The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
Children’s book classics such as Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat and the Hat will be available in ebook format for the first time beginning on September 24. Fifteen of author/illustrator Dr. Seuss’s (aka Theodor Geisel) beloved titles will make their digital debut on that date, keeping the original layouts and iconic illustrations from their print editions, says publisher Random House Children’s. By November 2013, a total of 41 ebooks will be available for children, parents, and educators.
Spring. After a exhausting fall and winter of measuring the year’s best books against each other; the new publishing year opens and those of us who doggedly follow children’s literature in the peculiar quest of speculating about the Newbery Medal get excited. Very excited. The slate is clean: what book will garner next year’s golden [...]
I just updated and distributed my September teacher newsletter. Along with all the Spartan-specific content was an update of 50 Ways to Leave Your Research Paper and Tell Your Story, a document I’ve been trying to crowd-source and improve for years. I am sharing this most recent update, though I readily admit its short-comings, one of [...]
Follett’s new back-to-school release of its FollettShelf hosted digital bookshelf—which includes a new HTML5 reading environment for econtent called Follett Enlight—is now available for schools to download this week via apps for GooglePlay and iOS, even though it does not yet appear in searches of Apple’s iTunes store, the company assures School Library Journal.
As educators, it’s essential that we teach our students how to become informed citizens–to examine evidence and argument related to the issues that shape political opinion and decisions. It’s as Common Core as it gets.
Later this month, the Bank Street College of Education’s Center for Children’s Literature (CCL) will begin a series of three free panel discussions moderated by Leonard Marcus, curator of “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter,” the critically acclaimed exhibition currently on view at the New York Public Library. The series will be followed by CCL’s 4th annual BookFest @ Bank Street on October 19, featuring the award-winning Kate DiCamillo as keynote speaker.
Tech maven Joyce Valenza and longtime SLJ contributor Joy Fleishhacker share the latest tools and book picks for the back-to-school season. From curated reading lists to useful tech trends and tips, School Library Journalhas gathered the following resources to help your students, patrons, parents (and you) get back in the swing of things.
Which ebook provider will best meet your school’s needs and budget? SLJ’s snapshot of 19 ebook vendors outlines the suppliers’ range of offerings, terms of use, and pricing options.
For this close-up report on going digital, SLJ talked to academic experts, librarians, teachers, and students at two Illinois high schools. Big questions: What are the best ebook providers? How many student iPads get damaged? Do students read more in ebook or print? And more.
Labor Day has come and gone, and this week marks the start of a new school year and the return of millions of students. Here at School Library Journal, we’re also celebrating two triumphant returns this week: those of our popular blogs Heavy Medal and Someday My Printz Will Come.
Inspired by the experiences of Connecticut librarian Sarah Ludwig’s Minecraft library club, Elizabeth Grohoski and Karen Letteriello of the Mattituck-Laurel Library (NY) are now using a virtual Minecraft library to attract young patrons. The game allows users to build in a 3-D virtual world with cubes similar to Legos—but without any proscriptive kits and manuals.
It’s called “school reform” with a focus on “student achievement,” but I shudder to think where we have come as a nation that many public schools don’t have a library, and won’t ever get one unless someone can beg a grant from a foundation or corporation.
The September Multimedia Review section features nearly70 reviews of DVDs, audiobooks, and children’s music CDs. Among the eight starred reviews are Constitution USA with Peter Sagal, a DVD that examines the document’s historical and contemporary contexts, and Nelson Mandela, Kadir Nelson’s evocative biography for elementary grade students.
Joy Fleishhacker, our media maniac, looks ahead to the October release of the motion picture Parkland, based on the 2007 book Four Days in November which examines the goings-on at Parkland Hospital following the shooting of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. She’s put together a selection of nonfiction and fiction titles which will can help middle grade and teen readers get the facts surrounding the event as well as the feelings of those young people who experienced it.
Poetry and nature feature strongly in our selections this month, perhaps because we’ve been spending more time outdoors of late?
While Labor Day is often seen as the unofficial end of summer around the country, in Michigan this holds especially true – the first day of public school is typically the following Tuesday. And this is going to be one heck of a year. My job has changed. In the past, I’ve split time between [...]
Do you know of an an outstanding educator whom you’d like to send to the head of the class? The International Reading Association (IRA) is now accepting applications for both its Arbuthnot and Jerry Johns Award.
You’ll want to share this event and its resources with the classroom teachers you are helping to flip. On September 6, the Flipped Learning Network will host the first global Flip Your Classroom Day. To celebrate, the network encourages teachers everywhere to pledge to flip one lesson in the hope that the flipping experience will be a sticky one. [...]
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.
Imagine a day in your library devoted to the basics of coding in Python and sending a roomful of teens home with computers they can keep. Now imagine doing this for about $30! It’s completely possible, because it happened at Southwest Regional Library, a regional branch of the Durham County Library system in Durham, North Carolina.
