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Does your novel have a message for readers?
The message is that if you are a girl, you can do anything. I really didn’t want my female characters to feel stopped by the fact that they were female. I wanted them to be able to control their lives, to do what they were good at, and what they wanted to do regardless of what society’s expectations were. I think that’s a good message for modern girls, as well, and that they need reminding about.
I am the Project Coordinator for Limitless Libraries, the partnership program between the Nashville Public Library (NPL) and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Limitless Libraries provides collection development assistance to school libraries to meet curriculum needs, and also provides daily delivery of NPL materials to the schools.
I just read Rebecca Miller’s editorial, “We Need Tag-Team Librarianship” (May 2012, p. 11), regarding collaboration between public and school libraries. It made me very excited to see a cover story [...]
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”).
A local church recently asked me to display a brochure about its vacation Bible school in our public school library. I refused because that would violate the separation between church and state. Our principal attends the church, and some of its members have complained to him. Now I’m on the hot seat.
More than five years ago, I stopped writing my monthly SLJ column, “Consider the Source,” and began a blog, “Nonfiction Matters.” Since the end of May, I’ve put down my blogging gear and now I’m shifting back to my column. So, hello again to my old column readers and my recent blog readers—and welcome aboard to any new friends who’d like to join us.
Our nation faces a huge reading gap—but most people are unwilling to talk about it because the bulk of illiterate kids are minority and poor, says Walter Dean Myers.
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.”
This is the worst time to be a school librarian and the best time to be one. Our profession is under daily threat of extinction, yet the implementation of the Common Core Standards affords incredible opportunity to make the strongest case for the importance of librarians and libraries in schools. Together we must commit to gaining a deep understanding of these new standards and determine to be at the fore of the Common Core conversations taking place in our buildings. We are uniquely suited for this because the Common Core Standards dovetail elegantly with inquiry, and we know inquiry.
It’s toddler storytime: let the rumpus begin! Toddlers bound quickly into the room. One hurdles mom’s legs while waiting for the opening song. Some hop, others roam, and a few practically climb our unflappable colleague Janie. Even after getting most of their wiggles out, many toddlers continue to float around the room—until Janie begins to read one of her favorite books, Owl Babies (Candlewick, 1996) by Martin Waddell.
Your novel, The Wicked and the Just, has two feisty 13th-century teens: Cecily, whose father forces her to move to Wales from England to seek a better life, and Gwenhwyfar, her resentful servant who lost everything when the British took over her town. Why Wales? Most folks have never even heard of it!
The Golden Globe and Peabody Award–winning Fox series Glee, now in its third season, has revamped the tired reputations of both glee clubs and TV musicals. Can it do the same for school librarians? Certainly not if producers and writers maintain their current approach, scripting a shushing, out-of-touch librarian who has barely gotten a minute of screen time and hasn’t appeared since season two, despite the fact that scenes often take place in the school library.
