I’m tuning in at 8:00 tonight to the TL Cafe discussion titled Rock Star Advocacy, presented by Jennifer LaGarde (AKA Library Girl).  I’ll update this post later with my reflections on it!

Helen Fellers, Coordinator at the SC Center for Children’s Books and Literacy located at the South Carolina State Library, regularly recommends new (and  sometimes not-so-new) titles that are great for kids! 

Until now, you needed access to YouTube – unfortunately blocked at many schools - to see her booktalks.  Streamline SC to the rescue!  Click here for details on how to locate Reading Rooster Recommends videos via Streamline SC.

(I got some good ideas from the August 31 video titled “Monkey Business!”)

November has been crowned Picture Book Month by a team of children’s authors and illustrators, and the official website offers a new essay each day this month on why picture books are important.  You can also find ideas for picture book activities and suggestions on how to celebrate.

I’ll be working on my own essay this month describing why I think picture books are important.  (Watch for it on November 20.)  I hope you’ll share your thoughts on picture books, too!

About a week and a half ago, I wrote a post about a new October tradition Neil Gaiman is spearheading called All Hallow’s Read.  Basically, you celebrate All Hallow’s Read by giving someone the gift of a scary book.

I’m quite enthusiastic about giving books as gifts, so next week I’m going to gift one of my blog readers with a copy of book one in the Skullduggery Pleasant series, Sceptre of the Ancients.  I personally LOVE this book!  It’s a delicious cocktail of fantastic magic, nasty villains, and dry humor, shaken well with action and topped off with a twist of plot.  It works for adults, YA, middle schoolers, and (upper) elementary kids; and there are lots of sequels (the author, Derek Landy, just published book six) for those of us who can’t get enough!

If you’d like a chance to win, just leave a comment on this post.  You don’t need to provide your mailing address (I can get that from the winner later), but I am curious about who is reading the blog: your title or position, geographical location, what type of students you work with, etc., and I’d also appreciate any feedback you’d like to give.

Then, at the stroke of midnight on October 31, I will consult the spirits for the name of the winner.  Wow, that sounded really dramatic, didn’t it!  But it would actually be more practical if I just closed the comments at 6:00 pm on October 31 and then used a random number generator to determine the winner.  Meanwhile, enjoy a preview of Sceptre of the Ancients. 

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

If the “Browse Inside” doesn’t work (apparently it sometimes does, sometimes doesn’t) you can click here to sample it at Google Books.

Happy All Hallow’s Read!
 
Update 11/1/11: Since there were no comments (other than my own) I don’t have a winner to announce. Better luck next time!
 

All Things Considered, the NPR news program, is starting a book club for public radio listeners age 9-14 called the Backseat Book Club.

They’re kicking things off with The Graveyard Book, an appropriate choice in that it’s a fitting story for the month of October, and it’s both well-written and well-read by Neil Gaiman.  The NPR article is short on details (what day(s) and time(s) to listen, for example), and the link to the book club’s main page is broken, so I’ll update this post as I find out more.

And by the way, I chose to show the book cover without the Newbery medal, because it makes it much easier to see the boy’s profile in the side of the tombstone.  Yes, the gold sticker fits perfectly there, but it does rather obscure the optical illusion a bit.

Please take a moment (okay, a few minutes – it’s long) to read this post from the AASL blog.  More action is needed to get school libraries into the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) bill.  SKILLS only has 5 co-sponsors (none from S.C., for those who were wondering) which means it is vulnearable to being cut from the final bill.

Basically, we need to continue calling, writing, faxing, and emailing our senators to let them know this is important.

It only takes a few moments to call the senate switchboard, ask for your Senators’ offices, and leave the message:  SUPPORT SCHOOL LIBRARIES IN ESEA!  OUR COUNTRY’S STUDENTS PERFORM BETTER IN SCHOOLS WITH SOLID SCHOOL LIBRARY PROGRAMS.

Click here to look up the contact information for your elected officials.

Update:  I forgot to include this quote from the article, which really surprised me when I read it:

Unfortunately, we have not had great support from the education unions and from other K-12 organizations.  We are competing with everything from literacy coaches to classroom teachers – even though we know that school librarians are both of these.  In the present political environment and the challenging budget climate, we have to cling to survival for our school libraries and, more importantly, the students they serve. 

Somehow I guess I expected that other professional education organizations “get” how important our school libraries are, and were fighting hard for us teacher librarians as well as for classroom teachers.  They aren’t.  It’s up to us to band together and speak out for our programs and our students.

I always like to share something fun on Saturdays, so today I encourage you to take a look at the Awful Library Books blog. 

This site is a collection of library holdings that we find amusing and maybe questionable for libraries trying to maintain a current and relevant collection.  Contained in this site are actual library holdings.

Be sure to read the comments; often they are just as much fun as the entries! 

They say the first step is admitting you have a problem.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the new Delicious interface, and if you read it you already know that I wasn’t thrilled.  The site looks different, and some of the features have changed, and there’s some new terminology to learn.

Did you catch those key words?  New.  Different.  Change.  Oh, how many times have we shaken our heads in pity over our less-enlightened colleagues who bemoan these very things?  (tsk tsk tsk)  I thought I was above all that.

The day after I posted my reaction, I read Delicious Stacks by Joyce Valenza at her Neverending Search blog.  (Go ahead, take a moment to read it; then meet me back here.)

As you can see, Joyce immediately embraced the positive aspects of the new Delicious and began using it with her students.  She didn’t waste any time freaking out over the unfamiliarity of it; she just plunged right in and made it work for her.  That’s why she’s Joyce Valenza and I’m just me.

So I’m taking this lesson in keeping an open mind to heart, and I’ll remember my own feelings of resistance next time I’m sharing a new way of doing something with an apprehensive teacher.  I think Joyce would approve.

School Library Journal and Orca Book Publishers are sponsoring a live webcast today from 3:00-4:00.  Reaching More Readers – The Book and Beyond will discuss not only high-interest books, but also new technologies and approaches that can help reach reluctant readers.

If you can’t be there live, you can still register anyway to have a link to the archived broadcast emailed to you once it becomes available.

This Week’s WWW (Weekly Wednesday Website) is…..

PBS Learning Media provides access to thousands of digital resources, including videos and interactives that work great on an interactive whiteboard, audio clips, photos, and even lesson plans (which include handouts, scoring rubrics, and Common Core Standards!) for grades k-12.

The site is searchable by grade level, subject, and resource type, and when you register and login required after 3 resource views) you can save your favorite resources.  Use the Help Guide, or just jump right in!