The Biggest Losers Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief - 10/01/2009
Dear Cushing Academy Parents: Soon, your child will have access to one of the most innovative secondary school libraries in the country. Over half-a-million dollars are being invested to transform your library into an interactive learning center with monitors providing news feeds, state-of-the-art computing, a cyber-cafe (with a $12,000 cappuccino machine!), and much more.
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Indianapolis Library Lands $1 Million for Early Literacy By SLJ Staff - 09/18/2009
Nearly 2,600 preschoolers in Indianapolis will get a head start in reading each year, thanks to a $1 million gift to the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library to expand its “Ready to Read” early childhood literacy initiative.
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Bill Gates Kicks Off Get Schooled Program By Lauren Barack - 09/17/2009
High school students have some fairly heavy hitters behind them, with the launch of Get Schooled—a five-year program designed to help kids not just do well in class, but also graduate.
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ALA Seeks Library Funding in "Race to the Top" Grants By Rocco Staino - 09/01/2009
The American Library Association (ALA) wants school libraries get their share of federal funds from the Obama Administration’s new “Race to the Top” education reform competition.
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The Odd Couple: An Interview with Author-Illustrator Jerry Pinkney By Rick Margolis - 09/01/2009
You’ve won five Caldecott Honors and five Coretta Scott King Awards. But a lot of folks are saying this is your best book yet. You often hear authors and artists say, “I respond to and I’m inspired by the child within me.” And a lot of my career was about that. I was reaching down to find that part of me that spoke not only about my childhood but what I thought about chi...
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As Goes California: A Flawed Initiative Could Become a Fabulous Opportunity Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief - 09/01/2009
Digital textbooks, once the playthings of a few Arizona high schools, are suddenly looking like they might become commonplace. And that could end up being a great thing for school librarians and, more importantly, students. Back in May, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the Free Digital Textbook Initiative, which would make open-source textbooks—for now just in science a...
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Ready, Set, Go! Storytime Can Help Children (and Parents) Become Kindergarten-ready. By Renea Arnold and Nell Colburn - 09/01/2009
On these early autumn days, in communities big and small, kindergarteners are stuffing backpacks with colored markers, glue sticks, tissues, and sometimes a favorite book or stuffed animal. Getting ready to start school requires so much preparation that it often eats up the last few weeks of summer. But as we know, preparing for kindergarten entails a lot more than one month of gathering suppli...
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Join Celebrities, Communities in the “What Book Got You Hooked” Campaign By SLJ Staff - 08/10/2009
What book left a lasting impression on you as a kid? For actor Morgan Freeman, it was Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. For singer Patti LaBelle, it was Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, and for Newbery-award-winning author Kate DiCamillo, it was Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. More
Sticky Standards: AASL requires permission to use 21st-C standards sparking backlash Lauren Barack - 08/01/2009
The American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) decision to require permission—and potentially a fee—to commercially use its Standards for the 21st-Century Learner (bit.ly/lWd9B) has generated ire among its members. “At first I was annoyed, but now getting mad,” posted librarian Beth Frise on Twitter.
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Met Any Good Authors Lately? Classroom author visits can happen via Skype (here's a list of those who do it for free) By Kate Messner - 08/01/2009
At 7:25 am on the last day of school, five avid fifth-grade readers hustle into the library of Chamberlin School in South Burlington, VT. They shrug off backpacks and pull out advance copies of The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z, my middle-grade novel about a Vermont girl who’s convinced her school leaf collection project is ruining her life.
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The Equal Opportunity Disorder: Autism is on the rise, and it can affect any family. Here's what you need to know. By Debra Lau Whelan - 08/01/2009
Marco Robertiello arrived on schedule in October 2000, weighing in at five pounds, seven ounces. Apart from being a little underweight, he had a near-perfect Apgar score, and by the looks of things, the brown-haired, brown-eyed newborn was healthy. In fact, everyone thought Marco was a perfect baby. He was quieter than most and didn’t need much attention.
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Literacy Focus for Library Grants By Lauren Barack - 07/24/2009
Libraries with a focus on family literacy now have three $10,000 grants to help them keep their programs flourishing.
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Baseball’s Kevin Youkilis Goes to Bat for Young Readers By Rocco Staino - 07/09/2009
Kevin Youkilis, an all-star first baseman with the Boston Red Sox, is going to bat for young readers with his Hits for Kids, an organization that hopes to collect 100,000 new or gently used books for Boston’s public school libraries over a two day period.
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Model Behavior: Children (and Adults) Often Learn Best by Seeing and Doing By Renea Arnold and Nell Colburn - 07/01/2009
Watching our Commander-in-Chief read Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins, 1964) at the White House Easter Egg Roll gave us chills, even though we had to experience it vicariously on YouTube. We had often heard the new president suggest to parents that they “turn off the TV and read to your child.
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Nation’s Report Card: 17-Year-Olds See Few Reading and Math Gains By SLJ Staff - 04/29/2009
The average test scores of 17-year-olds in reading and math haven’t changed much since the early 1970s, but kids ages 9 and 13 have seen significant gains in both areas, says the lastest report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
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Wyoming Librarian Develops Curriculum Comparing Holocaust to U.S. Indian Genocide By Rocco Staino - 04/29/2009
How does a librarian teach the Holocaust to middle school children of the Shoshone Native American tribe? That was the challenge faced by Robin Levin, director of Wyoming’s Fort Washakie School/Community Library and Technology Center, located on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
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