News Briefs
Staff -- School Library Journal, 11/1/2000
Take One Giant Step
Judy Blume Tells All
So You Want to be an Author?
That was the theme of this booth at September's "New York is Book Country" festival in New York City. The ever-popular Judy Blume, above, and writers such as James Howe, Rachel Vail, R.L. Stine, and Hudson Talbott, answered questions from young aspiring authors. The booth was organized by Blume and Bank Street Bookstore.
The Austin, Texas, Public Library's Terrazas Branch is the winner of the first annual Giant Step Award. The award, which was launched earlier this year by School Library Journal and the Gale Group, honors a school library, or a public library working in partnership with a school, that has made significant improvements in its service to children.
Although Elva Garza, Terrazas's manager, did not expect her library to win the award--a lot of other libraries are also doing good things, she explains--Garza is happy the library's outreach program is receiving recognition. By working closely with a local elementary school to register kids for library cards and by responding to a survey of the needs of the predominantly Hispanic community, the Terrazas Branch Library has attracted children and parents who had not traditionally used the library. In fact, says Garza, the number of people walking through the library's doorways increased by more than 100 percent during the past year. The Giant Step award, which carries a $10,000 prize, is the largest single award for libraries that serve young people.
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No, not that George W. It turns out our founding father, George Washington, was a prolific writer--and his diaries and digital versions of his sketches are now available online through the Library of Congress. The library released the diaries in collaboration with the University Press of Virginia and the University of Virginia. The President's diaries run from 1748 until the day before his death. To view the diaries, go to the American Memory Collection at www.loc.gov.
E. B. Who?
Maybe New York's Republican Governor George Pataki simply was not paying attention. Whatever the case, Pataki made a major faux pas shortly after a Hillary Clinton-Rick Lazio Senate debate in October. During the debate, Clinton made a reference to E. B. White's definition of a New Yorker. Afterward, in trying to put his spin on the face-off, Pataki denounced "Wyatt" as a literary type whom no real New Yorker would have heard of. Spokespersons from the Pataki camp later said that the governor actually had read White's Charlotte's Web to his children.
Don't Call Him Cyperpop
The "Live Free or Die" state has truly entered the Internet age. In a recent lawsuit, a father of four children in the Exeter, NH, school district is demanding that the district release to the public computer files that track students' Internet usage. Jonathan M. Knight wants the files released in concurrence with New Hampshire's Right-to-Know law. Knight says that he wants to protect his children, who are now enrolled in private schools, from stumbling across harmful Web sites that they might encounter as a result of the district's liberal policy of adult supervision and spot-checking. (In 1998, the school district opted not to use blocking or filtering software.) A decision is expected some time in early winter; a one-day trial held in mid-September directed both sides to submit additional files and briefs by late September.
What's New
Kim Ford, the librarian at Cypress Junior High School in Memphis, TN, is the new editor of "Student to Student," a monthly column in Voices from the Middle, a journal of the National Council of Teachers of English. The column features a collection of student book reviews from around the country, designed to help teachers know which books students might like to read.
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