Last year I attended Susan Bosak's workshop on Dreams in Nashville. This year the legacy project has a new event called "WEB OF DREAMS:  STUDENTS CAN GIVE OBAMA ADVICE." I wanted to be sure everyone saw this announcement and gave their students the opportunity to give advice to President-elect Barack Obama.

Adults have cast their votes. Now it's time for students to be heard -- by their parents and grandparents, by their teachers, and by the President-Elect of the United States. The idea of Legacy Project Chair and educator Susan Bosak, the Web of Dreams will enable children to send their advice to Barack Obama. The Legacy Project is also offering teachers a free online activity kit to help children understand the historic event taking place on January 20, 2009. The Honorary First School in the Web of Dreams is located in one of the m...Read More

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Wanting to find out more about Mike Graf and how he integrated informational material into his realistic fictional series Adventures with the Parkers, I contacted Mike by phone. I learned that you could invite Mike Graf to your school in late May and early June this year. Mike will be touring the National Parks as part of his new book tour and is setting his schedule now.  Mike's website is www.mikegrafauthor.com 

Mike currently has over 70 published titles that are mostly written for ch...Read More

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You might have overlooked Mike Graf's Adventures with the Parkers series  initially so I wanted to make sure you took the time to study them then to order more and put them in students' hands. Remember growing up and reading about exotic places? Most of us decided to either go visit them as adults or live vicariously through more books. With so much attention to videogames and fantasy worlds in the past decade, our students have not been exposed to the exciting adventure of touring our national parks. 
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Let me take a moment to share about my parents. They may not have anything materially (healthcare, income, savings, food) but they have so much to give of themselves.  Recently my mother was one of the volunteers who helped raise $50,000 for the Siouxland Sleep-Out in Sioux City, Iowa. Here's part of her story in the article:

One memorable story was that of Sue Ritts of Washta, Iowa, who was determined to experience homelessness despite no prior experience. She brought a very small thin-walled box for shelter and became unbearably cold. Two residents of Henry Muller Hall, with many years of actual homeless experience, recognized her problem and set her up in the third base dugout with an abandoned refrigerator box a...Read More

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Maria Peet wrote: I was reading your blog entry on how glorious it is to be a school librarian (Oct. 24^th), and it brought such mixed feelings that I thought I would write you – what do you do when the circumstances are not how you describe: “We have individual relationships with our students, staff, administrators, and parents. We have professional leadership roles.” 

I have positive relationships with kids, staff, and parents, but how do you change (or can you?) a situation where administration has a different, much more limited, view of your role than you do? I’m sure that I am not alone in being in a situation where there is minimal support for an expansion of the teacher-librarian from “the buying books, ca...Read More

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Jenny Schwartzberg from The Newberry Library wrote this great post on Child Lit and graciously agreed to share with all of you:

I wanted to ask you all to think about taking your Thanksgiving Weekend family and friends who are visiting your local town or city to children's book related things.  We talk about the importance of children's books, but how often do we take children and families to plays based on children's books or exhibits about children's books?  They are a great way to get children to enjoy these particular books and to share your own love of children's books.  Check your local newspa...Read More

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While I am not in total control of what happens TO me, I can control how I respond. So... today I am reading and re-reading monster books. Vampires, werewolves, witches, pixies, you name it. Good is going to triumph and evil is going to get what it deserves. 

One of those titles was an Advanced Reading copy of NEED by Carrie Jones. (Look at the cool countdown widget I found created by Devyn Burton) I would have reviewed it sooner, but teachers kept grabbing it from me to read. Since these were mainly English teachers, they returned the copy to me marked with any errors, notes on paragraph mistakes in the wrong section, etc. When I asked them to overlook that, they raved about the content and to...Read More

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When the going gets TOUGH, the tough put on lip balm.  That's because sometimes you just have to press your lips together and get through those tough times. Let's look at this weekend:

Friday morning we learn of the Nashville mayor's confusing proposal to merge public and school libraries - without working with the school librarians on this and faultily assuming we do the same activities/have the same collections. This happens while 400 Tennessee school librarians are meeting at the Tennessee Association of School Librarians annual conference to Be A Guiding Light @ your library and where advocacy gurus Debra Kay Logan and Sara Kelly Johns are speaking.

Friday night I learn my house has been robbed and my son's electronics (plus some hotdogs and pizza) were stolen. I learn how to conduct an investigation, how to interview neighbors, a...Read More

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Small town librarian left a comment for me in the post on Valuing My Time. I truly respect every librarian who has no budget and want to stand on my soap box to preach throughout the halls of administration because I know what you are talking about. I have taught in districts that gave me $500. My response wouldn't fit in the 7,000 character limit for comments so I'm opening the discussion up to others. I need each of you to comment on your budget situation so our community of readers has data. How much do you receive for books and media? Does it meet your needs?

I understand what you are talking about with budgets. I get horror stories from so many librarians about having no budget. It is important that you have a place to tell others about this. I would encourage all...Read More

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Imagine bookfairs done differently. Jason Johnson visited my school last spring to share information about Imagine Nation Books School Book Fairs. You might know the company for their corporate book fairs at hospitals and corporations. If you click through the About Us pages, you'll recognize their history in the industry. Now they are reaching out to more schools. Have you heard about them?

Key points Jason mentioned (but which could vary according to your local rep):

• They will have a team onsite to setup your event and will stay until its completion.
• Point of Sale System will be provided at each fair for those who want to use it. (Does that mean a cash register?)
• An amount of merchandise will be awarded to the school at each event simply for hosting the

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You librarians need to start valuing your time more. That's what Eric Fitzgerald from Capstone Press told me. We were discussing book processing and librarians' obsessive need to do it ourselves to have it perfect. 

Did you know that you can make special requests of vendors? You can ask them to stamp your books or put a printed label inside identifying your school so you don't have to stamp it. (Can you tell I don't like to stamp books?) You can request that vendors use their best judgments and create spine labels that don't wrap around. If the label needs to be printed sideways to fit, they can figure this out as well as you and get it done alot faster. 

Most vendors have people sitting there doing nothing but perfectly placing labels all day long. That sure beats how I pro...Read More

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Discover Big Cats arrived with its series sisters: Discover Bugs, Discover Sharks (written by by Monalisa Sengupta), and Discover Snakes (written by Sujatha Menon).

These Enslow Publishers, Inc. titles are part of the Discover Animals series intended for grades 5 and up. They are high-interest books for browsers and reluctant readers which fill the pages with information for research reports. The books arrived in the typical kind of publisher brown-envelope marked with the mysterious message "Do not open with sharp objects." I don't know about you, but my little hands are not capable of simply ripping apart c...Read More

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