I confess. I love reading series. I love reading lists. I love reading the Top Ten of about anything. So when Usborne books shared with me their new series Conspiracy 365 that produces one new book every month, I couldn’t help myself. I had to begin reading.  Publisher’s Info:  Don’t blink. Don’t forget to breathe. [...]

Ever cover a class for another teacher at the last minute? End of the day, no lesson plans, no activities, no term projects coming up, no notice, just suddenly a large number of teens in the library with nothing to do and who are tired of working all day? What do you do? You and [...]

Erased by a Tornado! by Jessica Rudolph. Bearport, 2010. ISBN 9781936087525 April 4-10 was Tornado Week yet last weekend was the wild one in the South.  Thanks to the Weather Channel’s emailing me during Tornado week, I could pull materials and activities for interested students. Try out their interactive tornado simulator. While I haven’t been blogging about [...]

Ever want to get involved in an association (like ALA), but there were barriers? I want you to try out this google form and tell me all about it. For some reason, the form shows up all the way down below here so you need to just keep arrowing down. RATS!  . . . . . [...]

#64 I am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak  Quote from one of the nominators: The cryptic messages in this book keep the reader engaged; the book is positive and uplifting without being the least bit hokey. The ending took me totally off guard! Publisher’s Description: Awards:  Reviews and Recommendations:  Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, SLJ review, TeensRead.com, [...]

Today I read this good news in the April 2010 issue of the Family News—the monthly newsletter from Army Community Service (ACS) and ArmyOneSource.com: DoD Opens Access to Social Media Sites All users of unclassified computers in the .mil domain will now be allowed to access social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, subject to local [...]

I’m trying to recall all the videos I’ve seen of various author award acceptance speeches – events like last year’s Printz and Nonfiction awards where there were a mix of authors present and those accepting via video. Thanks to Brenda Kahn I have the source of M.T. Anderson’s video acceptance speech: www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/printzaward/current_printz_winne.cfm  There were some other [...]

Trying to share this list with you humbles me. Although I have been trying to read every title on the list, I cannot get them read in a timely manner and still keep the blog current. Despite the huge number I books I read daily, you readers nominated some books of which I had never [...]

Susan Norwood shares her perspective on the book Read, Recommend, Remember for Teens: A Reading Journal for Book Lovers today. I have had to pry the book out of her hands several times just so I could tell you about it further down. Read what Susan says: I confess that I haven’t finished reading Read, Recommend, [...]

What will you be doing for National Library Week? Are you celebrating School Library Month every day? There are many resources available on the ALA website including PSA’s.  30 days of activities flyer. Check out the flyer from the AASL page. My 8th grade library club students who are bookfair managers have been pouring over this [...]