (NC)
UNCG http://acrlny.org/newsletter/connections-winter-2014/adam-rogers-shaping-a-makerspace-in-an-academic-library/
NCState http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/spaces/makerspace

***School Classrooms
http://makezine.com/2014/01/10/makerspace-in-the-classroom/
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/classroom-makerspaces-transformative-learning-stephanie-west-puckett
http://k12makers.org
http://makerschool.blogspot.com/ after school
http://www.makered.org/about/
http://k12makers.org/makered-twitter-chat-archive/
http://educonphilly.org/conversations/MakerEd_Design_Sprint

***Makerspace design
http://makerspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/MakerspacePlaybook-Feb2013.pdf
http://library-maker-culture.weebly.com/makerspaces-in-libraries.html

***Resources
http://makezine.com
http://littlebits.cc
Curt Gabrielson, Tinkering: Kids Learn by Making Stuff, 2013.
Rifkin, J. (2014). The Zero Margin Cost Society.

Twitter tools and tags: #pbl #pbi #makerspace, #maker #makers #makered #inventToLearn

Shortened URL for this posting: http://ow.ly/vlZOb

Updated May 14, 2014

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"We learn by doing" Aristotle "To understand is to invent" Piaget "Constructing solidifies learning" Papert Invent to learn" Martinez & Stager "The Makerspace in the library is an oasis for student self-directed learning. It serves as a rejuvenation center for inspiring love of both formal and informal learning.

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10 Reason to Read Children’s Books Instead of ‘Grown-Up’ Books by Isabelle Sudron | Nerdy Book Club

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10 Reason to Read Children’s Books Instead of ‘Grown-Up’ Books by Isabelle Sudron | Nerdy Book Club

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Some may think that you grow out of kid's books as you get older. There are those that think they are predictable and unrealistic. There is even the notion that children's books are not challenging enough for our big old brains. However, there are many of us that feel otherwise, myself being one them. Children's fiction can be some of the most honest, witty and humbling stories you'll ever read.

If you place a confusing, fictional situation in front of an adult, then they will immediately start to question things. How did she get from there to there? Why did he do that, when he could have done this? Surely, that isn't possible?

Children, on the other hand, have big, fantastic imaginations with no limits, as do the books they read. If you place an unusual, fictional situation in front of them, it won't take them long to put things together and explain the missing pieces.

Madeleine L'Engle, the author credited with A Wrinkle in Time, was once quoted as saying: "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

Whoever decided that grown-up books shouldn't have illustrations made a big mistake! Lets be honest, everyone loves a good pictures, from Quentin Blake's scribbles to Chris Riddell's detailed sketches. Description and imagination are great, but sometimes you just want to gaze, opened-mouthed at an illustration. Even grown-ups like that.

The use of advice in adult fiction is somewhat limited. That could be because it often seems preachy and unnecessary, or it could be because we think we know it all. However, you won't find this conundrum in children's books, there are endless words of wisdom to help mould young minds as they grow. Though, don't be fooled, these quotes can be just as helpful for adults who need a gentle reminder. I think we can all agree, Dr. Seuss is the best therapist that many of us could ever ask for. If you haven't been graced with his wisdom, here's a few words from his book, Oh, The Places You'll Go!:

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

You can enter an entirely different world

Of course, you can do this with many amazing fantasy books meant for adults, but children's books really have no boundaries. Nothing is too strange or unbelievable for kids and there is no end of imaginative places.

Also, it is more than acceptable to daydream about flying around on a broomstick after reading Harry Potter. Where's, there aren't very many grown-up books that lend to that freedom.

In 'grown-up' books you'll find an assortment of crazy characters, from psychotic murderers to obsessive girlfriends. However, as strange as they are, they're also eerily real. Arguably, grown-ups meet narcissists, nutters and pessimists everyday. Who wants to read about them in their spar time too, when you can read about hobbits and orcs!?

There are good, old fashioned villains

Adult fiction has a tendency of killing our darlings and turning our other favourite characters into pure evil. No one is safe and no character is 100% good. This usually provides a great shock factor or a twist. On the other hand, children's books are pretty blunt about 'good' and 'bad' people. There's something comforting about knowing that the 'bad guy' is definitely the one that's creeping around and causing havoc. It's also incredibly satisfying when the villain finally gets their comeuppance!

In grown-up books, events that are taken seriously tend to be of a very serious nature; affairs, betrayal, death. However, in children's books you can indulge the same intense emotions in everyday situations. For example, getting the wrong sandwich at lunch time or tripping up in front of everyone at school is just as terrible as it feels in real life.

Adult books tackle all sorts of tough subjects through metaphors and implications, whereas, kid's books aren't afraid to tackle the subjects head-on. They cover everything from adoption to sexuality and racism to death, with the matter-of-fact writing they deserve. There's something refreshing about reading the truth with no trimmings. One of my favourite blunt books is Wonder, an honest and touching story about a boy with a severe facial deformity and how he copes with life.

Need I say more? It doesn't matter whether you're reading them out-loud to your kids or saying them in your head on your commute to work - they're always great!

As we get older, we need more unexpected, strange endings. We like being surprised with twists, turns and disastrous finales. However, that doesn't mean that we'v forgotten about those classic, cheerful endings that we were brought up on. Happy endings can give us that warm, fuzzy feeling, no matter how old we are!
Isabelle Sudron is a writer, blogger and avid list maker. She currently lives in Hanoi where she teaches English, drinks a lot of coffee and partakes in national dangerous driving. You can find more of her writing at sudrobelle.com.

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10 Reason to Read Children's Books Instead of 'Grown-Up' Books by Isabelle Sudron

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Some may think that you grow out of kid's books as you get older. There are those that think they are predictable and unrealistic. There is even the notion that children's books are not challenging enough for our big old brains. However, there are many of us that feel otherwise, myself being one them.

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How to Tell a Story Week is here! — Kid Lit Frenzy

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How to Tell a Story Week is here! — Kid Lit Frenzy

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Wandering around the exhibition floor of ALA Midwinter '15, Jen Vincent from Teach Mentor Texts and I met Daniel Nayeri and his clever idea for storytelling called . The concept was simple..."read the book, roll the blocks, and build adventures." After chatting for awhile, we let Trevor Ingerson from Workman Publishers that we would be interested in highlighting How to Tell a Story on our blogs. Fast forward 10 months and we are finally able to share our excitement about this with everyone.
What is How to Tell a Story? Check out the video where

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Wandering around the exhibition floor of ALA Midwinter '15, Jen Vincent from Teach Mentor Texts and I met Daniel Nayeri and his clever idea for storytelling called How to Tell a Story . The concept was simple..."read the book, roll the blocks, and build adventures." After chatting

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student achievement . Although the data is mounting globally it is also clear that school administrators need to have evidence at the local school level when planning for school improvement and making tough financial decisions. Look how far we've come (already) in Ontario . Let's keep it going!

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iRubric Is An Excellent Tool for Creating Rubrics and Gradebooks ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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iRubric Is An Excellent Tool for Creating Rubrics and Gradebooks ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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November 10, 2015
iRubric is a powerful tool for creating educational rubrics. You can either design a new rubric from scratch or use existing rubric templates to edit and customize them for your own purposes. Scoring rubrics is another great feature in iRubric.' Student grades are automatically saved in the gradebook and a copy of the scored rubric with your notes is securely displayed to individual learners.'

The gallery section in iRubrics features a variety of interesting rubrics you can use in your own instruction. Rubrics are arranged by grade level, subject, and type. Once you find the rubric you are interested in click to preview it. You will need to register to be able to edit and print rubrics. Registration is free. Registered members can also print rubrics, bookmark them for later use, build gradebooks to assess students, discuss rubrics with other members, embed rubrics in a website or blog and many more. Teachers and students can use iRubric at no charge.

iRubric is part of the productivity tools provided by RCampus for the education community. RCampus is 'a comprehensive Education Management System and a collaborative learning environment'. It allows educators, students and school administrators to 'manage courses, build ePortfolios, create websites, join eCommunities, assess school work with rubrics and much more, from a single location.'

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iRubric Is An Excellent Tool for Creating Rubrics and Gradebooks

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November 10, 2015 iRubric is a powerful tool for creating educational rubrics. You can either design a new rubric from scratch or use existing rubric templates to edit and customize them for your own purposes. Scoring rubrics is another great feature in iRubric.'

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Building a Learning Commons Culture: Teaching Procedures | Knowledge Quest

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Building a Learning Commons Culture: Teaching Procedures | Knowledge Quest

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As the school year gets underway, don't forget the old adage that taking time to teach procedures is always time well spent. Teaching expectations for behavior in the learning commons library is just as important as teaching rules for a classroom. If the library is the hub of learning in the school, students and teachers need to be taught how to use the space. Especially given that more and more libraries are staffed by one librarian, teaching patrons how to be self-sufficient with everyday needs is necessary to sanity and survival, freeing the librarian to teach, provide point of need information assistance, and aid students with book selection.

One thing I've come to realize is that you cannot expect that students know how to behave. Whether it is lack of experience or that a patron is used to another librarian's procedures, many users will need to be explicitly taught how to use the learning commons. I really like the library rules posters that center around respect-respect the space, each other, etc. However, you cannot assume that kids know what you mean by respect. Demonstrate how showing respect looks. Act it out, use scenarios and even a script, if needed.

As much as possible, when you develop your rules, focus on wording them positively. So instead of "no food or drinks" try "responsibile use of food and drinks permitted." Scanning online for other sample rules posters, I see a number of them that include things that are redundant to school rules-dress code items, things like no bullying. I don't see the need to reiterate those in the library-they should be understood. Spend your time on helping patrons learn self-checkout and even check-in if that's possible, how to use technology, printing procedures, how they can use work spaces in the library learning commons, how to access online resources, and other types of services you offer.

Self-checkout is one of the things that I notice is so very hard for some librarians to embrace. It's definitely more time consuming at the beginning, but it is so helpful to get away from the circ desk, even for those of us who work with very young children. If you're still on the fence, or need a good how-to, this blog entry from Dr. Leigh Ann Jones is a great place to start.

Beyond that, what other functions does your learning commons offer, and how does it look when patrons are using it effectively?

I really like the library rules posters that center around respect-respect the space, each other, etc. However you cannot assume that kids know what you mean by respect. Demonstrate how showing respect looks in the library learning commons. Act it out, use scenarios and even a script, if needed.

For example, if you have a makerspace area, what do students and teachers need to know to use it successfully? Are there expectations about when to use it? How about how to leave it when finished?

Do you have open study space? Is there an understanding of when students are free to use it? Are students allowed to bring drinks and food if they use caution and clean up after themselves?

Do you have computers and/or lab space that students may use for projects or assignments? What about open web-surfing and games? Are these permitted if they are age-appropriate and not interfering with class work?

As the year progresses, you will be able to pull back from teaching students how to use the space, and focus on teaching them while they are in the space.

The best evidence you've done your job? When you can be gone from the space and the students carry on as if you had been there the whole time.

Something making you crazy-students are leaving a mess at lunch or your makerspace materials are in a jumble? Time to revisit the process! Don't assume something isn't working because the rules aren't being followed. First, try to observe what might be causing it-such as students aren't stopping to clean up early enough before they have to leave, trash cans are not adequate, or makerspace items need more containers, then help students be successful by making adjustments to the procedures and reteach them.

Creating a library learning commons with welcoming, collaborative culture requires work, but the investment of time to create it will bring big dividends!

Categories: Blog Topics, Makerspaces/Learning Commons

Tags: learning commons, Self-checkout

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Building a Learning Commons Culture: Teaching Procedures | Knowledge Quest

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As the school year gets underway, don't forget the old adage that taking time to teach procedures is always time well spent. Teaching expectations for behavior in the learning commons library is just as important as teaching rules for a... Read More ›

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Banned Web Sites: Are Your Policies Up-To-Date? | Knowledge Quest

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Banned Web Sites: Are Your Policies Up-To-Date? | Knowledge Quest

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In looking over an assignment to develop a library reconsideration policy that I gave to my graduate students, it occurred to me that an important information element is missing. Every reconsideration policy that I surveyed had the usual slots for challenging books, videos, etc. but almost none had a place for reconsideration of district-blocked Web sites. While it may be true that a district has a procedure in place for calling the IT department to unblock a particular site, what happens when the unblocking is refused or if there is a systematic blocking of sites by the district filtering software?

Two examples made me start thinking about this issue. I use Skype in my library science classes and one of my students said she couldn't use Skype at school. She had found this out when she wanted to Skype her husband who was serving in Afghanistan The district refused to let her use Skype even after school to participate in a graduate class or to contact her husband. It doesn't take much reading to realize that Skype, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are being blocked by a number of school districts even though there are many examples in the literature of effective educational use social media.

Not too long ago a school district near me systematically blocked any Web sites that dealt with homosexuality. It was only after the ACLU became involved that the school district backed down in a very public display of contrition which included having to pay the ACLU attorney fees, unblocking non-sexual pro-LGBT sites and reporting regularly about blocked Web sites to an outside party.

In both of the examples above, could the issues have been resolved had there been a collaboratively developed and board approved selection policy in place with a procedure for the reconsideration of Web sites? Of course we know that even with policies in place, a common problem with censorship challenges is that administrators don't follow their own policies, but even so, having a policy is an important step.

Librarians and teachers are constantly selecting Web sites for student research pathways. Are these links selected as part of the codified collection development policy? Collection development policies outline the objectives that drive the selection of material and without a policy in place is Web site selection purely an individual decision? One site that has definite guidelines for the selection of Web sites is iCONN.org from the Connecticut State Library. Particularly interesting in the introduction about the sites selected ( http://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/dld/other-useful-sites) is the statement, "links may be added to or deleted from iCONN by iCONN staff based on the selection guidelines...." In other words, because there is a selection policy in place a request for deselection would be measured against the policy and not summarily deleted just because someone made a complaint.

Doug Johnson has been thinking about this issue for some time. In a blog post from 2010 entitled "Censorship by Omission" ( http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/censorship-by-omission.html) Johnson makes a point that goes to the heart of library policies and Web selection. He states, does the selection/reconsideration policy "treat materials in electronic format the same way it treats materials in print format? ... Does someone who wants a website blocked need to go through the same reconsideration process required to remove a book or video from a library or classroom?"

We understand why schools ban Web sites because it is easier to overfilter rather than to deal with granular selection issues because schools are afraid of not meeting the requirements imposed by Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). But it is the librarian's mission to provide access information. The reason we have collection development policies with a reconsideration process built in is to be able to build a collection - print, non-print, digital, etc. based on principles of intellectual freedom supported by all members of the educational community.

One school district that has addressed the librarian's selection of Web sites directly is the "Atlantic City School District Library Development Reconsideration and Collection Policy 2012" ( http://sov.acboe.org/download.axd?file=ef634f3c-864e-4f69-9937-54004ce91ded&dnldType=Resource) where it is stated "the term 'electronic resources' refers to those that the Library Media Coordinator and/or Specialist has selected for use-specifically; online services subscribed to annually, or designated curriculum-based sites on the World Wide Web." As a result the district's suggested reconsideration policy form specifically slots in the "Electronic information/network" as an area for reconsideration.

It is a standard rule of thumb that the reason for creating a policy is to have something in place when a questions of procedure come up. Decisions can be made with guidelines in place. Have our policies kept up with the integration of the Web into our daily educational activity?

Categories: Blog Topics, Intellectual Freedom

Tags: Banned Web Sites, bwad, censorship, intellectual freedom, Reconsideration Policies

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Banned Web Sites: Are Your Policies Up-To-Date? | Knowledge Quest

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In looking over an assignment to develop a library reconsideration policy that I gave to my graduate students, it occurred to me that an important information element is missing. Every reconsideration policy that I surveyed had the usual slots for... Read More ›

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Apps, Online Tools, and More! - ALSC BlogALSC Blog

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Apps, Online Tools, and More! - ALSC BlogALSC Blog

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Being a children's librarian has to be one of the most fun and rewarding jobs a person could have, but that doesn't mean it is easy! Balancing multiple responsibilities, tight scheduling, and having to constantly be "on" are just a few of the everyday challenges. Luckily, for us, there are tools out there to help us along the way. I posed the question to the ALSC Listserv "What are your favorite apps or online tools that help you stay organized, focused and energized?"

Here are some of the ways youth service staff are using technology to their benefit.
Productivity:
Google Keep is a post-it style system for checklists and notes. Share across your devices or with others. See real time progress on collaborative checklists or setup location reminder notifications.

is a task management system with a built in timer that tells you when to move on to your next task. The task list is controlled completely by gestures, and is the recipient of many awards and positive reviews.
Professional Development:
Many people use for note taking, but it can also be used for much more. Save program resources and collection development resources, tweets, bookmarks and more!

allows you to store articles, videos or anything else to read at a later date. Save directly from your browser or from apps and access anytime, even without internet.
Wellness
is a meditation app that provides personal training for your mind. Learn the basics of meditation and participate in guided or unguided exercises ranging from 2 minutes to one hour.

Pocket Yoga lets you take your yoga instructor with you anywhere you go! Choose between different practices, different durations and different difficulty levels.
Programs:
allows anyone to create visually appealing graphics. Flyers, social media posts, ads, and even presentations can be created by dragging and dropping images and fonts. Canva for Work is coming soon.

Finally, this one isn't available yet but I know it will be worth the wait!

The Mother Goose on the Loose Online Construction Kit (OCK ) is a free cloud- based tool developed by Mother Goose on the Loose, LLC that is designed to make planning storytimes easy by utilizing three big databases. One database aggregates nursery rhymes information such as: lyrics, instructions, pictures, relevant illustrations, etc. The second database stores titles and bibliographic information of quality children's books. The third database consists of developmental tips that can be used to explain the value and purpose of certain activities being done with children. There is also a wizard friend who will help users combine information from all of the databases mentioned above to generate either a barebones outline or a fully-fledged script with lyrics and instructions to help make planning high-quality programs for young children a breeze. OCK is still in beta testing, and anyone who is interested can contact info@mgol.org

We hope these tips will help you further the amazing work you are already doing!

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ALSC Managing Children's Services Committee

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Apps, Online Tools, and More! - ALSC Blog

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Being a children's librarian has to be one of the most fun and rewarding jobs a person could have, but that doesn't mean it is easy! Balancing multiple responsibilities, tight scheduling, and having to constantly be "on" are just a few of the everyday challenges.

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Must Watch TED Talks on The Power of Reading Books ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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Must Watch TED Talks on The Power of Reading Books ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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August, 2015
Books hold a deep magic, an empowering spell that once cracked open could illuminate the entire universe of the self. Books are semiotic representations of wisdom, power, authority and intellectual prowess. From the dawn of time till today, 'people of letters' or 'knowledgeable folks' have always been revered in their societies and when they speak people listen to them. The magic of reading books is eternal and it will always remain so.

In this curated collection of TED talks we are sharing with you today, we are featuring some wonderful talks on the power of reading books. The predominant theme here is that reading books transforms one's being and opens up new realms of knowledge and opportunities.We invite you to check them out and share with your students.

1- How books can open your mind by Lisa Bu

'What happens when a dream you've held since childhood ... doesn't come true? As Lisa Bu adjusted to a new life in the United States, she turned to books to expand her mind and create a new path for herself. She shares her unique approach to reading in this lovely, personal talk about the magic of books.'

2- What we learned from 5 million books by Jean-Baptiste + Erez Lieberman Aiden

'Have you played with Google Labs' Ngram Viewer? It's an addicting tool that lets you search for words and ideas in a database of 5 million books from across centuries. Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel show us how it works, and a few of the surprising things we can learn from 500 billion words.'

3- Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK it is by Chip Kidd

Ever stopped mid‑aisle to examine an exciting book cover? Chip Kidd has. In his TED2012 talk, Kidd explains how he turned his love of reading and graphic design into a career designing some of the most interesting book covers in bookstores today

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Must Watch TED Talks on The Power of Reading Books

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August, 2015 Books hold a deep magic, an empowering spell that once cracked open could illuminate the entire universe of the self. Books are semiotic representations of wisdom, power, authority and intellectual prowess. From the dawn of time till today, 'people of letters' or 'knowledgeable folks' have always been revered in their societies and when they speak people listen to them.

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A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet: Tips for End-of-the-Year Library Obligations

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A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet: Tips for End-of-the-Year Library Obligations

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Oh, it's that time again. Time to collect the late books. Time to chase after students for overdue fines. Time to assess everything that went on this year in the school library.

I'm not a fan of being the bad guy, but one has to be in order to teach our students about being responsible. I haven't been as successful as I would like, but I have always managed to clear my list by the end of the school year. ( Personally, I would LOVE not to have to charge fines, but with budget issues as they are, our library needs the money.)

Here's the catch about teaching responsibility: If a student loses a book, their parent pays for it. If a student has a late fee, their parent pays for it. It's been suggested that a proper payback would be for the student to work off their debt. I don't agree. There are many ways to solve this dilemma. ( Of course there are very special situations, like if there are serious problems occurring in the student's family i.e. illness, divorce. Use your discretion. )

Here are some tips on how to collect fines and overdue books:

1. Maintain a sense of humor. Losing your grip will only stress you out. It is not worth it. What's the name of the book series? Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. Perhaps your signs could take on a message which is delivered using humor? Here are two I created; one uses humor and the other one is very basic and to the point:

I found these funny signs on the Internet. Not sure I'd use some of them, but they ARE funny.

Here is a sign which is too plain and will not get your students' attention:

2. Be tenacious. I follow students to their classrooms and I keep showing up day after day until they either return a book or settle their fine. When they see you are not going away, they remember. It has worked for me just about every time.

3. Offer an incentive.
Here's a cute take on the Monopoly card from the Hastings-on-Hudson Public Library:

You could also try Food for Fines, where instead of cash, the student brings in cans of non-perishable food which can be donated to a local food bank.

Amnesty Coupons are also a good way to get students to settle their debt. Choose one day and see what happens.

Remember the show Deal or No Deal? ( Repeats of the show are currently on GSN) I found this idea in the Google book Tips and Other Bright Ideas for Secondary School Libraries, Volume 4 b y Kate Vande Brake :

4. Use operant conditioning.

Students need to understand that their behavior has a consequence. I have used class trips and the prom as an incentive for the collection of books. ( See my poster Do You Owe Us a Book or Fine?above which explains.)

5. When all else fails, call the parent. Sometimes it is difficult to get in touch, but be persistent. The chance is pretty good that the parent did not know that their child had an overdue book or fine.

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL THING YOU DO TO GET BOOKS & FINES FROM STUDENTS?

Please comment at the bottom of the post.

Now to de-stress. Here are some really funny cartoons about overdue books:

LIKE WHAT YOU SEE?

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Tips for End-of-the-Year Library Obligations

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Oh, it's that time again. Time to collect the late books. Time to chase after students for overdue fines. Time to assess everything that went on this year in the school library. I'm not a fan of being the bad guy, but one has to be in order to teach our students about being responsible.

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» INFOGRAPHIC: A Map of the Literary Genres

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» INFOGRAPHIC: A Map of the Literary Genres

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INFOGRAPHIC: A Map of the Literary Genres - Electric Literature

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According to the fine folks at Pop Chart Labs, there's a theory that genres exist for the benefit of bookstores and at the expense of readers. Similar to a Las Vegas casino, booksellers manipulate...

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Benefits of Reading Infographic | The Metamorphosis Journal

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Benefits of Reading Infographic | The Metamorphosis Journal

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82 delicious layers, 12 hours of work dedicated to those who adore reading and book. Feel free to share it, and if you wish to make a print of this for educational purposes, don't hesitate to contact me in order to get a free, print-resolution copy.

Some people asked for a print of this infographic. But, unfortunately, they had problems with meeting printing requirements. If you wish to have it ready in print, it's available here on Zazzle. You can change the size as it please you, but please consider keeping the text readable.

Cette infographie en français

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82 delicious layers, 12 hours of work dedicated to those who adore reading and book. Feel free to share it, and if you wish to make a print of this for educational purposes, don't hesitate to contact me in order to get a free, print-resolution copy.

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Top 10 Ideas to Promote Summer Reading by Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan | Nerdy Book Club

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Top 10 Ideas to Promote Summer Reading by Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan | Nerdy Book Club

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Top 10 Ideas to Promote Summer Reading by Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan

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When we were browsing through Time magazine, we came across this quote: "A recent study from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that the average American spends only 19 minutes a day reading; young people read less than ever, apparently, with people ages 25 to 34 reading eight minutes a day on weekends...

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Top Ten Things Lit Lessons I’ve Learned from Students by Arika Dickens | Nerdy Book Club

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Top Ten Things Lit Lessons I’ve Learned from Students by Arika Dickens | Nerdy Book Club

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Top Ten Things Lit Lessons I've Learned from Students by Arika Dickens

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As an elementary teacher-librarian, I instruct many students over the course of the year. More important, though, may be the lit-lessons I've learned from students. Over the last 10+ years, here are ten that stand out: Series are King "Where are the My Weird School books?" "Do you have Piggie and Elephant?"

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Posted by Margaret Robson Kett |

Monday 4 May 2015, 10:55 AM (EST)

Readers love to share what they're reading, and there are few pleasures for story lovers like being read to.

From toddlers on someone's lap, listening to a picture book they've heard a hundred times, to a full auditorium, hushed, listening to a writer read their own work, reading aloud is part of the lifelong human story journey.

As a librarian I frequently hear parents of primary school children lament that they miss the nightly bedtime rituals of book sharing - now that their child can read for themselves. But there's no need for this precious shared experience to stop.

Here are seven rewards of reading aloud:

1. Share the experience

Reading aloud brings an author's world alive for listeners to wonder and talk about together. Once a reader becomes confident, the act itself becomes silent. This is one of reading's pleasures. Reading aloud enables those spontaneous moments of a character's action or dilemma to spark the sharing of personal experiences

2. Relax and enjoy

Children may be emotionally ready for a story before they're able to read it independently. For example, many young people heard Harry Potter before they could read it for themselves. Stories shared in this way become part of a family's shared history. Hearing the story read aloud, by an enthusiastic and enraptured adult means that the mechanical difficulties are overcome and pure enjoyment can take over.

3. Technical support

Reading aloud at home supports formal teaching once children go to school. An understanding of how story works is essential to learning to read, and teachers appreciate a family interest in books and stories. Parents sometimes feel that they are not academic enough to scaffold their children's learning. 'What counts are genuine interest and active engagement,' says the Secretary-General of the OECD. Has your school hosted a Reading Aloud Night recently? Maybe you could organise one.

4. Get picky

shows children are more motivated to read for pleasure when they choose the books for themselves. This applies to what they listen to as well. Ask your librarian (with your child) for recommended titles. Read out the blurb and a sample page from two or three book to make your choice together.

5. Keeping it real

It doesn't have to be "fiction" to be great. Readers of all ages choose to only read true stories. Reading history and biography out loud is just as satisfying as a novel. There's a fantastic selection of Australian nonfiction for young readers to choose from.

6. Be opportunistic

Night-time might not be the right time to read. It's when everyone's reconnecting after a day apart, and sharing a meal and daily news, which is more pressing than the page. But perhaps encourage reading from screens in the kitchen or family room. Share aloud news, sport and opinion. Read out the program descriptions from the to encourage selective viewing. Save the book for a Sunday morning snuggle on the couch.

7. Let it speak to you

'Reading aloud' can be hands-free. Talking books are a great companion in the car, on holidays and for TV-free evenings at home. Many are wonderful narrations by distinguished actors. The has a wide selection, or check your local library's website for free downloads.

Reading aloud is supposed to be for pleasure, so don't be upset if that treasured favourite of your own childhood has your listeners bored and fidgeting. The story just may not speak to them, or may be best discovered on their own later on. I'm still getting over nobody else in my family falling in love with .

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Posted by Margaret Robson Kett | Monday 4 May 2015, 10:55 AM (EST) From toddlers on someone's lap, listening to a picture book they've heard a hundred times, to a full auditorium, hushed, listening to a writer read their own work, reading aloud is part of the lifelong human story journey.

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Where the Wild Things Really Are: Maurice Sendak Illustrates the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm | Brain Pickings

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Where the Wild Things Really Are: Maurice Sendak Illustrates the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm | Brain Pickings

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A dialogue in darkness and light across two centuries of magic and genius.

It is always an immeasurable delight when a beloved artist reimagines a beloved children's book - take, for instance, the various illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hobbit from the past century - but I have a special soft spot for reimaginings of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, which remain among humanity's most exquisite and enduring storytelling. The roster of notable interpretations is lengthy and impressive - including Lorenzo Mattotti for a retelling by Neil Gaiman, Andrea Dezsö for the little-known original edition of the tales, Edward Gorey for three of the best-known ones, David Hockney for an unusual vintage edition, and Wanda Gág's seminal early-twentieth-century illustrations. But the most bewitching Grimm interpreter of all is Maurice Sendak (June 10, 1928-May 8, 2012).

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the tales in 1973, exactly a decade after Where the Wild Things Are transformed Sendak from an insecure young artist into a household name, FSG invited the 45-year-old artist to illustrate a translation of the Grimm classics by novelist Lore Segal. Sendak had first envisioned the project in 1962, just as he was completing Where the Wild Things Are, but it had taken him a decade to begin drawing. He collaborated with Segal on choosing 27 of the 210 tales for this special edition, which was originally released as a glorious two-volume boxed set and was reprinted thirty years later in the single volume The Juniper Tree: And Other Tales from Grimm (public library).

To equip his imagination with maximally appropriate raw material, Sendak even sailed to Europe before commencing work on the project, hoping to drink in the native landscapes and architecture amid which the Brothers Grimm situated their stories. Aware of the artist's chronic poor health, legendary children's book patron saint Ursula Nordstrom - Sendak's editor and his greatest champion - beseeched him in a lovingly scolding letter right before he departed: "For heaven's sake take care of yourself on this trip."

That Sendak should gravitate to such a project is rather unsurprising. His strong opinions on allowing children to experience the darker elements of life through storytelling were rooted in an early admiration for the Brothers Grimm, who remained an influence throughout his career. He was also not only a lifelong reader, writer, and dedicated lover of books, but also a public champion of literature through his magnificent series of posters celebrating libraries and reading.

Complement The Juniper Tree: And Other Tales from Grimm with Sendak's equally bewitching visual interpretations of three other classics - Tolstoy's Nikolenka's Childhood in 1961, E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker in 1984, and Melville's Pierre in 2005 - then revisit his own darkest, most controversial, yet most hopeful children's book.

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the juniper tree: and other tales from grimm

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Where the Wild Things Really Are: Maurice Sendak Illustrates the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

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It is always an immeasurable delight when a beloved artist reimagines a beloved children's book - take, for instance, the various illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hobbit from the past century - but I have a special soft spot for reimaginings of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, which remain among humanity's most exquisite and enduring storytelling.

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MRA 2015 - Examining Illustration/Text Relationships

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MRA 2015 - Examining Illustration/Text Relationships

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MRA 2015 - Examining Illustration/Text Relationships

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Presentation slides from Kristin McIlhagga's MRA2015 presentation "Examining Illustration/Text Relationships in Picturebooks for Classroom Selection & Discussi...

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A Brief History of Young Adult Books | Blog | Epic Reads

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A Brief History of Young Adult Books | Blog | Epic Reads

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We pretty much breathe, eat, and sleep all things young adult books, but where did it come from? What's the actual definition? Let us break down everything you need to know about how YA came about!

Once upon a time, there was only adult books, and that sucked. But then, in the 1940s and 50s, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys helped paved the way for modern YA which began to blossom in the 1960s.

We put together this quick video to highlight young adult literature throughout the decades that help explain how YA lit has evolved to the massive, pop culture phenomenon it is today.

The Beginning

Many of the books that we now consider to be young adult texts were initially written for adults and only later categorized as YA. One of the first books to be written and published for young adults was The Outsiders and it still remains the quintessential YA book today.

1970s

YA lit blossomed in the 1970s, moving away from the traditional children's stories of previous years. In what is called the "Golden Age of young adult literature," authors published more realistic and controversial titles.

Novels published in this decade introduced hard-hitting topics such as death, sex, underage drinking, homelessness, and drug use.

Notable YA books of the 1970s:
The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart (1970)
Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks (1971)
Heads You Win, Tails I Lose by Isabelle Holand (1973)
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (1974)
Forever by Judy Blume (1975)
I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan (1975)
Gentlehands by M.E. Kerr (1978)
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews (1979)

1980s

YA lit continued to grow in the 1980s as more authors began writing for teenagers. The Sweet Valley High series became the first young adult book to reach the New York Times paperback best-seller list.

Some authors began experimenting with style and genre, giving variety to YA.

Notable YA books of the 1980s:
Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson (1980)
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers (1983)
Sweet Valley High by Francine Pascal (1983)
The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (1984)
The Baby-Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin (1986)
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (1986)
Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block (1989)

1990s

The horror genre persisted in the 1990s as the Goosebumps series became immensely popular.

But the early 1990s was also a darker time for young adult literature as less young adult novels were being published. Many feared the extinction of the genre.

But, a rise in youth culture in the late 1990s helped young adult literature swing back into favor.

Notable YA books of the 1990s:
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney (1990)
The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening by L.J. Smith (1991)
Goosebumps by R.L. Stine (1992)
The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)
Sabriel by Garth Nix (1995)
Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen (1998)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999)
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (1999)

2000s

In the early 2000s, different book awards (Printz Award, Edwards Award, Alex Awards) were created specifically to honor YA lit. At the same time, Twilight and The Hunger Games popularized paranormal and dystopian series that reigned supreme in the mid to late 2000s.
What are your favorite YA novels published in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and which ones are you excited to read in the future?
This is known as the Second Golden Age of YA. (Also yes, Harry Potter really helped usher in a wave of new YA books in the early 00s, but we didn't include it in this video because technically, it is published for middle graders, not teens! But that's super technical and we totally bow down to Queen Rowling.)

Notable YA books of the 2000s:
The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot (2000)
Feed by M.T. Anderson (2002)
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (2005)
Looking for Alaska by John Green (2005)
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (2006)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)

Now

Now we have new YA books and series being published across all genres. They tackle all types of issues and explore numerous new worlds.

Where will YA go from here? Who knows! But we can't wait to find out.

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A Brief History of Young Adult Books - Epic Reads Blog

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We pretty much breathe, eat, and sleep all things young adult books, but where did it come from? What's the actual definition? Let us break down everything you need to know about how YA came about! Once upon a time, ... Read More

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Top 10 Ways To Get Students Talking about their Reading by Tammy Mulligan | Nerdy Book Club

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Top 10 Ways To Get Students Talking about their Reading by Tammy Mulligan | Nerdy Book Club

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Top 10 Ways To Get Students Talking about their Reading by Tammy Mulligan

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My grandmother was a kind and gentle person who only spoke when she had something important to say. Although she didn't carry on lengthy conversations, her words were full of wisdom. As a young girl, I remember walking in the woods with her after arguing with my younger brother.

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Which books would make today's list of 100 greatest children's novels? | Books | The Guardian

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Which books would make today's list of 100 greatest children's novels? | Books | The Guardian

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Two events this week have set me thinking about what makes a great children's book and what a canonical list might look like in the early years of the 21st century. On Monday, as part of a widely appreciated feature on the rereading of children's books, SF Said asked seven writers for the ones they liked to reread. The results were as follows:

Philip Pullman:
The Magic Pudding. Anything by Arthur Ransome. Tove Jansson's Moomins.

Neil Gaiman:
The Narnia books. The Mary Poppins books. Kenneth Grahame's The Wind In the Willows.

Francesca Simon:
Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Half Magic by Edward Eager. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

Andrew Motion (former poet laureate and Man Booker prize jury chair):
Treasure Island and other books by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Erica Wagner (former Times literary editor and Man Booker prize judge):
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin. The Owl Service by Alan Garner. Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban. All of George and Martha by James Marshall. All of Maurice Sendak. Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Daniel Hahn (translator and chair of the Society of Authors):
Asterix.

Charlotte Higgins (Guardian chief culture writer)
The Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley.

Two days later, Robert McCrum and the novelist Kate Mosse sat down for a Guardian Live session on McCrum's long-running 100 best novels series.

Asked by an audience member which three books he would recommend to a family with two children aged eight and 11, McCrum suggested two novels which, "with a heavy heart" he had left off his list: EB White's Charlotte's Web and CS Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

His third recommendation was JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye which did make the list, now winding its way through the mid-1950s. It joins Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, and William Golding's Lord of the Flies as the only five of the 74 novels included so far that would qualify in most people's minds as literature for young readers.

McCrum argued that Alice in Wonderland wasn't actually a children's novel, while Mosse made the point that a dedicated children's literature was a relatively recent phenomenon. Her own father "thought it was appropriate to read King Solomon's Mines to me when I was five. It wasn't appropriate - it's all sex and violence - but what you have in that book is genuine excitement."

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Shia LaBeouf as Stanley and Khleo Thomas as Zero in the film of Louis Sachar's Holes. Photograph: Buena Vista/buena vista - handout

So which of the more recent books and writers would make the cut? Mosse cited Philip Pullman, Anthony Horowitz and Suzanne Collins as exceptional. I would include Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth and Louis Sachar's Holes.

McCrum cast an eye backwards to the extraordinary popularity of Kipling and Dickens, writing at a time when English literature carried the standard for empire and the fate of Little Nell was a national news event. "We have no-one remotely like that today," he said, "with the possible exception of JK Rowling."

Let us know your thoughts below.
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Which books would make today's list of 100 greatest children's novels?

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Two events this week have set me thinking about what makes a great children's book and what a canonical list might look like in the early years of the 21st century. On Monday, as part of a widely appreciated feature on the rereading of children's books, SF Said asked seven writers for the ones they liked to reread.

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20+ Rules of Storytelling You Should Know About ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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20+ Rules of Storytelling You Should Know About ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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A Wonderful Poster on The Benefits of Reading ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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A Wonderful Poster on The Benefits of Reading ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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February 4, 2015
Today I am sharing with you this wonderful infographic on the benefits of reading created by Raphael Lysander. You can use this document with your students in classroom to raise their awareness to some important facts about reading. For instance, did you know that a 6 minutes of reading can reduce stress by 60%? How about the fact that reading reduces stress more than listening to music by 685, walking by 300%, and playing video games by 700%?

Yes , these and several other facts included in the visual below are really mind-blowing and the important thing about this work is that it is backed up by references to books, articles and scientific studies. This infographic is also available in premium format that is Print friendly from this link. I invite you to check it out and share with your colleagues. Enjoy

(N.B: small typo in the title: benefits not benifites)

Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

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A Wonderful Poster on The Benefits of Reading

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February 4, 2015 Today I am sharing with you this wonderful infographic on the benefits of reading created by Raphael Lysander. You can use this document with your students in classroom to raise their awareness to some important facts about reading. For instance, did you know that a 6 minutes of reading can reduce stress by 60%?

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Back to school: Jackie French inspires children to read

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Back to school: Jackie French inspires children to read

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You visited the library, stocked the bookshelves. You read your kids a bedtime story every night (except when you were too pooped to stoop)

Then, somewhere between six and 12, your kids have turned from book lovers into "Why isn't there an Olympic electronic game event?" enthusiasts. School readers are left in school bags, to acquire the faint tang of fermented tomato sandwiches and mouldy oranges over the holidays.

Here is a secret adults rarely admit. Most books are boring. If they weren't boring I'd need a wheelbarrow each time I walked out of a bookshop, instead of carrying a mere one or two.

Here is another secret: school-books are even more boring, because they have been chosen for a purpose: to teach the kids to read, or expand their knowledge of literature and how it can be used.

"Compare and contrast six examples of descriptive writing" does not make a book more enthralling. (NB, please do not write to me and ask me for six examples of descriptive writing in any of my books. I don't notice descriptions as I write them, and hope you don't when you read them. Similes et al should be as unnoticed as the workings of your bowels.) Excuse the digression. And mention of bowels.

Unless the author is Dr Seuss, it is rare to find a book of short simple words that is fun. And even counting Dr Seuss, you won't find any books with the same complexity as the shows your kids watch on TV or even their electronic games.

Be honest. What did your kids watch these holidays? When I ask classes of eight year olds if they have seen Game of Thrones, at least two thirds put up their hands. No, I am not advocating Game of Thrones as anyway suitable for eight year olds, and they have probably seen it on a friend's pirated version. But no one ever says to kids "You can't watch Game of Thrones because you won't understand it." We don't want them to watch it because they will, with its graphic horror.

Now look at the books they read at school, or the simple books they are capable of reading to themselves when they go to bed. No wonder we lose our young readers by adolescence. Run Spot Run does not inspire anyone to race to the library for the sequel.

Last year I asked about 10,000 kids to put their hands up if they found books boring. At least 80 per cent did - but only when all adults' eyes were closed (Writers don't count as adults. We can ride dragons, too.)

So how can we keep kids reading? Simple. Keep reading to them, especially when they are just beginning to master reading themselves. Keep reading to your kids until they ask you to stop. (They may never ask you to stop. Dad still read to me over the phone when I was in my 50s, and I read my favourite books to him.)

Read your kids the challenging, exciting books they'll love, but can't quite read: Lord of the Rings, the Tomorrow When the War Began series, Rowan of Rin, or Harry Potter ... head to the library and choose at least six books together, then try them all, till you find a book your child is fascinated with.

And cheat, a bit. Leave the book open when you've read a chapter and you may find they read another half chapter themselves, just to see what will happen next, though they'll still want you to read most of it. But also offer kids books that are written for adults, too. By the time kids are between 10 and 12 years old they are ready to enjoy the types of books they'll read all their lives, including thrillers and romances.

By seven to 10 years old, kids can understand adult shows on TV. We don't say, "You can't watch that" because they don't understand it. We say, "You can't watch that" because we know they will understand it and it contains themes that are too confronting for them.

And keep reading to them when they are eight, or 18, too.

Last year I also asked "How many of you would LOVE to tidy your room if someone read you your favourite book at the same time?" Every hand went up. Every. Single. One.

"How many of you would read your parents their choice of book if they made your favourite meal?" Once again, all hands shot into the air.

We forget the joy of reading aloud and being read to, in this age when machines so often do it for us. About a dozen years ago, speaking to a prestigious boys' school's year 12 boys, averaging 2.5 metres high and profoundly sophisticated in the way 17-year-old boys can be, I asked the standard question at the end of the talk "Any questions?" (This can come half way through the talk if you forget the rest of it).

The most hulking male pointed to the copy of Diary of a Wombat that the librarian had perched among more, shall we say, mature books, behind me. "Could you read us that?"

I did. They giggled. They glowed. Hardly anyone reads great hulking males picture books. Or any books. Picture books are not less fun when you are 18. It's more.

We need to teach kids that there are two kinds of books: the ones you HAVE to read - i.e. a text book, school reader, or the manual for the computer or new oven (I really wish I hadn't lost the oven manual). There are books that Auntie Debbie gives you that you say "Thank you" for then donate to St Vinnie's as some other kid will love it. Then there are the books YOU love - the magic books that are so fascinating you want to read another straight away. Magic books turn kids into readers.

They may be funny, but they will also probably be longish and complex, because those are the richest worlds to dive into. A simple funny book is fun, but it usually doesn't lure you to another book. A movie tie-in will be interesting, but it is more likely to encourage you to see the film sequel than to head to the library to stock up on books to read under the bedclothes or in a fort of cushions where no one will disturb you.

Teach kids the six rights of readers:

1.You have the right to find most books boring;

2. You don't have to finish every book you start;

3. You can read the ending first;

4. Boys can love romances and girls the more technical extremes of sci-fi;

5. You have the right to adore a kids' book when you are 85.

6. You have the right to enjoy a book for adults (like the Complete Guide to Amphibians of Australia, not necessarily Fifty Shades of Grey) when you are 16 months old. (I've just read A Guide to Australian Mammals to my toddler grandson, for the umpteenth time. His choice, not mine.

But readers have a duty too. Read to your kids till they ask you not to - or at least when nobody is looking. Read to your parents when they cook the dinner, even when they are 85; read to the dog, because dogs never criticise how you pronounce "orgy" and most dogs love to be read to. Read to tired friends in hospital.

And if you want your child to be a reader, read to them.

Reading games for every age

* Under 2s

Make words out of spaghetti and slurp them up. It's called "eating your words" and a great way for kids who still explore the world via their mouths to learn 10 or more basic words, including their name. Stick to simple words for real things, like dog, if you have a dog, or eat me - words that have a strong meaning for your child. By the time a kid has eaten a word every day for a week, he'll know that word. After a year, he'll know 52 words. After two years, he'll have over a hundred - an excellent basic vocabulary.

* Three years old

Feeling words - young kids learn by touch too. Give children letters to feel. Make them out of fluffy material and paste them onto cardboard. Wrap wool in different colours around cardboard letters or glue fine sandpaper onto them.

* Four years old

Display words around the house. Write the names of things in your house (e.g. door, bath, bed) on cardboard. This is a great way for kids to learn what many common words look like before they try to read them in a book.

Print big, clear, letters in lower case, not capitals. Stick them appropriately around the house at child-height.

Now and then remove the cards and get your child to return them to the right places. Don't stress about this or make it too challenging and if it's too difficult for your child don't do it. But if she starts getting them right, cheer!

* Five years old

Tap words on the computer. Learning to read AND write at the same time combines the two hardest tasks you'll ever learn even if you become a neurosurgeon or an astronautical engineer. Learning to write via a keyboard is MUCH easier than handwriting ... and at eight or so you can learn calligraphy.

* Six years old

Teach writing while moving. Find a blank concrete wall outside. Use water pistols to write words.

* Seven years old

Turn the loo into a poetry studio. Stick them up with Blu-Tak. You can only paste over someone's poem after it's been there for six months, then it's fair go. Luckily, there's a surprising amount of wall space in a loo, especially once you can reach the ceiling on a stepladder. It really is the most interesting loo I know.

* Eight years old

Give kids recipe books - the ones with great colour pictures of each dish - and let them work out what they want for dinner. Kids will ponder all the hard-to-read ingredients to make sure that they don't include coconut or pumpkin or whatever they particularly hate. The reward is that they get to choose what's for dinner tomorrow.

* Teenagers

It's not helicoptering to be a book delivery service: "Tell me what you want, i.e. title and author, and I'll hunt it out for you." Have books on hand for them to read and magazines on subjects they enjoy. These magazines may well be aimed at adults, in which case rejoice, as they'll be expanding their vocabulary beautifully. Have this sort of reading around especially in the holidays or at weekends when they have time to browse.

And (in a whisper) keep reading to them, if they're not too embarrassed, especially if they are crook, but don't tell anyone. Not even Grandma.
Everyone
Read; to those you love; to those who need a story; for the sheer joy of hearing perfect sentences spoken aloud. Just read.

A passport to reading

Every night: read a story at bedtime.

Every dinner time: ask your kids what they're reading. And why they like it, or suggest ways they might find a book they like more.

Once a week: share a household chore like unpacking the dishwasher or tidying their bedroom - one person works while someone reads to them.

Once a week: visit the library together and hunt for books you might like to read. (You don't have to read them all!)

Every weekend: share what you're reading with your kids. Share an item in a newspaper or magazine or a text from a friend or an online article.

Every weekend: find a new way to share a book or a poem or a story. Get Grandma to read a story via Skype. Blu-tack up a poem in the loo. Read the dog a bedtime story. Tell the kids a funny story about your childhood, or their grandparent's.

Every week: lend a friend a book you love.
Jackie French is the Australian Children's Laureate 2014-2015 and Senior Australian of the Year 2015. Her book I Spy a Great Reader is published by Angus and Robertson.

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The perfect plan to get your kids reading | Canberra Life

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You visited the library, stocked the bookshelves. You read your kids a bedtime story every night (except when you were too pooped to stoop) Then, somewhere between six and 12, your kids have turned from book lovers into "Why isn't there an Olympic electronic game event?" enthusiasts.

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Reading Australia provides teaching resources for Australia's greatest literature and it's all mapped to the Australian Curriculum. Register for free today!

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▶ School Libraries Matter: The Changing Role of the School Librarian - YouTube

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▶ School Libraries Matter: The Changing Role of the School Librarian - YouTube

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NYPL Recommends: 100 Best Children's Books of 2013

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The New York Public Library recommends the best children's books of 2013 in this interactive guide.

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How Libraries are Advancing and Inspiring Schools and Communities | MindShift

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How Libraries are Advancing and Inspiring Schools and Communities | MindShift

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Two cities in the state of Tennessee, Nashville and Chattanooga, were highlighted in the report for their bold reimagining of what a library could be, and how their communities have responded in overwhelmingly positive and successful ways to the changes.

When Corinne Hill got appointed executive director of the Chattanooga Public Library in 2012, the city had just received a harrowing report on the state of its library. "It was a really bad report," Hill said. "The consultant came in and basically said the system was broken." Because the library needed rebuilding from the ground up, she said, the board was open to doing something really different, and she saw an opportunity.

At the same time, Chattanooga was undergoing a transformation. City leaders had recently provided the entire city with a one-gigabit-per-second Internet speed as a municipal utility, the first in the Western Hemisphere. Hill saw a great opportunity to leverage the brand-new "GigCity" to improve -- and expand -- the library.

"Having that kind of speed in a library is crazy-ridiculous-amazing," Hill said. With the help of grants and the library's operating budget, she invested in outfitting the downtown library with infrastructure to handle the highest-speed Internet, and then got to work on what they would offer.

The fourth floor of the library had historically been used as storage, but Hill decided to rip it all out and transform it into a space the community could use. "We emptied all of that [storage] out, and turned it into a raw space with all the appeal of a 1930s factory space, with concrete floors and everything that goes along with it," she said. "It's now a public space. If you've got an idea, you can develop it here."

Currently, the fourth floor is home to several businesses, including a wedding-dress maker who uses the space to cut out patterns, and a writer in residence. One of Hill's goals was not only to offer the high tech -- like a popular 3-D printer available to the public -- but the decidedly low tech, too. "We've got sewing classes, we've developed these popular programs about making stuff, which is a natural extension of the space," she said. "And we're now in the textile market! We brought in a loom and it's really popular. We're becoming where the community can come and make stuff. Yes, the gig is sexy, but this other stuff is very real, very much a maker movement."

And very soon, the fourth floor will be adding the GigLab, "a separate but inclusive gig-connected space designed specifically for gigabit-related experimentation and learning," according the . That level of connectivity, according to Hill, will create new opportunities. "Our job then will be to help the community figure out what to do when you got a gig," Hill said. "It's like back in the days when electricity was new. Once you turn the lights on, what do you want to do next? What do you do with all that electricity? We're doing the same thing."

Nearly 700 kids and teens per day pour through the library's second floor, which is dedicated to youth. Not only are kids enticed by the 3-D printer and video arcade, but they can also learn how to edit video using software provided by Mozilla, go to coding camp or lay down on the floor with a Chromebook and do research for a school project. Hill and her team have also joined with the online craft marketplace Etsy to help teens get their own Etsy stores off the ground. "When I was 14, I worked at a pizza place. Can you imagine if your first job can be your own shop?" Hill said.

While many parents and teachers worry that all the tech gadgets will draw students away from reading books, Hill said, she's finding that reality is the opposite: So many students now associate technology with school that they find reading print books pure pleasure.

Much like the missions of Nashville's Limitless Library and the Aspen Institute's report, Hill said she hopes to transform the Chattanooga library "into a catalyst for lifelong learning, especially in the age that we live in."

"Giving people access in a public space is a great use of tax dollars," Hill said. "We're not really expanding the role of libraries. It's doing what we've always done, we're just using different stuff. We are a place for the curious, for creativity, a place for learning, a place to experiment. It's always been the mission of the library. We're just using different tools."
Beyond Mobile Libraries
In Nashville, Mayor Karl Dean had an idea to "break down the walls" between the public library and the public school libraries. Dean, who is also a member of the Dialogue on Libraries group, noticed that technology changed how students received information in every area of their lives, but school libraries struggled to keep up both in the quality and relevance of the materials they could offer.

So together with then-Library Director Donna Nicely, Dean created the Limitless Libraries program, a way for public school students to access the entire public library catalog without ever having to leave school. Students can check out any material the public library has to offer -- including books, music and DVDs, but also iPads and e-readers -- through their school library, and the public libraries deliver the materials directly to the schools every day.

Beginning as a pilot program in 2009 with just a handful of schools, Dean can proudly say that Limitless Libraries is now available in every Nashville public school. The effects on the students and the libraries have been staggering. "Out of 28,000 students who have registered [for the program]," said Dean, "15,000 have used the public library for the first time because of Limitless Libraries. And circulation at school libraries has increased by 79 percent."

Limitless Libraries has also helped teachers, Dean notes, by giving students access to the millions of volumes in the public libraries, which means better access to quality materials for research papers and projects. And, above all, the program gives access to books and materials to many kids who can't afford them on their own, or have difficulty getting to a library from home.

Dean said he is a "big believer" in libraries, and they are far from becoming irrelevant. "People need to have access to computers, digital books and DVDs," Dean said. "Libraries are also gathering places for a number of reasons," he said, which is why he's building two new Nashville libraries, one as part of a community center inside an abandoned shopping mall. "They're tremendously popular, every community wants one, and the demand isn't going away," he said. "They'll play an even more important role in cities going forward."

Garmer said Dean is a "visionary leader when it comes to connecting and supporting the public library in the community," and a great example for the report. While schools are an obvious partner for libraries, she said, because they come out of different parts of the budget and are part of two different professional communities, their "silos" are difficult to break down. "When leaders step outside of the box and really reimagine what a library is capable of doing in the community," she said, "the new partnerships and collaborations will start to flow naturally."

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How Libraries are Advancing and Inspiring Schools and Communities | KQED

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Two cities in the state of Tennessee, Nashville and Chattanooga, were highlighted in the report for their bold reimagining of what a library could be, and how their communities have responded in overwhelmingly positive and successful ways to the changes.

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Love letters to libraries: Chris Riddell | Books | The Guardian

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Love letters to libraries: Chris Riddell | Books | The Guardian

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From his first adventures in reading, to the librarians who inspired him, follow illustrator Chris Riddell's graphic journey through life-changing books - exclusively for the Guardian

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Love letters to libraries: Chris Riddell

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From his first adventures in reading, to the librarians who inspired him, follow illustrator Chris Riddell's graphic journey through life-changing books - exclusively for the Guardian

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The Graphic Canon of Children’s Literature: Comic Artists Reimagine Beloved Childhood Classics, from Tolstoy’s Fairy Tales to Harry Potter | Brain Pickings

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The Graphic Canon of Children’s Literature: Comic Artists Reimagine Beloved Childhood Classics, from Tolstoy’s Fairy Tales to Harry Potter | Brain Pickings

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"Tales are powerful instruments and should be wielded skillfully," artist Andrea Dezsö told me in our conversation about her striking black-and-white illustrations for the little-known original edition of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Some of history's most skillful wielding of tales has refused to bend to the false divide between "children's" and "adult" storytelling - there are the Grimms themselves, of course, but also Tolkien, who vehemently believed that there is no such thing as writing "for children"; Maurice Sendak, who in his final interview scoffed that he has never written for children; Neil Gaiman, who opposes the idea of protecting children from the dark; Madeleine L'Engle, who believed that the best children's books ask questions that "disturb someone's universe"; and most of all C.S. Lewis, who elegantly eviscerated the notion that literature should treat children as a special species.

On the heels of the year's best children's books comes a magnificent embodiment of that ethos in The Graphic Canon of Children's Literature: The World's Greatest Kids' Lit as Comics and Visuals (public library | IndieBound) - the latest installment in an ongoing series of comic adaptations of beloved works of literature.

In this volume, fifty contemporary graphic artists reimagine such classics as The Little Prince, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Aesop's fables, Russian fairy tales, Harry Potter, and even The Diary of Anne Frank.

Series editor Russ Kick writes in the introduction:

Part of the appeal is my belief that "children's literature" can be great literature, period. Works meant primarily for children or teens are usually ghettoized, considered unworthy of serious treatment and study. But the best of it achieves a greatness through heightened use of language, through examination of universal themes and human dilemmas, and through nuance and layers of meaning. One sign of a great work of literature or art is that it can be interpreted multiple ways, that it remains ambiguous, refusing to provide clear-cut answers.

[...]

Children's literature is wild. It's often bizarre, grotesque, dark, and violent. It seems odd that many of these works are considered children's literature... Danger everywhere! Wolves, dogs, tigers, condors, thieves, wicked stepmothers, witches, giants, pirates, disease, Nazis... There's something about seeing a children's work fully illustrated sequentially to make the terror and weirdness that much more visceral, that undeniable.

[...]

We ended up with over forty adaptations and over sixty stand-alone illustrations that treat children's literature with the respect, daring, and verve it deserves. In a strange twist, we created a book that many people may think isn't suitable for children... They might be right. The book has obvious appeal for teens and adults, and maybe they're the only audience for a work that shows so many bizarre, upsetting, and nightmarish images. Or perhaps we should keep in mind something Sendak said in one of his final interviews: "I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence."

Here are a few of my favorites, beginning with British illustrator and Penguin book-cover designer Lesley Barnes 's breathtaking illustrations for the Russian fairy tale "Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf," which my grandmother used to read to me when I was little and which graces the book's cover:

American comic artist Lucy Knisley, who read Harry Potter when she was fourteen, reimagines the famed J.K. Rowling series:

Artist Dasha Tolstikova - the illustrator behind the heartwarming bibliophile tale - takes on At the Back of the North Wind by Victorian preacher and unsung fantasy pioneer George MacDonald, who influenced such storytelling icons as J.R.R. Tolkien, Madeleine L'Engle, C.S. Lewis, and more:

Children's book author and illustrator Karen Katz does a lyrical adaptation of Tolstoy's little-known tales for young readers:

Comic artist and illustrator Isabel Greenberg presents an appropriately gory take on Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinderbox:

Chicago-based artist and writer Caroline Picard adapts the tales from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book in an unusual visual sequence, where each story moves forward from left to right along a single arrow-line across multiple pages:

Illustrator Matthew Houston applies his singular style of visual psychedelia to H.G. Wells's The Time Machine:

Swedish cartoonist Emelie Östergren presents a wonderfully twisted take on Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstockings:

The Graphic Canon of Children's Literature contains many more treasures at the intersection of literature and graphic art. Complement it with the previous volumes of the series, then treat yourself to the year's most intelligent and imaginative children's books.
Images courtesy of Russ Kick

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the graphic canon of children\'s literature: the world\'s greatest kids\' lit as comics and visuals

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The Graphic Canon of Children's Literature: Comic Artists Reimagine Beloved Childhood Classics, from Tolstoy's Fairy Tales to Harry Potter

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"Tales are powerful instruments and should be wielded skillfully," artist Andrea Dezsö told me in our conversation about her striking black-and-white illustrations for the little-known original edition of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales.

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ReadPlus contains over 4,000 titles of books and films arranged under themes. It also contains links to author sites, reviews and teacher materials. The books range from picture books to adult fiction and are organised into different age categories. The lists are the source for several of our books.

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The UK School Library Association is committed to supporting everyone involved with school libraries, promoting high quality reading and learning opportunities for all.

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Recommend Display | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

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Recommend Display | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

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PM&C acknowledges the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and acknowledges their continuing connection to land, water and community. We pay our respects to the people, the cultures and the elders past, present and emerging.

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A Literacy Site with animated children's books, musical stories, stories written by children...

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A Literacy Site with animated children's books, musical stories, stories written by children...

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Lists of Great Book Recommendations from Flashlight Worthy

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Lists of Great Book Recommendations from Flashlight Worthy

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Lists of Great Book Recommendations from Flashlight Worthy

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Handpicked book recommendations, organized into interesting book lists. These books are so good, they'll keep you up past your bedtime.

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A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet: Simple Design Can Catch the Attention of Your Students and Teachers

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A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet: Simple Design Can Catch the Attention of Your Students and Teachers

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I am a creative sort; I admit it. I love design. Perhaps it's the songwriter/photographer in me, but I always make an effort to make my signs and forms pop. We all know know that people do not usually read signs, but when you make an effort to use simple, eye-catching designs, you have a better chance that your audience will notice. To illustrate this, I've done a few before and after for three different signs in my media center.

This is a simple sign to show students the URL of the media center's webpage.

I added a thick red stripe, our school mascot and a few sentences. Notice that the fonts are easy to read. No need for fancy lettering.

There is a lot wrong with the sign to the left. First of all, the font comic sans was used. ( See my posting "comic sans criminal") The text is not totally centered, and clip art from Microsoft was used. ( Microsoft has photo images which are not too bad)

This is the sign I made, using one black and white photo and a second color. Eye-catching, wouldn't you say?

Another simple sign with basic clip art. Ordinary, right? Let's see what adding a photo and little bold text can do to change the sign:

I took the photo and enlarged it to cover the width of the paper and added some bold text with a drop shadow.

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Simple Design Can Catch the Attention of Your Students and Teachers

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I am a creative sort; I admit it. I love design. Perhaps it's the songwriter/photographer in me, but I always make an effort to make my signs and forms pop. We all know know that people do not usually read signs, but when you make an effort to use simple, eye-catching designs, you have a better chance that your audience will notice.

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A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet: Huge Collection of Webquests and Webquest Resources!

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A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet: Huge Collection of Webquests and Webquest Resources!

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The model for the webquest (inquiry oriented activity done online) was created in 1995 by Bernie Dodge at San Diego University. Since its inception, thousands of webquests have been created, covering all school subjects, including social studies, science, language arts and much more. Whether you choose to design your own or use one created by another teacher, I hope this list with have what you are looking for.

WEBQUESTS BY SUBJECT and GRADE LEVEL
LANGUAGE ARTS
The 10 Most Essential Grammar Rules- grades 6-8

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

All Quiet on the Western Front Webquest

The Crucible Webquest

CSI: Lord of the Flies

Exploring American, British and World Literature- grades 9-12

Figure Out Figurative Language- grades 6-8

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: 30 Years Later- grades 5-6

Gatsby Meets the Press

Grammar Clamor

The Grapes of Wrath: What If This Happened to You?

Mrs. Sikora's Language Arts Webquests- grades 7-12

Of Mice and Men

Rockin' Webquests- language arts

Romeo and Juliet Revisited- grades 10-12

Shakespeare Webquest

Tangerine- grade 7

To Kill a Mockingbird Newspaper Webquest

Which Road Did You Take, Robert Frost?

MATH
Advertising Design Webquest- grade 7

A Creative Encounter of a Numerical Kind

Baseball By the Numbers- grade 5

Let's Go to the School Math Carnival- grades 6-8

Lions, Tigers and Bears Webquest Project- grades 6-8

Math, Who Needs It?- grade 7

New Library in Town- grade 7

Rockin' Webquests- math

Tessellations Webquest- honors geometry

A Well Planned Diet- grades 6-8

The Wide World of Soccer- grades 6-8

MISCELLANEOUS
Adventure to New York City- grade 7

Decisions, Decisions: A Career Exploration for Middle Schoolers

Know Your Neighborhood- grade 2

Journey to the Winter Olympics- grade 5

A License to Drive Webquest- teenage drivers-to-be

Le Maghreb- for 10th grade French honors

NASCAR Fun-grade 6

SCIENCE
Biome Zoo Design: A Scientific and Geographic Webquest

Cell Challenge- grades6-12

Dr. Digestion- grades 11-12

The Endless Surge of Energy- grades 6-8

Genetic Disorders Webques t- for middle school

The Machine Called the Human Body- grades 3-8

Organic Molecules for Life- grades 9-12

Periodicity- grade 8

Rockin' Webquests- science

Science Webquests- from TeAchnology

Snakes Alive- elementary

A Solar System Webquest

SOCIAL STUDIES AND HISTORY
All Men are Created Equal?- discrimination in the United States

American Presidents Online Adventure- middle school

The American Revolution- grades 9-12

The American Revolution: Was It Worth It?- 5th grade

Becoming an Immigrant- grade 3

A Black History Tour of Three Illinois Towns

The Boston Massacre: What Happened- grade 8

Bunker Hill Webquest

The Case of the Missing Trunks- explorer webquest

Children of WWII- grade 7

The Civil Rights Struggle- high school

The Declaration of Independence and Political Activism- high school

Egypt: Journeying the Nile River- grade 7

Exploring Peru- grades 9-12

The Fire Burns On

The Great Migration-African-Americans in the South in 1918; elementary

I Was Part of the Movement- Civil Rights

Inventors Who Have Changed the World

Knowing Our Native Americans- grade 2

Lewis and Clark Expedition- grade 4

Mesopotamia Webquest- grades 6-8

Mrs. Joiner's Cold War Webquest- 9-12

My Journey as a Colonial Immigrant- grade 3

My Life During the Civil War- grade 5

The New Roman Times- mythical daily newspaper

Organize an Andrew Jackson Museum Exhibit- grades 6-8

Parading Through the Industrial Revolution- grade 5

Political Cartoons for the American Revolution- grade 8

Relating to the Holocaust- grade 8

A Revolutionary Webquest

Rockin' Webquests- history

Social Studies Webquests- from TeAchnology

Starving Nations

Copyrights, Trademarks and Licenses- grades 6-8

Cybersafety Webquest- grade 6

Ideas for Technology: An Internet Webquest

A Webquest About Webquests- grades 1-2

A Webquest About Webquests- grades 3-5

A Webquest About Webquests- grades 6-10

A Webquest About Webquests- grades 11-12

WEBQUEST COLLECTIONS
Kathi Mitchell's Webquest Listing- by subject or by collections

Webquests from Nine National Museums and Galleries

Zunal- search by grade level, (K-College) and subject area

CREATING A WEBQUEST/ EDUCATOR RESOURCES
Create a Webquest- from TeacherWeb

Creating Webquests- from Webquests.org, Bernie Dodge's site

Education World- creating a webquest

Rubric for Evaluating Webquests

Use a Webquest Generator to Make a Webquest

Webquest Design Patterns

Webquest Format- takes you through the steps

Webquest Maker- from TeAchnology

Webquest Process Guides

Webquest Taskonomy

Webquest Template- Word document

Webquest Templates

Webquests 101- tips on choosing and assessing webquests

Webquests: Concepts and Definitions

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Huge Collection of Webquests and Webquest Resources!

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The model for the webquest (inquiry oriented activity done online) was created in 1995 by Bernie Dodge at San Diego University. Since its inception, thousands of webquests have been created, covering all school subjects, including social studies, science, language arts and much more.

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Essential Books for Kids and Teens | Common Sense Media

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Essential Books for Kids and Teens | Common Sense Media

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Best Books for Kids & Teens | Common Sense Media

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The absolute best kids' books, chapter books, and teen reads to help you raise a lifelong reader. Find recommendations for 2- to 17-year-olds.

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Story Starters - Story Stones - Children's Books Daily...

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Story Starters - Story Stones - Children's Books Daily...

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I am SO not a storyteller. I read books - I need a script. I admire storytellers immensely, but it's just not me. Plus I talk too much. If I were to hone my storytelling skills I might be unstoppable. So for me it's books.

But storytelling is a great thing to encourage in young children. Storytelling encourages imagination and creativity, increases vocabulary and helps communication and listening skills. If you quietly sit and watch a young child engaged in free play you'll often hear snippets of the incredibly complex worlds and characters they are creating. Very young children can sustain their stories and free play worlds over days, weeks, months...coming back time and time again to the characters and settings of their stories and making them more elaborate.

Storytelling though free play is also a way for children to make sense of their world, problem solve, and see the perspectives of others. Dan has had two rounds of back surgery this year...it's been a fun year. For months now PudStar has been playing and telling stories about babies who need to keep going to the hospital - babies with sore backs, scars and bandages. I realised the other day that her 'treasures' container was now a pills container and I watched her line up all her babies, give them all their medication and tell them to go to bed. Wasn't so sure about the 'pills', but she's obviously been watching, absorbing and responding!

As children share their stories with trusted adults or peers, they are sharing and exploring their own worlds...their experiences, fears, joys and passions. The response they get from their audience helps them to communicate and make connections with others. It empowers them, and encourages their creativity and imagination.

So with this in mind PudStar and I made some story starters, which I have always loved using when teaching early childhood classes. The idea for a story is often the hardest to find: story starters are prompts for stories - storytelling or story writing. In classrooms, teachers might use pictures, a list of characters and settings, or a piece of music to prompt ideas for a story.

Story stones are perfect with young children as they are durable and ridiculously easy to make, with just a few supplies - in this case from Riot.

You can paint the stones if you wish, and then it's a matter of drawing/painting characters, settings or props, and/or cutting out tiny pictures (Frankie magazine provided lots of our pictures). Then you simply glue and varnish. We used Mod Podge from Riot to glue and varnish.

PudStar was in charge of backgrounds and picture choosing, I was in charge of intricate cutting and gluing. Chickpea? She mostly just got in the way and got squawked at by Pud.

I also added to our pile some eggs shapes story prompts I made years ago when I had Year Two. The hundreds and thousands 'stones' are from 'Teal and Lime'. They are meant to be brooches or pendants but like them as stones. I'd like a whole bowl just of these!

When they are done and you have a lovely collection of them, the possibilities are endless. Here are a few things we've done with them:

Top Ten Ways to Use Story Stones

1. Take a bucket of them in the car. Children in the back can take turns pulling out stones and telling stories. The car is a time when I am captive and just have to listen to Pud...did I really just say that? Well it's 20 minutes when she has my attention and we might as well use it for storytelling!

2. Leave them around the home or classroom for free play. Not every session with story stones should be structured. Some of the best stories will come from times when a child picks up a stone or two and incorporates them into their free play.

3. In a classroom or group, choose a stone from a bag and tell or write a story about that stone. Help the child to identify if their stone might be a character in a story, a setting for a story, or a prop/object for a story.

4. Sort your stones into characters, settings and objects.

5. Use several stones to tell a story: a collection of characters, or a setting and a character.

6. Lay them on a desk, picture side down. As a child chooses a stone to flip over, incorporate the picture into a story...great for plot twists. This can be a group or individual activity.

7. Give a bag of story stones as a gift to a friend.

8. Create sets of story stones about themes...a set of fireman and rescue worker stones or some schoolyard stones - which would be perfect for exploring and problem solving schoolyard issues.

9. Draw 'sets' for your stones. Have children draw or find pictures of a beach, a stage, a fantasy castle and use the stones to tell the story that is happening in the setting.

10. Actually I can't think of another way right now...post me an idea in the comments section! How slack am I?!

The titles of each book takes you to the Australian based online bookstore Booktopia. You can also compare prices on Fishpond and Bookworld for Australian purchases. If you live in the US or would prefer to use Amazon click here. If you live in the UK or would prefer to use Book Depository click here. Purchases clicked through from the Children's Books Daily site result in a small commission. Commission is used in part to maintain Children's Books Daily and to support community groups which connect children with books.

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Story Starters - Story Stones - Children's Books Daily...

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Story Starters - Story Stones I am SO not a storyteller. I read books - I need a script. I admire storytellers immensely, but it's just not me. Plus I talk too much. If I were to hone my storytelling skills I might be unstoppable. So for me it's books.

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Motivating Students to Read | True Blue Librarian

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Motivating Students to Read | True Blue Librarian

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Getting Graphic: Introducing Graphic Novels to the Classroom – Resources and Inspiration | ResourceLink

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Getting Graphic: Introducing Graphic Novels to the Classroom – Resources and Inspiration | ResourceLink

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Getting Graphic: Introducing Graphic Novels to the Classroom - Resources and Inspiration

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It is undeniable that we live in a new media age. In this age, literacy requires students to be able to make meaning from information in a wide variety of formats, one of the most prevalent being visual. The Australian Curriculum identifies the important role that visual literacy plays in contributing to a student's overall...

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Middle School Student-Parent Book Club – A Recipe for Success by Ann Hagedorn | Nerdy Book Club

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Middle School Student-Parent Book Club – A Recipe for Success by Ann Hagedorn | Nerdy Book Club

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Middle School Student-Parent Book Club - A Recipe for Success by Ann Hagedorn

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When you say parents, middle school students, books, and reading some believe that it equals a recipe for disaster. Well, a few years ago a co-worker and I decided to try out this recipe- we created what we called a parent-child book club (still hate the name, but we couldn't come up with anything better)....

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A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet: Guest Post: The Secret to Having it all @ Your Library

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A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet: Guest Post: The Secret to Having it all @ Your Library

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I've been a teacher-librarian at an elementary school for 5 years and this past year I absorbed the technology classes into my schedule. Struggling with how to manage a library, classes and over 100 laptops, I devised an experiment. I decided to Let it Go! I've always been a bit of a control freak, so I took a deep breath and looked for those areas that I could let go. I'm proud to say that I let go of my collection: overdue notices, shelving and collection development. I let go of the bulletin boards and I let go of the book repair. Librarians are

superheroes , but even a superhero needs a sidekick. I gave my library over to my community, the rightful owners. By giving them ownership, they felt more invested and worked with me to keep everything running smoothly.

Here are a few things I did that may help you out as you look for more time in your work day:

Children as young as 7 can learn to check out their own books. Think about it, their moms are already training them by using the self-checkout at the grocery store. I pull one child from the class - you know which one - the eager beaver and I train him/her to use the self-checkout system, how to troubleshoot simple errors. Then s/he watches the others checkout. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. (I keep a checkout station running behind my desk so I can do manual overrides.) Will there be a few books not checked out properly? Of course, but it's a small price to pay for your time.

Check with your school district: chances are you may be allowed to have the circulation software on more than one computer. I placed my self-checkout station on a laptop, so I can easily relocate it, or gasp! take it into a classroom with me?!

A mentor once said to me, "Think of a book as a $20 pencil." This is my mantra. Books will come and books will go, relationships with the students are more important. Remember the ultimate goal of the library is to inspire young minds and to create life-long learners, not to squeeze a child out of his allowance. The relationships you form with students will influence their future feelings towards libraries and librarians. By all means, students should be held accountable, but there are kinder/gentler ways to do this without becoming a crazy book lady.

First and foremost the responsibility should lie with the child. Borrowing and returning books is an exercise in responsibility. My older students attach their email address to the circulation software so they receive overdues via email. Younger students write notes to mom and dad, asking for help remembering their overdues. After a reasonable amount of time, I reach out to parents via email or with the item's bill. I always, always give the option for the parent to purchase the item from Amazon in like condition.

I allow students who have a lost book to work off their fines, but only if they genuinely can't replace it. My rule of thumb is to have them work ten minutes of their recess time for 3 days in a row. Students vacuum, wipe down tables, sharpen pencils, and dust the shelves, etc. I allow older students to re-shelve books, make bulletin boards, and perform simple computer maintenance. After the book is "worked off", I make sure students know that their slate is wiped clean and that I do not hold a grudge, ever.

Collection Development - Let others Work for You!

I have a few methods for keeping my collection fresh. I keep a public Amazon wish list that I refer students and parents to if they'd like to purchase an item for the library. I place a special bookplate inside, honoring the student. I promote this list on the school website and Facebook. Also, I use Google Forms to collect lists of wanted book titles, including ISBN. Navigating between separate tabs in a web browser and cutting and pasting is an important skill for students to learn. If you've never used Google Forms, you're missing out on an invaluable classroom tool! Here's a simple form that you may use as a model.

I keep a running list on Follett Titlewave all year long of books that I may want to order. The collection development tool makes it simple to assess my collection weaknesses. Titlewave even suggests books to fill these holes. Another thing I do is survey the teachers every Spring and ask them where they felt the gaps in the collection were regarding their curriculum, again with a Google Form. One of my favorite features in Titlewave is the bulk search. If you read a great article in SLJ, you can cut and paste the entire article into the search field. It picks out the ISBNs and populates a list for you. Wow! Think about how easy it would be to copy the ISBN field from your book request Google Form spreadsheet in order to search for those books. Also, don't forget that your book reps can make lists for you. Just ask!

Library Organization: Dew-ey or Don't We?

Yes, the Dewey Decimal system is wonderful, but I decided long ago that my collection needs to be easily accessible, especially for my youngest patrons. I still adhere to Dewey, mostly. This past year, student volunteers labeled our sub-3rd grade non-fiction with E stickers for easy locating. Popular subjects (dinosaurs, animals, transportation) are placed in free standing browse bins for quick selection. Not only does this make it easier for kids to find what they like, but the real bonus is

that these books are easy to shelve! I also use foldable cloth bins from IKEA on the shallow bottom

shelves of my fiction bookcases for series paperback fiction. They fit so nicely! I label them with a

picture of the series, and Velcro to the bin. Also,I recently pulled out all my little readers and organized them in awesome IKEA that are pre-labeled!

Remember - there is no rule that says your shelving cart must be empty at the end of the day. No rule at all. I'm going to say it again. You can go home and leave things on your shelving cart! I've found that kids don't mind taking books from the shelving cart. In fact, if it's on the cart, it must be popular! I have a volunteer position that I call "Shelving Angel". Several parents who know how to shelve occasionally stop by when they have a few minutes and they shelve. No scheduling required. Some of them even shelve during the monthly PTA meetings that are held in the library. Parents feel needed when you leave them things to help with.

Book repair - 10 minutes is too long!

This was a tough one to let go of because I've always wanted to be able to save every book, but the truth is, that's impossible. I sat down and thought about how much my time is worth. I decided that if it takes more than 10 minutes to repair a book, it's time to replace it. I hack fix many of my books. Nothing is off the table, duct tape, glue, construction paper. My goal is to circulate those popular titles a few more times. A school library is not an archive. One caveat, I strongly believe that stocking your library with ugly books sends the message to students that they are not worthy of nice things. My goal is to repair items quickly, but nicely. Of course, if you find a brilliant and neurotic volunteer (student or parent) who loves the challenge of tipping pages into your Captain Underpants books, the 10 minute rule doesn't apply!

Pulling materials for teachers: - Get Them Involved

At the beginning of the year, I make sure my teachers know my preferences for requesting books. I prefer that my teachers know their way around the library and circulation software so that they can pull and checkout their own materials. Otherwise, I ask them to email me a list of titles through the OPAC. I have students pull these titles. I also make sure my teachers are aware that both our school district library and the public library will create book baskets for them within a two week window.

Displays and bulletin boards:

Students and parent volunteers can do these for you! Simple bulletin boards are the best. Have students write book recommendations, post student work, or tear apart some of those broken "Where's Waldo" and "I Spy" books for a quick bulletin board!

How did my "letting go" experiment work out? I'm happy to report that it was a smashing success. I had more time for lesson planning and computer maintenance. I had more time to investigate Google Apps for Education. I had more time to reflect and refine my practice. I ended the year with only twelve outstanding student books, out of 415 students. The ultimate bonus is that I have created a space where everyone feels needed and welcome. I love it when students walk through the library as a "shortcut" on their way to class, just to say 'Hi". That's when I know I'm doing it right! My next steps are to look for more places I can "let it go"!

Denise Cushing lives and works in Denver, Colorado

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Guest Post: The Secret to Having it all @ Your Library

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I've been a teacher-librarian at an elementary school for 5 years and this past year I absorbed the technology classes into my schedule. Struggling with how to manage a library, classes and over 100 laptops, I devised an experiment. I decided to Let it Go!