Librarians can pair audio with print to build literacy skills. The launch of the Playaway Bookpack program has been announced by Findaway World. Each Bookpack features a preloaded audiobook and its print version, and is packaged in a plastic hanging bag. There are currently more than 200 titles available for preschool through young adult readers. “Playaways have been used as powerful read-along companions for years. Launching Playaway Bookpacks is our way of making it easier than ever for users to access these pairings and especially easy for libraries and classrooms to deliver this service,” said Nancy Stickney, Vice President Playaway Products Group.

Books for preschool to third grade students include titles from Peggy Parish’s Amelia Bedelia collection, Gene Zion’s Harry the Dirty Dog and Other Stories, William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and Other Stories, and Jean Fritz’s What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? And Other Stories of Famous Americans. For grades three to six, works range from Gennifer Choldenko’s Al Capone Does My Shirts and Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot to Russell Freedman’s Lincoln: A Photobiography and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Among the middle school selections are Irene Hunt’s Across Five Aprils, Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, and Christopher Paul Curtis’s The Watsons Go to Birmingham. Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens, Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter are among the titles for young adults. Be sure to check out the complete list.

Medal for Libraries and Museums

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is now accepting nominations for the 2014 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. The National Medal honors museums and libraries that make extraordinary civic, educational, economic, environmental, and social contributions to their communities. Public or private nonprofit museums, including art, history, science and technology, children’s, and natural history museums; and all types of nonprofit libraries, including public, school, academic, research, and archival, are eligible to apply. Complete applications must be mailed to The National Medal for Museum and Library Service, Office of the Director, Institute of Museum and Library Services, 1800 M St. NW, 9th floor, Washington, DC 20036-5802 and postmarked by October 15, 2013 (no faxes or emails). Check out eligibility requirements for libraries and museums, and then complete a nomination form.

National Book Awards Virtual Exhibit

The National Book Foundation’s Up All Night online exhibition showcases the National Book Award Winners and Finalists in Young People’s Literature from 1969 to 2012. The exhibition features 228 titles, including picture books, novels, graphic novels, novels-in-verse, poetry, and nonfiction books. Forty-five readers, writers, and National Book Award authors who were inspired by the titles have contributed videos, interviews, collages, essays, poems, and other artwork. For example William Alexander, the 2012 National Book Award Winner in Young People’s Literature for Goblin Secrets (S &S, 2012), contributed essays and recordings of himself reading passages from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Stone (1973 winner).

Educator Workshop at Serious Play Conference

Interested in designing serious games? Administrators and teachers interested in integrating educational games into the K-12 curriculum are invited to attend a one-day workshop on August 19, 2013 at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington during the Serious Play Conference. Teachers and administrators who have incorporated game-based learning as well as senior serious games developers will share their insights and discuss what kind of products are best for different ages, where in the curriculum they work well, and how to measure learning objectives. The one-day workshop is $200 and registration is open now.

Serious games are simulations of real-world events or processes designed for the purpose of solving a problem. The Serious Play Conference is an annual event held to examine the current challenges and future developments in the field.

Grammy nominations:  Five children’s music albums were nominated for a 2013 Grammy Award by the Academy of Recording Arts on December 6. The top contenders in the Children’s Album category are Can You Canoe (RedEye Dist.), performed by the Okee Dokee Brothers (childhood friends Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing); Bill Harley’s High Dive and Other Things That Could Have Happened (Round River); the JumpinJazz Kids’s A Swinging Jungle Tale (JumpinJazzKids), narrated by James Murray and featuring Dee Dee Bridgewater, Al Jarreau, Hubert Laws, and various artists; Little Seed: Songs for Children by Woody Guthrie (Smithsonian Folkways), re-imagined renditions of classic Guthrie favorites by Elizabeth Mitchell; and the Pop Ups’s (Brooklyn-based music duo Jason Rabinowitz and Jacob Stein) Radio Jungle (CDBaby.com). The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on February 10.

Early Childhood Education

A learning initiative: What role should libraries and museums play in early learning? On December 5 leaders from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Campaign for Grade Level Reading hosted the first in a series of activities that will become the basis for a policy report that “will lay the foundation for decision makers at the local, state, and federal levels to fully use the capacity of libraries and museums in their early learning efforts.” The report is expected to be released in April 2013.

The meeting included representatives from the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Education, the National League of Cities, the National Governors Association, libraries, museums, public and private funders, and others. The topics under discussion included how libraries and museums are expanding early childhood learning in their communities, strategies to engage museums and libraries in early learning decision making, and ways to establish relationships with civic leaders, policy makers, and others to influence libraries and museums to help meet our nation’s early learning challenges.

Libraries and museums reach millions of children each year, and it is exciting to bring that capacity into focus,” said IMLS director Susan Hildreth. “I am delighted that we will be able to tap expertise nationwide so that libraries and museums can more effectively engage in early learning strategies at the community, state, and national level.”

The Campaign for Grade Level Reading is “a collaborative effort by foundations, nonprofit partners, states and communities across the nation to ensure that more children in low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career, and active citizenship. The Campaign focuses on the most important predictor of school success and high school graduation—grade-level reading by the end of third grade.”

Game on: Libraries in the United States and across the world are coming together to celebrate the American Library Association’s (ALA) 5th Annual International Games Day @ Your Library on Saturday, November 3. Beginning this year, National Gaming Day has been renamed International Games Day to reflect the interest of libraries outside of the U.S. It’s up to individual libraries how they celebrate this special day, but there are lots of freebies for your library if you fill out a registration form. (So far, nearly 900 libraries have registered.) There are three new sponsors for the event. PopCap is donating copies of their games Bookworm and Bookworm Adventures to the first 2,000 libraries that register. Ravensburger is donating 1,000 copies of its board games, Labyrinth, as well as coupons for $5 off on orders at the Ravensburger online shop. And all of the games on GameTable Online’s site will be available to play for free on that date to encourage everyone to join in the fun.

So hurry up and register for International Games Day @ Your Library. If you need ideas for gaming activities, check out The Librarian’s Guide to Gaming: An Online Toolkit for Building Gaming @ Your Library. And ALA has a press kit that you can use to publicize the event that includes posters, public service announcements, and more.

Environmental Video Challenge

Student video project: Explore the Blue Water Challenge, launched by Take Me Fishing and Discovery Education, is a hands-on project for students in middle school. Students in grades 6 to 8 are asked to select a waterway or water-related issue in their community, do research to identify a problem related to their chosen project, and develop and carry out an action plan to create positive change. Teams of two to four students, along with a teacher acting as mentor, must then create a two- to five-minute video that shows how they improved a community waterway or water resource. The video can be a documentary, a news story, an interview, a digital story, etc. Make sure to check out the Challenge overview, application, and rules. All entries must be received by March 14; winners will be announced by the end of April. One grand prize-winning team will receive a U.S. water-based adventure trip for up to four students and their mentor, a $1,000 scholarship check for each student, and $5,000 for the school to continue work on the project. Second and third place winning teams will receive scholarship checks and teacher awards.

The Water Challenge is part of ExploretheBlue.com, a free resource for K–8 teachers and parents to engage students in discussing the importance of outdoor recreational activities like boating and fishing and to encourage an appreciation of our lakes, rivers, streams and oceans. The site features lesson plans, activities, and much more.

Listen Up

The Collier Brothers:  More than 40 classic children’s titles by acclaimed authors James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier will be released in audiobook and ebook formats by AudioGO under the Audio Bookshelf imprint throughout the year. Among the historical fiction and nonfiction titles are Newbery Honor Book My Brother Sam Is Dead (1974), The Bloody Country (1976), The Winter Hero (all Four Winds Pr, 1978), With Every Drop of Blood (1994), Jump Ship to Freedom (both Delacorte, 1981), The Jazz Kid (Holt, 1994), and The Winchesters (Macmillan, 1988). In addition, the 23 volumes in the Colliers’s “Drama of American History” series will be released as ebooks. With these releases, a whole new generation of children will be able to enjoy these great books in new formats.

Save the Date

Book and author festival: If you’re in the area, make sure to visit the annual Rhode Island Festival of Children’s Books and Authors on Saturday October 13, 2012 at The Lincoln School in Providence. Tickets are $5 at the door, and there’s something for everyone to enjoy. The event runs from 9 am to 5:30 pm. An awesome group of authors and illustrators—Tom Angleberger, Harry Bliss, Michael Buckley, Brian Floca, Marie-Louise Gay, Alan Katz, Lynn Munsinger, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Stephen Savage, Gary Schmidt, and Chris Van Allsburg—will each give a 30-minute presentation about their work, life, and philosophy. Then, you’ll be able to talk with them and have your books signed (you can bring up to three books to be signed or purchase the books at the Festival). Also, you can participate in bookmaking crafts, enjoy an exhibit of antique children’s books and books that inspired these authors and illustrators provided by the Providence Athenaeum, and listen to a concert by children’s performer Justin Roberts & the Not Ready for Naptime Players. For those attending the event, professional development credits are available. And of course, donations are accepted to help promote early childhood literacy in Rhode Island. Make sure to check out the schedule of events. If you need directions to the Festival, they’re available online.

Calling All District Library Supervisors

Survey: For the first time in more than 40 years, a national survey of school district library supervisors is being conducted by a University of Maryland research team. Dubbed the Lilead Project, the survey will launch on October 10 is the first of its kind to be conducted in more than 40 years. It will poll more than 300 library supervisors in the largest preschool through grade 12 school districts in the country as well as the largest school district in each state. The aim of the survey is to “create a concrete, national picture of the challenges school district library supervisors face, the tasks they’re being asked to perform, and their value—perceived and real—in their district.”

The project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), is being led by Dr. Ann C. Weeks, Associate Dean of Academic Programs in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Prior to her appointment at the University, she was Director of Library and Information Services for the Chicago Public Schools, Executive Director of the youth divisions at the American Library Association, and Coordinator for the National Library Power Program. In addition to the survey, there is also an online community, the Lilead Network, where district library supervisors, and later other school library professionals, can come together to share their best practices. All district library supervisors can join the community—even if they are not part of the survey.