The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
By Marilyn Burns — School Library Journal, 05/01/2010
Illustration by Joyce Hesselberth.
Searching for something to get kids excited about math? Scrambling for a great resource to share with your colleagues or use in the library?
Consider picture books.
What I’ve learned over the years is that illustrated books can help dispel the myth that math is dull, unimaginative, and inaccessible. They can spark children’s mathematical imaginations in ways that [...]
By Elizabeth Bird
A magazine article changed my life.
Admittedly, that sounds like a bit of hyperbole, but it’s true. There I was in New York City, with my shiny new MLIS degree, working at my very first children’s librarian post. I was still experiencing that first flush of excitement people have when they start a new job in an occupation they love, and I was reading every article in every children’s literature–related periodical I could get my grubby little hands on. [...]
Best practices for using games and simulations in the classroom
By Karen Billings
We know that educational games and simulations can be valuable tools to reach and teach 21st-century students. However, many traditional classrooms and media centers aren’t designed to support educators who want to use them. Teachers and librarians are often required to justify the purchase and use of games in the classroom. And they sometimes even ask themselves if they have successfully met their intended educational objectives when they do [...]
Classroom author visits can happen via Skype (here’s a list of those who do this for free)
By Kate Messner, 08/01/2009
Illustration by Marc Rosenthal.
At 7:25 am on the last day of school, five avid fifth-grade readers hustle into the library of Chamberlin School in South Burlington, VT. They shrug off backpacks and pull out advance copies of The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z, my middle-grade novel about a Vermont girl who’s convinced her school leaf collection project is ruining her [...]
Nothing attracts boys like a Lego club
By Abbe Klebanoff, 7/1/2009
Go ahead, say it. Toys don’t belong in the library. That’s probably what some of you still think. But my library outside Philadelphia was having such a hard time attracting boys who had outgrown storytime that we decided to try something new. So we started a Lego club.
Photo by Molly Carroll.
Since our June 2008 kickoff, we’ve been amazed by how many kids show up for our program just to [...]
By Mitali Perkins
As a teenager, I lived in two worlds: the traditional Bengali heritage inside our home and the contemporary California of my suburban peers.
Sometimes the gap between those two worlds seemed huge. Apple pie? Didn’t taste it till I got to college. Our kitchen smelled of mustard-seed oil, turmeric, and cardamom. Bikinis? No way. A one-piece bathing suit felt too revealing (and still does). My mother never showed her legs in public, even when she eventually shelved her sarees [...]
Self-censorship is rampant and lethal
By Debra Lau Whelan
Illustration by Brian Stauffer
When Barry Lyga finished writing his second young adult novel, he knew there’d be trouble. After all, Boy Toy was about a 12-year-old who has sex with a beautiful teacher twice his age, and Lyga expected it to spark letters to local papers, trigger complaints to the school board, and incite some parents to yank it off library shelves.
But none of those things ever happened.
“The book just [...]
By Debra Lau Whelan
To gain a better understanding of collection development and the issue of self-censorship, School Library Journal recently conducted an anonymous survey, which was emailed to 5,438 of SLJ‘s Extra Helping subscribers on November 18, 2008. The survey closed on December 2, 2008.
The results are based on 654 school libraries responding, and they are broken down as follows: 53 percent elementary school librarians, 37 percent middle school librarians, 30 percent of high school librarians, and 5 percent other. [...]
School libraries need a revolution, not evolution
By David Loertscher
One of the biggest business battles of our time is between Microsoft and Google. The two have very different business models. Microsoft believes that if they build it, we will come—and buy their product. Google’s approach is different: if they build it, we will integrate it into our lives. We use Microsoft products on their terms, but we use Google products—from iGoogle to GoogleDocs—on our terms, to construct whatever we want.
What does [...]
Suzanne Collins’s ‘The Hunger Games’ has plenty of blood, guts, and heart
By Rick Margolis — School Library Journal, 09/01/2008
Thanks to a cruel futuristic government, 24 children are chosen by lottery to compete in the annual Hunger Games—a fight to the death that’s televised live. How did you come up with that idea?
It’s very much based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, which I read when I was eight years old. I was a huge fan of Greek and [...]
By SLJ Staff, 8/27/2008
What’s a good way to see a decline in the crime rate? By making sure teens graduate from high school. Dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than high school graduates and more than eight times as likely to be incarcerated, says “School or the Streets: Crime and America’s Dropout Crisis,” a report from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a nonprofit anti-crime organization comprised of more than 3,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, other law enforcement [...]
Open source software has become a catchword in libraryland. Yet many remain unclear about open source’s benefits—or even what it is.
By Karen Schneider
So what is open source software (OSS)? It’s software that is free in every sense of the word: free to download, free to use, and free to view or modify. Most OSS is distributed on the Web and you don’t need to sign a license agreement to use it.
In fact, you’re probably using OSS and may not know [...]
This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping.
By Joan Oleck, 3/10/2008
A whopping 95 percent of high school students say they’ve cheated during the course of their education, ranging from letting somebody copy their homework to test-cheating, a Rutgers University professor reports.
"There’s a fair amount of cheating going on, and students aren’t all that concerned about it," says Donald McCabe, a professor of management and global business at New Jersey-based Rutgers.
The professor has been surveying cheating practices among college kids for [...]
OK, maybe we’re exaggerating. But Minnesota does produce a humongous amount of books.
By Claire Kirch
Minneapolis is a book lover’s paradise. There are dozens of neighborhood bookstores, a sleek new $125 million Minneapolis Central Library, and Open Book, the nation’s first facility devoted to the literary arts. No wonder it was dubbed America’s most literate city last year.
But one of the best-kept secrets is that Minneapolis and nearby Mankato have evolved over the past 75 years into major publishing hubs for [...]
You can’t ignore the benefits of eco-friendly schools
By Debra Lau Whelan, 9/1/2007
Maybe it’s the waterless urinals or the geothermal heating and cooling system buried 515 feet underground. Or perhaps it’s the motion-activated faucets or the paints and furnishings made from low-volatile organic compounds. But one thing’s for sure: Great Seneca Creek Elementary is unlike most schools.
Since opening its doors in the fall of 2006, this school in Germantown, MD, has hosted more than two dozen tours for administrators, architects, parents, [...]
Is it Time to Update Your Albums for Really Young Listeners?
By Warren Truitt, 7/1/2007
Has a parent or teacher asked your advice about the best new CDs for members of the preschool set? Well, you’re in luck.
In the last 10 years, the once-comatose children’s music scene has been resuscitated, starting with its performers. Many musicians who were rockers in a former lifetime (from Dan Zanes to Elizabeth Mitchell) are now parents, and they’re writing some terrific tunes for children. And these [...]
This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping.
By Joan Oleck, 05/23/2007
Violent television does not lead to violent children, says a new research paper from the Media Institute, countering a recent, much-heralded report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stating that the opposite is true.
“Television Violence and Aggression: Setting the Record Straight,” refutes an April FCC report that called for laws to curb certain television content for children.
“The debate is not over,” writes Jonathan Freedman, author of the paper and a [...]
An enlightening look at the feminist ideals that informed this American icon
By Philip Charles Crawford
This year marks the 65th anniversary of one of comics’ oldest and most enduring characters, Wonder Woman. For over half a century, she has entertained and inspired millions, appearing in comic books, newspapers, novels, television, and cartoons. Her image is known throughout the world, licensed on everything from Halloween costumes, Kraft brand macaroni & cheese, and Underoos, to cookie jars, toothbrushes, and the American Library Association [...]
Learning by doing is a snap thanks to these cool Web sites
By Gail Junion-Metz
Exploratorium: Online Activities www.exploratorium.edu/explore/online.html
Need some Web-based science activities in a hurry? Here you’ll find almost 60 projects for kids ages 10–18 on a wide variety of topics. Most take little prep time (“Common Cents,” for example) but a few activities, especially those for older students, are more involved (such as “Build a Solar System”). Created by: The Exploratorium Museum, San Francisco, CA. Don’t Miss: For all [...]
