In the deep, dark, frigid days of winter, what could be more fun than curling up in a blanket with a shivery ghost story? Set during summer vacation, The Ghosts of Pandora Pickwick is a wonderful combination of two evergreen middle grade tropes: the aforementioned ghost tale and an adoption/origin story. Protagonist Mia Jones has … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: The Ghosts of Pandora Pickwick
What’s faster than a jet? Or bigger than a whale? And have you ever wondered how many vertebrae are in a giraffe’s neck? These and myriad other fascinating questions are the focus of Faster Than a Jet, Bigger Than a Whale: An Illustrated Guide to Measuring Our World, a wonderful nonfiction book for readers age … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Faster Than a Jet, Bigger Than a Whale: An Illustrated Guide to Measuring Our World
Twelve-year-old Movits “Mo” Lind is the antithesis of cool. He plays chess, trains his guinea pig, cooks for his younger sister, and mortifies his popular older sister with his geeky interests. His life changes, though, when he agrees to travel with his best friend, Ruben, from their quiet suburb to downtown Stockholm to see Ruben’s … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Biggest Fake in the Universe
A sweet, otherworldly tale that’s billed as “the fantastic adventure that first inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved film, Spirited Away,” The Village Beyond the Mist is sure to charm. Set in a magical town hidden in a mysterious forest clearing, The Village Beyond the Mist is a delightful, multigenerational fantasy for middle grade readers about service. Is that … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: The Village Beyond the Mist
I hope you've enjoyed my advent calendar type selection of "displays" for the month of December with a variety of ways to slice and dice collections and perhaps you've even found a few new or different books to add to your collections. A couple of people have asked me about the how and why and … Continue reading #DecDisplays – Wrap up
In anticipation of the country celebrations in January - here is my Australian poster - being an American school with relatively few Australian students, we don't have a very robust collection of books from Australia. There are all sorts of complications in procuring books from Australia - and as my fellow-librarians who I asked from … Continue reading #DecDisplays – Australian books
Here are a few posters I made for our Grade 6 social studies classes to read around ancient lives. Our G6 curriculum is pretty heavy on the ancient civilizations - moving from the IB / MYP system it's the first time I've seen the American Curriculum in full force with a text book and doing … Continue reading #DecDisplays – Ancient lives
Kind of following on the post about teens yesterday, here is a poster of nonfiction and fiction books around social media, one of the obsessions of most (young) people today. Our G8 social studies class looked into social media as part of their identity unit, and one of my displays this year was fiction and … Continue reading #DecDisplays – Social Media
Most educators, parents, adults would agree that this is a really hard time to be a teenager. When my own children were teens I kept reminding myself that they were at the chrysalis stage, in process of becoming beautiful butterflies and that everything, particularly in their brains was in the mush of reconstituting itself. Today's … Continue reading #DecDisplays – the chrysalis years
After the debut of my "read around" posters for sciences, our Drama teacher request to have some for music and drama. She's one of my "best" middle grade / YA readers and has read so many of the books on our core lists, including many of the sequels to the books. It's truly a fantastic … Continue reading #DecDisplays – Music and Drama
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 