The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
Phyllis Mandell is Managing Editor/Multimedia Review Editor for SLJ.
Publisher Kane Miller is cosponsoring a nonfiction writing contest for budding poets. Educators can enter the “Pin It to Win It” MathMovesU sweepstakes via Pinterest. From September 17, 2013 through March 24, 2014, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, is featuring the artwork from Carle’s new picture book, Friends. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre has announced the finalists for its seven major children’s book awards.
Sesame Street’s “Maria,” Sonia Manzano, received top honors in the 2013 Americas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature for her The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano. Celebrate International Dot Day with its creator, author/illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, on September 15.
Gravity, quasars, the formation of black holes, and the meaning of event horizon are just some of the ideas covered in the impressive scope of Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano’s A Black Hole Is NOT a Hole. Be sure to read the review of the audiobook version.
Thirty-two titles from the “DC Super-Pets,” “DC Super Heroes: The Man of Steel,” “Superman,” and “Batman” series are now available as interactive ebooks from Capstone. Educators, student teams, gamers, or programmers can submit entries of games, math videos, infographics, or manipulatives to the WGBH Educational Foundation’s Innovation Math Challenge for prizes of $1,000.
NASA offers a Hubble Space Telescope program for the classroom, online applications are being accepted for the 2014 Penguin Young Readers Group Awards, Artemis Fowl will make its big screen debut, and a new toolkit is available for Kwame Alexander’s He Said/She Said to coincide with a big student contest.
Enter a contest to determine who will voice Four in the Allegiant audiobook, the final book in Veronica Roth’s young adult dystopian trilogy. RIF and Macy’s have donated 10 million books to kids in need. Visit the Library of Congress’s 2013 National Book Festival in Washington, DC, in September.
The Kids in Need Foundation is calling for applications for its classroom grants program. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund released Raising a Reader! How Comics & Graphic Novels Can Help Your Kids Love to Read, a free resource that promotes comics’ positive impact on readers’ literacy skills. Apply for the Estela and Raúl Mora Award, which recognizes exemplary programming that celebrates El día de los niños/El día de los libros. Edie Parsons has won the first Karen and Philip Cushman Late Bloomer Award that celebrates authors over the age of 50 who have not been traditionally published in the children’s literature field.
Lizzie Skurnick Books, a new imprint from Ig Publishing, brings back beloved YA titles; Laurie Halse Anderson wins the Empire State Award; nominate your favorite librarian for the “I Love My Librarian” award; and more.
Findaway World launches the Playaway Bookpack program, which features preloaded audiobooks and their print versions. There are currently more than 200 titles available for preschool through young adult readers. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is now accepting nominations for the 2014 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. The National Book Foundation’s Up All Night online exhibit showcases National Book Award Winners and Finalists in Young People’s Literature. Educators interested in integrating educational games into the K-12 curriculum are invited to attend a one-day workshop on August 19 during the Serious Play Conference.
The nominees for the 2013 Teens’ Top Ten have just been announced by the Young Adult Library Services Association. Kids Read Now combats summer slide with a summer reading program focusing on children in first through third grades. Channel One News is expanding its digital distribution so that its education content can be accessed inside and outside the classroom. Chronicle Books celebrates its 25 years in children’s publishing with a tween and teen book giveaway, with entries due July 3. A school librarian at Hitchin Boys’ School in the UK has discovered a poem incorrectly attributed to William Blake.
Libraries can win a Harry Potter party pack to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the U.S. publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, complete with new paperback editions of the beloved series, illustrated by Kazu Kabushi. Entries are due July 17. Latinas for Latino Literature has launched a Summer Reading Program for summer camps, youth groups, and cultural centers serving Latino students and families, running through August 12.
Capstone Publishing has created different ways that the library community can help the children and school libraries affected by the recent tornado in Moore, OK. The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation’s Minigrant Program has awarded 59 grants to teachers and librarians in 29 states. The World Almanac for Kids Online has been relaunched by Infobase Learning to include a new streamlined interface and new content. Benjamin Alire Sáenz won a Lambda Award for his acclaimed Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe in the LGBT Children’s/Young Adult category.
The winners of the Audie Awards, the audiobook industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, were announced at the 18th Annual Audies Gala held at The New York Historical Society in New York City on May 30, 2013 and hosted by Daniel Handler (author of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” series written under the name Lemony Snicket). The awards, sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association (APA), recognize distinction in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment.
From tragic turning points to budding first love, some of the most talented and up-and-coming authors for the middle grade audience shared their insights on the writing process, connection to their intended audience, and how humor plays a part in all of their works at SLJ’s annual Day of Dialog, held at Columbia University’s Faculty House on May 29.
Students entering the fifth and sixth grades in the fall of 2013 can enter the “A Book That Shaped Me” Summer Writing Contest. To participate, kids must write a one-page essay about one book, either fiction or nonfiction, that has had an impact on their lives.
Penny Warner’s The Code Busters 2: The Haunted Lighthouse won the 2012 Agatha Award. Capstone is adding 60 more Presidential titles to the K–3 PebbleGo Biographies module in August 2013. ABDO’s will publish library editions of IDW’s “Jurassic Park” and “Star Trek” graphic novels this fall.
Luci Tapahonso has been appointed the Navajo Nation’s first Poet Laureate. Arte Público Press launches a A Day without Sugar initiative to combat child obesity. The winners of the South Asia Book Awards and the Marion Vannett Ridgway Award were announced.
The doors to the exhibit halls at BookExpo America (BEA), one of the biggest shows of the year, open on May 30, and School Library Journal has prepared a special free guidebook, the 2013 BEA Guide to ARCs & Signings, for its readers.
Celebrate 10 years of Mo Willems’s Pigeon with a visit to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, which will be hosting an exhibit on the award-winning author/illustrator. Winners for the Jane Addams, Golden Kite, and IRA awards have been announced. Attend a one-day workshop focused on integrating games into the K–12 classroom. These stories and more, in this week’s News Bites.
In this week’s News Bites: As an incentive to get children in the library during the summer, Bedtime Math is offering two free math-focused program kits. National Geographic Kids content is being added to Cengage Learning’s National Geographic Virtual Library product line. Four S. E. Hinton novels are now available in ebook format for the first time. Capstone partners with Save the Children.
