May 21, 2013

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JLG’s On the Radar: Fantasy for Middle School Readers

House of Secrets

In the last 12 years, the fantasy genre has dominated the middle grade market. Thanks to “Harry Potter”, children worry less about the number of pages, and authors have been happy to comply with longer imaginative offerings. These lengthy tomes are fast-paced reads, full of magical creatures, daring adventures, and loyal characters that fight for the good of all. In the following titles selected by JLG editors, themes of family and friendship are woven into sets of enchanted lands, and fans can escape to a place where their own problems seem far away.

Pick of the Day: Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend (DVD)

scaredy squirrel makes a friend

Scaredy Squirrel finds an almost perfect friend in a slightly germy, drooling dog in this animated film from Weston Woods based on Melanie Watts’s picture book, Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend.

Juvenile Fiction Nominees at the Edgar Awards Ceremony on May 2

Edgar Awards Juvenile Fiction nominees

The Mystery Writers of America celebrated Edgar Allan Poe’s 204th birthday with the announcement of the Edgar Awards. Pictured here are the nominees for the Juvenile Fiction category, including winner Jack Ferraiolo for The Quick Fix .

Kids suffer when librarians are cut from schools| Letters

dig those dinosaurs

Check out School Library Journal’s reader responses to Rebecca Miller’s editorial, “The Cost of Cuts,” the review of Dig Those Dinosaurs, and more.

AEP, AAP to Merge; AAP to Create Pre-K Division

AAP photo

The Association of Educational Publishers and the Association of American Publishers have agreed to merge. They two professional groups will combine their programming, professional development, and public policy advocacy operations serving the preK–12 educational publishing industry. Once the merger is complete, AAP will create a new pre-K division.

Author/Illustrator Bernard Waber, Lyle the Crocodile Creator, Dies at 88

Waber

Author/illustrator Bernard Waber, creator of the iconic character Lyle the crocodile and more than two dozen picture books for children, died on May 16 after a long illness. He was 88.

The Best PowerPoint Alternatives for Creating Great Presentations

The Best PowerPoint Alternatives for Creating Great Presentations

We’ve all endured “death by PowerPoint.” It’s a painful experience for the audience and probably not all that fun for the presenter either. To help students deliver effective presentations—free of those deadly bullet points—SLJ columnist Richard Byrne cites his go-to applications.

Pick of the Day: Zebra Forest

birch trees, arrow in foreground with Zebra Forest on it

A novel about two siblings and their presumed-dear father that captures the nuances of family dynamics in spare prose

Moonbird, Delaware Shore Bird that Inspired Phillip Hoose Book, Still Flies

Moonbird_rev

A rare shore bird, who Phillip Hoose profiled in his award-winning book Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with Great Survivor B95 (Farrar, 2012), was spotted flying over Delaware Bay this week, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports in its blog today.

SLJ’s Kid-Lit Guide to Manhattan | BEA 2013

Patience, or is it Fortitude? The two icons of the New York Public Library.
Photo by www.flickr.com/photos/zeldman

Looking for some places to hang during downtime at Book Expo America (BEA)? We’ve compiled some of our favorite spots in Gotham—literary and otherwise—all within a few miles of the Javits Convention Center. We’ve thrown in some recommendations for good eats along the way. So lace up some sneakers or make like a New Yorker and hail a cab.