News and Issues for K-12 education from School Library Journal
Obama’s Pick for Secretary of Education Supports School Libraries By Debra Lau Whelan - 12/16/2008
Arne Duncan, the man President-elect Barack Obama has tapped as secretary of education, spent the last seven years as CEO of Chicago Public Schools—and during that time he’s shown solid support for school libraries. More
Crisscrossing the Globe: A world of international books for young people By Elizabeth Poe - 02/01/2010
2010 marks the fifth year the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) has selected an honor list of international books. Once again, titles on the list crisscross the globe. They have been published in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, India, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
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Digital Resources: Early Learning Made Easy By Shonda Brisco - 01/01/2010
Finding new tools to meet the educational needs of early childhood educators and their students can be a difficult task. With hundreds of toys, games, and software programs available for instruction, it becomes a major research project to identify the best resource for an individual child, along with a measurable outcome.
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SLJ Reviews the AVerPen Starter Pack Collaborative Classroom Tool By Jeffrey Hastings - 01/01/2010
AVerPen systems aspire to combine the functionality of an interactive whiteboard with the mobility of wireless tablets and the real-time, formative assessment capabilities of classroom response (clicker) systems. The expandable starter pack includes a teacher pen and four student pens. The teacher pen is connected, via a USB cradle that both charges it and receives RF signals from all the pens,...
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Future Shock: It takes five magazines to figure out tomorrow By Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief - 01/01/2010
About a year ago, when I was at the American Library Association’s midwinter meeting in Denver, I joined the editors of some of the other school librarian magazines for drinks (I only had a diet Coke!) and dinner. Around the table were gathered Debbie Abilock (Knowledge Quest), Gail Dickinson (LMC, Library Media Connection), Deb Levitov (School Library Monthly), and David Loertscher and B...
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Humor Us: Fun and laughter are essential to children's lives By Renea Arnold and Nell Colburn - 01/01/2010
The desire to be with people who laugh or make us laugh must be universal. In our office, we’re fortunate to have our own resident giggle bug. At 16 months old, our colleague Martha’s little guy laughs at the drop of a hat. It’s such fun to hear Kieran laugh that when he comes into the office, we all compete to see who can make him laugh first.
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Videos, Games Help Preschool Literacy, Study Says By SLJ Staff - 12/01/2009
Do videos and interactive games help kids better prepare for kindergarten? According to a new study, low-income children in preschool classrooms improved their literacy skills when their teachers incorporated video and online technology into the curriculum.
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Miami-Dade Public Library Helps Kids With Reading Readiness By Lauren Barack - 11/23/2009
The Miami-Dade Public Library System (MDPLS) has a kicked off a new program that equips each of its 49 branches with brochures, bookmarks, and even laminated placemats covered in nursery rhymes that allow librarians to wrap the wonder of reading and early childhood literacy skills into freebies that bring those lessons home.
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Practically Paradise Diane Chen, Librarian, Hickman Elementary School, Nashville, Tennessee March 6, 2007 The Perfect School Library
Welcome to the first posting of this new blog for SLJ. I appreciate the simplicity of... More
2009 National Book Awards On the red carpet with nominees in the Young People's Literature category.
Photos by Rocco Staino.
SLJ Covers 2009 A bigger and better view of SLJ's covers from 2009
BookExpo America 2009: SLJ's Day of Dialog School Library Journal held a Day of Dialog in conjunction with the annual BookExpo America on May 28, 2009 at the Brooklyn Public Library. Full story: bit.ly/1a0G7o
Rockin’, Rollin’ and Ridin’ with Rebecca Frezza & Big Truck. CD. 23 min. Prod. by Big Truck Music. Dist. by CDBaby.com. 2009. $8.99.
Gr 1-5–A veteran of Noggin Channel and PBS Kids, Frezza created these eight exceptional rock ‘n roll songs for elementary grade children who are too old for Raffi, but not old enough for adult pop music.
Friends and colleagues of the late Effie Lee Morris may enjoy this photo of the children's librarian, which Nicholas Glass, founder and executive director of Teachingbooks.net, recently found on his computer. It was taken at the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, and features (from left) Ashley Bryan, Christopher Myers, and Morris, also an advocate for children's literature and library service to youngsters with impaired vision, who died of cancer on November 10, 2009.
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Rockin’, Rollin’ and Ridin’ with Rebecca Frezza & Big Truck. CD. 23 min. Prod. by Big Truck Music. Dist. by CDBaby.com. 2009. $8.99. 
