Blogs

At BookExpo America, they announced this year's Quill nominees. It's the third year for these consumer-driven awards. The last two lists helped me plan my summer reading and helped me to discover newauthors and titles to include on our high school shelves. Scroll down to the bottom of the list for youth titles.

Please read about my new book FAT TALE available at www.barnesandnoble.com also www.amazon.com FAT TALE, written and illustrated by Karen Land, is a picture book that will help children focus on good nutrition. Not long ago, a chubby child meant a healthy child. Today obesity is our nation’s fastest growing health problem. Our children are experiencing a nationwide epidemic of poor eating habits. The good news is for the most part, obesity is preventable. Planting the seeds of good nutrition at an early age is a fundamental preventative measure.
Fat Tale is an educational story showing the pitfalls of overeating. Using the empathy children have for animals, the story tells how a cute little frog gets into big trouble by becoming addicted to junk food. Gorf, the children’s name for him, becomes so fat from eating sugary cereal, fries and other scraps of fast food he can not dive down to the bottom of the pond to hibernate. Winter is coming and he will freeze. The children realize that they are lethargic and overweight, too. A healthy appropriate diet of real food is adopted by all.
This book will interest children in pre-school through third grade. It can be used as a supplemental text to introduce a health lesson and by concerned parents who want to teach their children about the perils of poor eating habits.

Karen Land is a School Media Specialist and has worked in the field of library science for more than 30 years. She has written book reviews for School Library Journal and is a member of the Children’s Book Council and ALA.

I don't remember how I came upon this site: Answer Board Librarians at WetPaint.com, but I signed up much like I do for others sites like this and then "sat on it" for a while. Takes me some time to get the feel for a site and decide to participate even if I am a member.

This site seems to be mostly participated in by public library staff, but why not have a school library contingent? Check it out and let me know what you think.

Have you seen this? Have you been there? What do you think? Who sends in these questions anyway? I know, the world. I've been a member for a while now, but am just starting to delve into this site and it's usefulness to me and me to it. I am not an answer board librarian. Should I be?

What is it? This is an idea-sharing wiki for librarians who post to answer boards, like Answers.com's WikiAnswers (http:wiki.answers.com), Yahoo Answers or Amazon's Askville. It is kind of like AskColorado only not just library type questions. It seems much, much larger and free. The answer board librarians recognize that this wiki and being an answer board librarian can help promote the idea that librarians are active and dynamic participants in the web 2.0 community, and they're not just waiting for the questions to come in! For that reason alone, we should participate. . .

Go to: Slam the Boards and look for the August original post to find out more about this little opportunity. Where do these folks find the time to do this? Do you do this? Where could we find the time? Even Ask Colorado evening shifts are run by folks all over the world that are hired by a subcontractor.

One thing I recently found out about AskColorado - they have no school librarians answering the online questions currently but most of the calls are from middle school age students. Thank you public librarians for helping our kids.

Sadly I think that school librarians are so overworked, their ability to participate in this larger global culture is extremely limited. What can we do?

Hello;

I and six of my peers are hosting a regional, annual conference for librarians and teachers on the joys of liesure reading, called 'Books Abound', October, 2007. We anticipate 125 attendees. As an icebreaker we thought trading cards would be fun. Collect a set and win a chance at a prize!

But trading cards are a little harder than first thought. A set of 12 to 16 cards might be nice, on a literary theme, character, etc., but no such animal, to my limited research exists for easy creation/acquisition.

Thoughts?

Hey everybody,

I'm Reading Queen Bee (Cheryl Hill),
www.empoweringchildrentoread.blogspot.com.

I am having such a great a time reading about all of you! I am learning so much!
I have been a librarian for six years now, and, it took someone else to see the librarian in me to point me in the direction to become a librarian. I have always loved teaching children to read. I have always loved reading books and reading books to children. I have always loved using literature as a jumping off point to inspire children to read and write.

In becoming a librarian, I was told that librarians “grow” readers.
Well what does a librarian do when many children who enter the library door(s) do not possess the prerequisite skills to actually read the wonderful books in the library? How can a librarian inspire children to read and get excited about what they cannot do in the first place, which is to read? Armed with the knowledge and skills/tools from my previous life as a classroom teacher, I started thinking about it a lot, hence, the creation of www.empoweringchildrentoread.blogspot.com.
Although, I have incorporated various beginning reading games in addition to library skills’ games, I’m still mulling over various strategies to incorporate to be most effective, and, don’t yet have it worked out thoroughly as to how I will create a framework to impact the beginning reading skills of the struggling readers entering my library.

We engage children in the accelerated reading program and they love it! Also, I do have children (in grades 3-5) who are wonderful readers and they belong to my Bluebonnet and Beyond Reading Club; these children read 35-50 books (most of them chapter books) a year, in readiness for our district’s Name That Book Contest; yet, I still worry about the children who aren’t inspired and can’t get excited about books in order for the librarian to “grow” their reading because, either, they can’t read or they have gaps in their reading skills that cripple them from wanting to read and enjoy books.
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My blog gives voice for my written expressions and opinions; I also share much of what I say on my blog in newsletter format with the teachers at my school.

p.s. My school has about 1,200 students--- Prekindergarten -5th grade.
Each day, I have 7 ancillaries classes (45 minutes each) and no library clerk.Delete Comment

I'm taking the FL Teacher Certification Exam for Ed Media Specialist in 10 days! As the lucky 13th of October approaches, I'm freaking big time! Help! Has anyone in the state taken the test recently and can share some words of encouragement?? Is there anyone near Orlando who's looking at that date and is available to study with me??

Thank you for welcoming me to TeacherLibrarian Ning. I found you by taking an online summer class called School Library Learning2.0 sponsored by the California School Library Association. What I have learned in the course will dramatically change my teaching next year. It is embarrassing to admit, but no one in our district uses blogs, wikis, tagging, or RSS. I have heard these terms at conferences and read about them in periodicals, but had no idea how powerful they could be and how easy to use until I experienced them for myself.

I would love to hear from others who have used any of these tools with teachers and students. How was the research process improved? Were there any challenges I should know about before I begin? Which tool would you suggest I try first?