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With the Youth Media Awards having been announced Monday January 28, buzz around the Caldecott-winning This Is Not My Hat (Candlewick), the Newbery-winning The One and Only Ivan (HarperCollins), and the Printz-winning In Darkness (Bloomsbury), is higher than ever. School Library Journal has compiled a list of relevant blog posts, reviews, interviews, and articles related to the winners and honor books.
Check out the latest News Bites for information on the National Coalition Against Censorship’s FIlm Contest, books for GLBTQ Youth, and the latest ebook news.
Balloons Over Broadway: The Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade. By Melissa Sweet. cassette or CD. 15 min. Recorded Books. 2012. cassette: ISBN 978-4703-2922-8, CD: ISBN 978-1-4703-2921-1. $15.75; hardcover book, ISBN 978-0-5471-9945-9: $16.99.
K-Gr 3–The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is a holiday tradition. But where did those big balloons begin? With puppeteer Tony Sarg, of course! The informative, enthusiastic text of Sweet’s Robert F. Siebert Medal picture-book biography (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) tells a little about Sarg’s life and his career [...]
Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan and Jon Klassen’s This Is Not My Hat may have won the Newbery and Caldecott on Monday, January 28, but they were already stellar titles for School Library Journal’s Book Review editors. Both books made SLJ’s Best Books of 2012 list, as well as many of the other ALA’s Youth Media Award-winners. Check out SLJ’s reviews for the top prizes.
FRADIN, Judith Bloom & Dennis Brindell Fradin. The Price of Freedom: How One Town Stood Up to Slavery. illus. by Eric Velasquez. 48p. bibliog. further reading. photos. websites. Walker. Jan. 2013. Tr $16.99. ISBN 978-0-8027-2166-2; PLB $17.89. ISBN 978-0-8027-2167-9. LC 2012015781.
Gr 3-6–In 1856, John Price escaped from slavery in Kentucky by crossing the frozen Ohio River. Two years later, slave hunters arrived in Oberlin, Ohio, and attempted to take him back at gunpoint. Shopkeepers, farmers, teachers, and college students formed [...]
Watch a short film by a semifinalist in the National Coalition Against Censorship’s 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest.
Zero the Hero. By Joan Holub. CD. 12:45 min. with hardcover book. Spoken Arts. 2012. ISBN 0-8045-4242-2. $29.95.
Gr 1-3–Zero dons superhero garb and tries to change his reputation because he’s tired of feeling like nothing. It’s clear that he makes no impact in addition, subtraction, or division. And in multiplication he sends the other numbers fleeing in fear of extinction. Finally, in despair, Zero rolls away. However, once he’s gone the other numbers miss him. They can’t make 10. They [...]
School Library Journal’s fifth annual Battle of the Kids’ Books tournament, affectionately known as “BOB,” is about to begin! Modeled after college basketball’s March Madness, the tournament pits 16 of 2012’s best books for young people—everything from fantasy to nonfiction to wicked good romance—against one another in a winner-take-all online elimination contest kicking off on Monday, March 12.
With the Youth Media Awards just a few days away, School Library Journal editors and contributors took a stab at naming some possible contenders.
Scholastic will offer a free, behind-the-scenes video tour of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History with author David Baldacci as a guide. The “Decoding History” virtual field trip coincides with the release of Baldacci’s new book, “The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers: Day of Doom,” the latest in the bestselling series.
The Fire Chronicle: The Books of Beginning, Book 2. By John Stephens. 10 CDs. 12:22 hrs. Prod. by Listening Library. Dist. by Listening Library/Books on Tape. 2012. ISBN 978-0-307-87982-0. $37.
Gr 4-7–In The Emerald Atlas (2011), the first book in John Stephens’s series, we met Kate, Michael, and Emma who were searching for their missing parents and got caught up in a magical adventure that nearly turned deadly, tested their family bonds, and gained them the first Book. In this second [...]
The American Library Association’s News Know-How initiative has selected the teen services department of the San Antonio Public Library to receive more than $50,000 to train and support kids in grades 10–12 in learning how to distinguish fact from opinion, check news and information sources, and distinguish between propaganda and news, the library announced this week.
BOLDEN, Tonya. Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty. 120p. bibliog. chron. glossary. illus. index. notes. photos. reprods. Abrams. Jan. 2013. RTE $24.95. ISBN 978-1-4197-0390-4. LC 2012000845.
Gr 5-9–After a dramatic opening description of abolitionists waiting for word that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed, this title reviews the events that led up to the Civil War, examines Lincoln’s reasons for writing it, and details the role of abolitionists. Bolden makes excellent use of primary sources; the pages are filled [...]
If we build it well, a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) can help school libraries meet the information needs of students even as local budgets shrink. The DPLA can provide important resources to the partnership between library-based and classroom-based teachers, especially during this period of rapid change in education, in libraries, in technology, and in the world of information generally.
Pete Remembers Woody. 2 CDs. range: 57:42-53:56 min. Prod. by Appleseed Recordings. Dist. by CDBaby.com. ISBN unavail. $20.
Gr 9 Up–This masterful album celebrates the centennial of Woody Guthrie’s birth in 1912. Producer David Bernz has compiled a number of stories that Pete Seeger (now in his 90s) told about Woody and himself, which were recorded in informal sessions over a span of time in their private homes. These reminiscences are interspersed with Woody’s songs, performed by a number of well-known [...]
Patricia Polacco’s In Our Mothers’ House, an acclaimed picture book about a family with two mothers, is finally back on K–6 school library shelves in Utah’s Davis School District, more than eight months after a committee pulled the book and restricted its access.
The Association of Jewish Libraries has given its 2013 Sydney Taylor Book Awards to Hannah’s Way, by Linda Glaser; His Name Was Raoul Wallenberg, by Louise Borden; and Intentions, by Deborah Heiligman.
BROWN, Don. Henry and the Cannons: An Extraordinary True Story of the American Revolution. illus. by author. 32p. bibliog. Roaring Brook. Jan. 2013. Tr $16.99. ISBN 978-1-59643-266-6. LC 2012013450.
Gr 1-4–As the American Revolution was getting underway, George Washington knew he needed cannons to defeat the British. Unfortunately, he was camped outside British-held Boston, and the nearest big guns were 300 miles away at Fort Ticonderoga, New York. They were thought to be impossible to retrieve, until Henry Knox agreed to [...]
Fans outside of Carnegie Hall display their loot from John and Hank Green’s An Evening of Awesome.
The Freedom Maze. By Delia Sherman. 8 CDs. 8:19 hrs. Prod. by Listening Library. Dist. by Listening Library/Books on Tape. 2012. ISBN 978-0-499-01463-9. $55.
Gr 5-8–Sophie’s mother drops her off to spend the summer at her grandmother’s house in the Louisiana Bayou. Once a prolific sugar plantation, the property is derelict and overgrown. In the garden, Sophie discovers a maze, now in ruins, much like Sophie’s life since her parents’ divorce. It’s 1960, and the stigma of the divorce, combined with [...]
