Mary Ann Cappiello

“The Classroom Bookshelf” considers the power of the poem, with lesson plans and teaching ideas for Kwame Alexander’s powerful and prodigious body of work.

Current events may leave you and your middle grade students with questions. Perhaps our entry on teaching with the 2018 Orbis Pictus Honor Book Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today can help.

As the first picture book on Stonewall, timed for the 50th anniversary, Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution provides teachers, librarians, parents, and children with an entry point into the history of the Gay Rights Movement, to be explored in the context of other books, those written and yet-to-be-written, and digital texts as well.

Ideal for explorations in science, language arts, and social studies, for whole class and small group explorations, and for quiet rereadings by shell-lovers and beachcombers, Seashells: More than a Home has many roles to play in the classroom and beyond.

Ideal for genre study of verse novels and historical fiction, an examination of the lives of women in medieval Europe, and gender perspectives, "Voices" has much to offer mature tween and teen readers and their teachers.  

This young readers edition of Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s National Book Award–nominated title details the account of Ona Judge, who ran away from the household of George and Martha Washington. This "Classroom Bookshelf" lesson plan provides teaching ideas and digital resources  to accompany what SLJ's  reviewer called "a brilliant work of U.S. history."