How about becoming a YA Galley Group? Intrigued but not sure what that means? Well, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) is seeking 15 teen book groups for the YA Galley Project, which helps determine each year's Teens' Top Ten nominees. Visit their Web site for more information.
TikaTok Turns Kids into Authors There's nothing like letting a child choose their bedtime story—and having one of those titles be their own.
Through the new site TikaTok, children can compose the mysteries, adventures, and fantasies bursting from their imaginations, post them online for friends and others to read, and even print the tale for their bookshelf at home. read more...
VIDEO/DVD Growing Frogs K-Gr 3–The croaking of frogs is one of the great sounds of warmer weather, but environmental concerns threaten the loss of that chorus.
AUDIO Uprising Gr 6-8–In this novel (S & S, 2007), Margaret Peterson Haddix steps back in history to present the fascinating story of three very different 15-year-old girls living in New York City in 1910.
America's sixth graders feel safer in school. Educational attainment is on the rise, fueled by the dramatic increase in the number of children aged four to six enrolling in full-day kindergarten. Performance on standardized math and reading tests among nine-year-olds has improved. And more parents are reading to their children daily.
A Darkling Plain ("The Hungry City Chronicles," HarperCollins), Philip Reeve's dark, post-apocalyptic tale of return to a London ravaged by war and radiation, has won the Los Angeles Times' 2007 Book Prize for young adult fiction, announced late last week.
In a second just-announced literary honor, The Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington’s Slave Finds Freedom (Farrar), written and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, has taken the top prize in the 2008 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards, in the category of Books for Younger Children. We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin (Calkins Creek) by Larry Dane Brimner has won in the Books for Older Children category. read more...
Fresh Approaches: Noteworthy New Editions and Reissues
Choose Your Own Adventure: 21st-Century Style
Librarians active during the 1980s and 90s will recall placing copies of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series (Bantam) in the hands of many a child…and often having them return, eager for more. In these edge-of-your-seat volumes, readers play the role of the protagonist, determining the course the plot will take by choosing one of several scenarios each with its own outcome. Between 1979 and 1998, more than 180 CYOA titles were published with sales topping 250 million copies.
The series has been relaunched by Chooseco, a Vermont-based publishing company founded in 2004 by R. A. Montgomery, CYOA’s creator, and his wife and copublisher Shannon Gilligan, author of several CYOA titles. Chooseco is releasing a combination of revised editions and newly published titles. read more...
The Board of Library Trustees is looking for a visionary, creative leader, who believes and models customer service - and is able to articulate this view - to fill its Director's position, soon to be open due to retirement. Cleveland Heights-University Heights is one of Ohio's best-regarded public library systems. The library has an annual operating budget of $8.5M, with specialized funds for staff development, building repair and technology; 107 FTE dedicated staff; collection of over 400,000 items; and circulation last year of over 1.8 million. read more...
To see all positions available through the SLJ Career Center, click here...
Gr 5-7–What was supposed to have been a reunion with Mr. Benedict turns into trouble for the four young heroes of The Mysterious Benedict Society (Little, Brown, 2007). 
