The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
Rebecca Miller (miller@mediasourceinc.com) is Editorial Director, Library Journal and School Library Journal.
As students around the country return to school, those in New York City are facing a future without certified school librarians, as the NYC Department of Education (DOE) has asked to be excused from a decades-old state mandate on minimum staffing requirements.
As the economic landscape continues to shift, the mission of schools and libraries to address the gaps intensifies, and the work of the key players, teachers and librarians, has never been more essential.
The most exciting time for a kindergarten teacher is when a kid looks up and says, ‘Hey, I can read!’” Fostering early literacy is the focus of our very first theme issue. We’re also debuting a new look, with some significant improvements to the all-important reviews section.
What if ALA leadership fought for school librarians like it fought for access to ebooks?
Pam Sandlian Smith’s ongoing reinvention of library service at the Anythink Libraries in Colorado shows what leadership exercised in a spirit of wonder and playfulness can achieve. John Hunter’s World Peace Game takes playing to a new level for learning. We can all learn from both.
April is National Poetry Month and a favorite part of this initiative by the Academy of American Poets is Poem in Your Pocket Day, coming April 18. It’s a perfect time to see poetry all around us and reinforce that poetry infuses our lives. How will you be celebrating?
The Pennsylvania study joins a growing body of research that proves the efficacy of librarians in our schools, but the findings of this study alone should take the decision to cut a librarian off the table.
There’s nothing quite like the run-up to the announcement of the Youth Media Awards at the American Library Association’s (ALA) Midwinter Meeting.
Who wouldn’t want to work with the two librarians on our cover? To me, their joyous, open faces welcome engagement. I want in on the action—in this case, the series of projects they pull off to bring more to the kids they each serve.
First, consider the numbers. Some 37,000 children’s and YA books have been published in 2012, according to Bowker. SLJ reviewed more than 6,500 of them—thanks to our corp of 300 active reviewers in the field. Of these titles, 289 earned stars. And here, in the final presentation, are the 65 that were selected as SLJ’s Best Books of 2012.
How they get identified is not a math problem, of course. Passions run high. There’s a talented team behind this list, packed [...]
Photograph by Mark Tuchman
Action figures don’t usually weigh in on SLJ’s design, but Flash, the iconic DC Comics superhero, zipped into the story this month. He snuck his way into my purse and then onto my desk just as editors Kathy Ishizuka and Rick Margolis and I talked about our cover strategy with art director Mark Tuchman. Flash didn’t say much, but his force was unstoppable.
Our conversation about the findings of SLJ’s 2012 school library tech [...]
As SLJ’s editors roll up our sleeves in final preparation for our annual Leadership Summit, in Philadelphia, October 26-27 (www.sljsummit2012.com), and our “Digital Shift: Libraries, Ebooks and Beyond” online event on October 17 (www.thedigitalshift.com/beyondebooks), I’m inspired by both the big ideas in education and the ground-level work I’ve seen in school libraries across the country.
I’m also aware of the vast challenges we face as we strive to give our kids the best educational experience possible. A recent [...]
What happens when you comingle 80 or so librarians for some eight hours and give them just enough structure to focus on key issues? Answer: KidLibCamp. I expected this unconference at Darien (CT) Library, on August 16, to be good, but it was so much better than that. It was professional learning at its best—the kind of inspiring event that ought to be replicated in every system and district in the country.
We are so pleased to unveil SLJ’s new website. The look is all different, but you’ll still get the same great content–and it will be easier to find and comment on.
Among the big changes: major menus to help you readily discover areas of coverage, better integration of SLJ Blog Network content, and tech stories folded into the overall content flow.
I got a chill listening to Walter Dean Myers describe the decline in literacy he has witnessed in his decades of working with incarcerated males. It used to be, he said in his keynote address at SLJ’s Day of Dialog in June, that he could tell what grade kids were in by the quality of the writing in their letters to him, but not anymore. He would also see kids in detention who were functionally illiterate, but now [...]
On June 6, Forbes published a list that ranked the master’s in library and information science (MLIS) against 34 other master’s degrees in terms of salary and employment outlook (see “The Best and Worst Master’s Degrees for Jobs”).
If you want to have a stake in the Common Core, take a page from Tina Edwards Felder, who responds to her teachers’ concerns about meeting the ambitious new standards with a willing, “I can help you with that.”
