I got home late last night and caught the tail end of Rock Center, hosted by Brian Williams on NBC. The information about the show indicated that there had been a segment on an innovative reading program between a charter school and a public school in Rhode Island.

Today, I checked NBC's website and found the segment. The innovative aspect is the collaboration between the charter and public schools, not the reading instructional approach, which is being implemented in schools around the country.

It is always great to see teachers working together for the benefit of their students!
















The 6th Annual CYBILS (Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards) were announced on Valentine's Day. Winners included:

Book Apps: The Monster at the End of This Book

Fiction Picture Book: Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell

Nonfiction Picture Book: I Feel Better with a Frog  in My Throat by Carlyn Beccia

Easy Reader: I Broke My Trunk! by Mo Willems

Easy Chapter Book: Have Fun, Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke

Poetry: Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto by Paul B. Janeczko

Graphic Novels: Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke

Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright; illustrations by Barry Moser

Middle Grade Fiction: Nerd Camp by Elissa Brent Weissman

YA Nonfiction: Amelia Lost by Candace Fleming

YA Graphic Novel: Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

YA Fantasy and Science Fiction: Blood Red Road by Moira Young

YA Fiction: Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach



The new "100 Greatest Books for Kids" list has just been released from Scholastic and Parent's Magazine. Which book is number one? You guessed it, E. B. White's Charlotte's Web! Here are the next nine on the list:



Click on this link to see the full list.

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A few things that might be of interest...

The SLJ Battle of the Kids Books is gearing up for a 4th year starting March 13. If your favorite book didn't win (or even get recognized!) in the ALA awards, maybe this year's BOB contest will correct that oversight!

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has announced a new four-book series from author Lemony Snicket (a pseudonym for Daniel Handler), set to launch this fall. On October 23, the publisher will release “Who Could That Be at This Hour?”, first in the “autobiographical” All the Wrong Questions series, which will explore Snicket’s youth “in a fading town, far from anyone he knew or trusted.” “Who Could That Be at This Hour?” will be published simultaneously in hardcover, audio, and e-book formats, and has a one-million copy announced first printing.

Maggie Stiefvater's writes about her new series with Scholastic, The Raven Boys, on her blog. The first book in the series comes out September 18.

Each year a committee of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) identifies the best of the best in children's books. According to the Notables Criteria, "notable" is defined as: Worthy of note or notice, important, distinguished, outstanding. As applied to children's books, notable should be thought to include books of especially commendable quality, books that exhibit venturesome creativity, and books of fiction, information, poetry and pictures for all age levels (birth through age 14) that reflect and encourage children's interests in exemplary ways. Find the list of Notable books here.

Finally, Megan McCarthy of the Blue Rose Girls blog writes about Maurice Sendak's appearance on The Grim Colberty Tales. If you haven't watched this "interview" yet, take the time!

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A few things that might be of interest...

The SLJ Battle of the Kids Books is gearing up for a 4th year starting March 13. If your favorite book didn't win (or even get recognized!) in the ALA awards, maybe this year's BOB contest will correct that oversight!

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has announced a new four-book series from author Lemony Snicket (a pseudonym for Daniel Handler), set to launch this fall. On October 23, the publisher will release “Who Could That Be at This Hour?”, first in the “autobiographical” All the Wrong Questions series, which will explore Snicket’s youth “in a fading town, far from anyone he knew or trusted.” “Who Could That Be at This Hour?” will be published simultaneously in hardcover, audio, and e-book formats, and has a one-million copy announced first printing.

Maggie Stiefvater's writes about her new series with Scholastic, The Raven Boys, on her blog. The first book in the series comes out September 18.

Each year a committee of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) identifies the best of the best in children's books. According to the Notables Criteria, "notable" is defined as: Worthy of note or notice, important, distinguished, outstanding. As applied to children's books, notable should be thought to include books of especially commendable quality, books that exhibit venturesome creativity, and books of fiction, information, poetry and pictures for all age levels (birth through age 14) that reflect and encourage children's interests in exemplary ways. Find the list of Notable books here.

Finally, Megan McCarthy of the Blue Rose Girls blog writes about Maurice Sendak's appearance on The Grim Colberty Tales. If you haven't watched this "interview" yet, take the time!

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Recently, I read Brenda Power's introduction to the most recent The Big Fresh Newsletter. I always enjoy Brenda's insights and love the resources the newsletter provides for readers.  

The title of this particular newsletter was Acronymia and in it Brenda shares her dislike and frustration with the myriad of acronyms used in education that can be intimidating to everyone, including teachers.  However, at a writing retreat, she learned of a few new acronyms that she felt helped her to monitor her own behavior. For this post, I would like to talk about one of these acronyms, SHAME:

My favorite new acronym forteachers and literacy leaders is SHAME, which represents Should Have AlreadyMastered Everything. Isn't this exactly the trap so many of us find ourselvesin, embarrassed that we haven't mastered everything there is to know aboutteaching and learning, including that massive number of acronyms so many folkssling around in conversations? 

Like Brenda, and many teachers around the world, I also feel SHAME. However, as professor of children's literature, I would like to add a new acronym that follows this same line of thought, SHARE: Should Have Already Read Everything.

One of the first things teachers do when they enter my class is confess their feeling of SHARE. They express their feelings of embarrassment because they:

• haven't read many children's books since they were kids themselves.
• haven't read most of the books in their classroom library.
• don't read the books their students are reading.
• prefer adult books (even "trashy" adult books!).
• prefer certain genres and never
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Recently, I read Brenda Power's introduction to the most recent The Big Fresh Newsletter. I always enjoy Brenda's insights and love the resources the newsletter provides for readers.   

The title of this particular newsletter was Acronymia and in it Brenda shares her dislike and frustration with the myriad of acronyms used in education that can be intimidating to everyone, including teachers.  However, at a writing retreat, she learned of a few new acronyms that she felt helped her to monitor her own behavior. For this post, I would like to talk about one of these acronyms, SHAME:

My favorite new acronym for teachers and literacy leaders is SHAME, which represents Should Have Already Mastered Everything. Isn't this exactly the trap so many of us find ourselves in, embarrassed that we haven't mastered everything there is to know about teaching and learning, including that massive number of acronyms so many folks sling around in conversations? 

Like Brenda, and many teachers around the world, I also feel SHAME. However, as professor of children's literature, I would like to add a new acronym that follows this same line of thought, SHARE: Should Have Already Read Everything.

One of the first things teachers do when they enter my class is confess their feeling of SHARE. They express their feelings of embarrassment because they:

• haven't read many children's books since they were kids themselves.
• haven't read most of the books in their classroom library.
• don't read the books their students are reading.
• prefer adult books (even "trashy" adult books!).
• prefer certain genres and never read others.

I suffer from a mild form of SHARE, too. I am one of those people who feel the need to have read the Newbery, Caldecott, Printz and other award winners "before" they are announced. When I haven't done so (which is almost always in one or more category), then I feel SHARE. 
However, I do read quite a bit. For example, in 2011 I read 100 chapter books. If I were to add picturebooks and professional books, I would add at least 100 more.  

For teachers, the key is often not the desire to read but finding the time to read. Teachers have so many things to feel SHAME about, that often, reading children's books gets pushed to the bottom of the list. I have multiple ways of reading that are integrated into my daily lifestyle that allow some time for reading everyday.  
 
In the next post, I will share the ways I find time to read. In the meantime, I'd love to hear the ways others are finding time to read. Please post your thoughts in the comments section and I will include them in the next post.

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Audio: AvailableSaturday at approximately 7PM (ET) at http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2

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Audio: Available Saturday at approximately 7PM (ET) at http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2

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That ALA Youth Media Awards were announced early this morning.

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos won the Newbery! I loved this book and am happy to see it win. It also won the 2012 Scott O'Dell Award for best historical fiction, which I blogged about last week and included a link to his National Book Festival speech.

Two Newbery Honors were awarded: Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhaa Lai, which also won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin.

A Ball for Daisy, written and illustrataed by Chris Raschka, won the Caldecott!

Three Caldecott Honor books were awarded: Blackout written and illustrated by John Rocco, Grandpa Green written and illustrated by Lane Smith and Me...Jane written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell, which also won the 2012 Charlotte Zolotow award.

Interestingly, all of the Caldecott award winners were written and illustrated by the same person.

All winners of the ALA Youth Media Awards can be found on the ALA website. I did well this year with having read the Newbery before it was announced as well as most of the other awards, but I do have some reading to do in a few of the categories. Soon, however, it will be time to take a deep breath and start all over again for 2012. Happy reading!
 

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That ALA Youth Media Awards were announced early this morning.

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos won the Newbery! I loved this book and am happy to see it win. It also won the 2012 Scott O'Dell Award for best historical fiction, which I blogged about last week and included a link to his National Book Festival speech.

Two Newbery Honors were awarded: Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhaa Lai, which also won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin.

A Ball for Daisy, written and illustrataed by Chris Raschka, won the Caldecott!

Three Caldecott Honor books were awarded: Blackout written and illustrated by John Rocco, Grandpa Green written and illustrated by Lane Smith and Me...Jane written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell, which also won the 2012 Charlotte Zolotow award.

Interestingly, all of the Caldecott award winners were written and illustrated by the same person.

All winners of the ALA Youth Media Awards can be found on the ALA website. I did well this year with having read the Newbery before it was announced as well as most of the other awards, but I do have some reading to do in a few of the categories. Soon, however, it will be time to take a deep breath and start all over again for 2012. Happy reading!
 

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Jacqueline Woodson (from PW)

Are you currently mining any memories for another writing project?

 

I feel like I’m still coming out of the fog of finishing Beneath a Meth Moon. I don’t think I realized how inside that story I really was. It was a hard and heavy book to write. But I’ve finished a picture book, Each Kindness, which E.B. Lewis is illustrating and Nancy Paulsen Books will publish in fall 2012. I was inspired by seeing third- and fourth-grade girls being so mean to each other and not even realizing that’s what they were doing. I remember thinking, “They think this moment is always going to be here, that there will always be a chance to go back and undo that.” And it’s not true. So Each Kindness is about a girl who isn’t kind and what happens with that. It’s about the importance of kindness—something I deeply believe in.

 

I’m also about to start writing the book for an opera about Clementine Hunter, an African-American painter from Louisiana whose work was shown at galleries that she wasn’t allowed to enter because of Jim Crow laws. And another project that is slowly coming together for me is a middle-grade novel which will be quite funny.

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Jacqueline Woodson (from PW)

Are you currently mining any memories for another writing project?

 

I feel like I’m still coming out of the fog of finishing Beneath a Meth Moon. I don’t think I realized how inside that story I really was. It was a hard and heavy book to write. But I’ve finished a picture book, Each Kindness, which E.B. Lewis is illustrating and Nancy Paulsen Books will publish in fall 2012. I was inspired by seeing third- and fourth-grade girls being so mean to each other and not even realizing that’s what they were doing. I remember thinking, “They think this moment is always going to be here, that there will always be a chance to go back and undo that.” And it’s not true. So Each Kindness is about a girl who isn’t kind and what happens with that. It’s about the importance of kindness—something I deeply believe in.

 

I’m also about to start writing the book for an opera about Clementine Hunter, an African-American painter from Louisiana whose work was shown at galleries that she wasn’t allowed to enter because of Jim Crow laws. And another project that is slowly coming together for me is a middle-grade novel which will be quite funny.

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For the past 90 years, the ALA has awarded the Newbery Medal, sometimes called the "Oscar" of children’s literature, to an author in recognition of the year’s most distinguished children’s book. Open Road Integrated Media has made available to the public a video that captures Newbery Award-Winning authors Virginia Hamilton and Jean Craighead George talking about how those awards (for Julie of the Wolves and M.C. Higgins The Great respectively) changed their lives. Hamilton was the first African American to win the award and George saw the view of children's literature change to "something important instead of something second-rate.”

This short (2:06) video is below. Enjoy!

Credit: Open Road Integrated Media

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For the past 90 years, the ALA has awarded the Newbery Medal, sometimes called the "Oscar" of children’s literature, to an author in recognition of the year’s most distinguished children’s book. Open Road Integrated Media has made available to the public a video that captures Newbery Award-Winning authors Virginia Hamilton and Jean Craighead George talking about how those awards (for Julie of the Wolves and M.C. Higgins The Great respectively) changed their lives. Hamilton was the first African American to win the award and George saw the view of children's literature change to "something important instead of something second-rate.”

This short (2:06) video is below. Enjoy!

Credit: Open Road Integrated Media

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Me … Jane written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell is the fifteenth annual winner of the Charlotte Zolotow Award for outstanding writing in a picture book. 
 Patrick McDonnell’s picture book about chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall as a child depicts her as a curious, scientific-minded young girl whose favorite stuffed animal was a chimpanzee named Jubilee. She took the stuffed chimp everywhere as she explored and carefully observed the natural world of her childhood . . . and dreamed of someday going to Africa. McDonnell’s spare, skillful, and superbly paced text balances a sense of playfulness with purpose as he conveys Goodall’s focus and determination. Me … Jane was edited by Andrea Spooner and published in the United States in 2011 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

The 2012 Zolotow Award committee named three Honor Books:  

• Apple Pie ABC, written and illustrated by Alison Murray, edited by Stephanie Lurie, and published by Disney/Hyperion;  

• Meet the Dogs of Bedlam Farm, written and photographed by Jon Katz, edited by  Sally Doherty, and published by Henry Holt; and 

• Naamah and the Ark at Night, written by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, illustrated by Holly Meade, edited by Katie Cunningham, and published by Candlewick Press.

The 2012 Zolotow Award committee also cited ten titles as Highly Commended:

• All the Water in the World, written by George Ella Lyon and illustrated by Katherine Tillotson (ARichard Jackson Book / Atheneum)

• Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade, written and illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Houghton Mifflin)

• Fortune Cookies, written by Albert Bitterman and illustrated by Chris Raschka (Beach Lane Books)

• Nothing Like a Puffin, written by Sue Soltis and illustrated by Bob Kolar (Candlewick Press)

• Samantha on a Roll, written by Linda Ashman and illustrated by Christine Davenier (MargaretFerguson Books / Farrar Straus Giroux)

• Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature, written by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Beth Krommes (Houghton Mifflin)

• These Hands, written by Margaret H. Mason and illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Houghton Mifflin)

• Three by the Sea, written and illustrated by Mini Grey (Alfred A. Knop
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The annual award, established in 1982 by author Scott O'Dell,  goes to an author for a meritorious book published in the previous year for children or young adults.  The purpose of the award is to encourage other writers--particularly new authors--to focus on historical fiction. Scott O'Dell hoped in this way to increase the interest of young readers in the historical background that has helped to shape their country and their world.

A list of all award winners by historical period is available here. 

On a personal note, I loved this book! I laughed all the way through it. I heard Jack Gantos speak about the book at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. last year and he was hilarious (as usual). A webcast of his speech is available here. Enjoy!

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Thousands of adults, young adults, and children received eReaders this past holiday season and analysts predict that volume will continue to grow in 2012 to 28.9 million. Pricing is also expected to drop this year with Amazon’s Kindle as low as $49 and Barnes and Noble's Nook as low as $99.

I have had a Kindle since they were first introduced and though I am on my third one due to hardware and software problems, I do love that I can get most books anywhere at anytime at a cheaper price than the print copy.

Though eReaders have largely not made it into the classroom, as prices drop, this might change. The idea of having instant access to books that match students' interests is very appealing to teachers. However, teachers already spend a great deal of their own money to purchase books for their classroom libraries and school and library budgets are very limited.

With this in mind, there are a couple of ways to get free books for the Kindle. You can download Free Childrens Books and Young Adult Books for Kindle: Linked List of Over 1,000 Free Classics For Boys, Girls and Teens for .99 on Amazon. Each title is linked to the book on Amazon.com and can be downloaded to the Kindle free of charge. Of course, most of these books are classics, but they are still great books!

With Kindle apps, books can be read on more than one device that might be available in the classroom such as a computer, a tablet, or a phone (Android or Mac).


Most often, public libraries also offer patrons the ability to download eBooks. My local library doesn't offer many eBooks but other libraries nearby have a nice collection.

Another nice aspect of eReaders is the ability to respond and share your thoughts about what you are reading. Students can highlight words/phases and take notes and share them with other students.

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