What Will Happen In Teen Reading Groups? When BBYA was open to all books, library teen reading groups would get the nominatiions list as it evolved, and those books would make up the basis of their discussions. Fiction and GN lists may still be available, but since the NF is an award, its discussion list [...]

Here Is What I Know — And I Wish Some YALSA Officer Would Come Here to Discuss and Explain Luanne Toth at SLJ went to interview the board, so I am sure there will be a piece with some official clarification soon. But this is the word on the street. Why they felt some change [...]

Great News Terrible News Great: Nonfiction all over the place — Almost Astros wins the Sibert; Phil Hoose gets a Newbery honor and a Sibert honor for Claudette Colvin; Jim Murphy wins the Margaret Edwards; Deborah Heiligman’s Charles and Emma Darwin both a Prinz honor and the winner of the new YALSA nonfiction award. Wonderful. [...]

Awards? As I posted Nick’s links on CSK I was thinking it a bit odd for me to do so, since I had long ago critiqued the CSK rules — the requirement that a winner, or one winner in a team, be African American: tinyurl.com/yza4two And to add to the mix, this Monday, YALSA holds a [...]

Monday is MLK’s Birithday — Celebrated, as Well As Announcement Day for the Awards So courtesy of Nick Glass at TeachingBooks.net, here is information about a free resource linked to the CSK award The Coretta Scott King Book Award Online Curriculum Resource Center—a free, multimedia, online database for educators and families featuring more than 250 [...]

Cobblestone’s Picks — and Ours For their 30th anniversary, Cobblestone magazine decided to select its pick of the "30 greatest Americans" — defined as no longer living, and people whose most significant accomplishments took place here (in other words immigrant is fine, but Einstein becomes an also ran since he published his special and general [...]

As We Move from Text and Art to Book Plus, Which Kinds of Resources Belong On Which Platform? Downstairs my sons, ages 5 and 9, and an 8-year-old buddy, are giving up TV time to play on a Wii. After a day spent playing basketball, football, swimming — they could hardly wait to get to [...]

Don’t Mourn, Organize Joe Hill, the song tells us, urged working men (people) not to be sad that he had been killed, but, instead to band together, to fight for their rights. Well that is how I feel now as I work on creating multimedia enhancements to go with print books. The whole area of permissions [...]

"Authors," I was told when I first began working in publishing, "never go to Midwinter." The midwinter ALA conference is known as the working meeting — no glitz, no glamor, no celebrations and parties. In fact there was a certain monastic tone — a sense that important work was going on behind closed doors, and [...]

Of Blogs and Mock Awards The YALSA blog is featuring a series of interviews with the finalists for the new YA NF award: tinyurl.com/y8nycjq I see by my email inbox that  The Children’s Book Guild of Washington DC is conducting an online poll for the 2010 Children’s Book Awards: YALSA Nonfiction (new for 2010) is currently [...]