Can YA fantasy speak truth to power? Author Sayantani DasGupta addresses that question and more with Elana K. Arnold, Betsy Cornwell, Kiersten White, Anna-Marie McLemore, and Mimi Yu.
Overhauling library systems, forging alliances, finding communities, weathering suspicion, and weeding—sometimes thousands of titles. It’s all in the first year’s work for many librarians starting at a new school.
How to draw on, and supplement, classroom teaching skills while making the transition to a school library.
YALSA gets a new executive director, IMLS awards nearly 50 grants for cultural programs, and new diversity-related awards are announced.
Did you catch our behind-the-scenes live video chats with book creators during Book Expo? In case you missed them, we've rounded up some of our recent talks with Kwame Alexander, Eoin Colfer, Ngozi Ukazu, and more.
Is your library looking for a new way to boost early literacy and get young patrons reading? Join this webcast to hear from the creators of the Starling Early-Learning Wearable and two libraries that are lending the Starlings to their communities and hosting early literacy programs around this technology.
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Join Shelley Diaz,
School Library Journal's reviews manager, for a lively conversation with leading K-YA publishing insiders. They’ll discuss their selection process, building relationships with authors and illustrators, and publishing at large.
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Roll up your sleeves and engage cool project ideas, including upcycling with weeded books and other maker activities that encourage a connection to reading and are just plain fun. Our panel of crafty practitioners will show you how and answer questions in this interactive session.
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Penguin is throwing it back! Join Penguin Young Readers for a time-traveling webinar focused on historical fiction and nonfiction that will be on shelves in Spring & Summer 2018. This webinar will also feature a conversation between Luann Toth and author Elizabeth Partridge.
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Join Katherine Applegate, author of
The One and Only Ivan, for a LIVE webcast from the Park School in Mill Valley, CA, as she kicks off the tour for her new series,
Endling! She'll talk about the inspiration behind her books, her journey as a writer, and the ways young readers have impacted her as an author.
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Tech skills are key to workforce readiness. But the question remains: Are we teaching computer science the right way? A diverse panel of educators and working programmers will offer their insight and advice on what computer science learning should look like.
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Three award-winning school librarians—including 2018 LJ Movers & Shakers and School Librarian of the Year honorees—will tell the real story of what the library does, from their experiences across a range of environments.
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School librarians are change agents. Join our live webinar to discover learn new approaches and action steps as we explore 6 of 8 best practices, such as how to embrace chaos; start small, think big; zero in on outcomes; and reach out to teachers.
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A list of videos, articles, and other resources to help librarians be more culturally literate.
In this webinar, littleBits discusses best practices on bringing hands-on coding and STEAM into your school’s library makerspace and STEM labs. Whether you’re an educator, a stakeholder, or interested in facilitating maker activities in your school or library setting, you will benefit from attending this session.
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A fast-paced, practical share of the hottest tech trends in the classroom and library, and how to implement them. Panelists will tip you on creative ideas in DIY electronics, student-created augmented reality, maker activities, and more.
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Keeping students engaged can be challenging during the last quarter of the school year. Join this webcast to learn how to design a multi-week campaign that drives student excitement for reading, and hear about campaign, incentive and program promotions you can use year round.
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What’s looking good for spring? Join moderator Alea Perez along with a panel of insiders who will share some of the hottest graphic novels hitting the shelves this season. Comics are forever pursuing diverse subjects and themes, so be sure to tune in to this lively and informative webcast.
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This is the second of a series of post on productivity and organizational tools that I’m finding useful in my library work. If you’re not currently using Slack, you’ve surely heard of it. There are gobs of ways to use Slack for communicating with teams of people, and it makes a great compliment to the other […]
Seeking new titles to excite your nonfiction fans? Look out—they’re right around the corner! Books that inform the mind and inspire the soul are heading your way this spring. Aimed at a wide range of readers, these sets are sure to enrich your collection and provide high-interest material to your readership.
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Join us for a live webcast featuring the finalists for the 2018 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award. Learn a bit about these fantastic titles, and hear from the authors and editors about their processes. Don’t miss out on this exclusive event!
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Reading is a highly complex activity. Readers must build strategies and create behaviors as they move to increasingly difficult texts. How can schools support this process and teach self-sufficiency as readers progress?
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This is the first of a series of post on productivity and organizational tools that I’m finding useful in my library work. I’ve been using Trello off and on, for professional and personal projects, since 2014. It’s visually appealing, simple to use, and dovetails nicely with Google apps.
When did you last think deeply about why you are a teacher librarian? I challenge you to articulate that. You will be empowered.
Creative Commons certificates and workshops for librarians, educators, and government workers will impart mastery on a variety of copyright issues.
As a teen librarian, I’ve done three school visits for two different libraries. The first was while I was still in college. I spoke to the sixth graders about volunteering for the Summer Reading Club during their lunch. A middle school cafeteria at lunchtime. I was thrown to the wolves. Even the most seasoned veteran […]
On posts, in tweets, and in my mailbox, one of the questions we – TLT – get asked a lot is “What about the conservatives?” Because we post regularly about GLBTQAI+ literature, talk about advocacy, etc., some are left with the impression that we do not care about meeting the needs of the more conservative […]
So yesterday I began telling you about doing my diversity audit. I began in a place that many people wouldn’t suspect, by doing a local community needs and assessment evaluation. I thought if I wanted to understand why I was building a diverse/inclusive collection, I also wanted to understand who I was doing it for. […]
Tomorrow as part of the Library Journal/School Library Journal training on diversity Diversity and Cultural Competency Training: Collections & RA (which you should do), I will be doing a presentation on doing a diversity audit. I will outline what a diversity audit is, how to do one, and what I learned doing mine. I will […]
Jan Wilson, SLJ's 2017 Hero of Collaboration, provides tips to boost your school library's profile.
Move over, John Green. In an event featuring star authors, a group of Oregon high school students stole the show at SLJ's 2017 Summit. Here's video of the teen panel.
At the SLJ Leadership Summit, Gene Luen Yang and students and educators at Jesuit High School in Portland, OR, discussed how Yang's American Born Chinese helped develop their racial literacy.
Author John Green opened School Library Journal's 2017 Leadership Summit in Nashville, TN, with an emotional keynote. Here's the video.
Add an “R,” Reading, to STEAM and ramp up student learning. In this free session, you’ll glean insight from STREAM practitioners and tips on integrating science, technology, reading, engineering, arts, and math.
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Helping teachers access a wide range of quality content for classroom assignments and lesson plans can be overwhelming. Attend this live webinar to hear from a Teacher Librarian who has met this challenge head-on and is successfully connecting her users to valuable digital resources.
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In this timely webinar, you’ll learn about best practices for introducing coding to your library makerspace and how you can support coding initiatives in your school or district. You’ll also learn how tools like littleBits can give students the foundations in engineering and coding that will be useful no matter what changes lie around the corner.
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Ready for maximum takeaway? This fast-paced event is jammed pack with ideas to engage students. Panelists will tip you on the best applications in VR creation, digital storytelling, making, and more!
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Join Shelley Diaz,
School Library Journal's reviews manager, for a lively conversation with editors and publishing insiders. They’ll discuss their acquisition process, their path to working in publishing, growing relationships with authors and illustrators, and how they feel about the fall season buzz.
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Nothing tells a story like a picture, and early readers thrive on visual stimulation. Join moderator Maria Alegre and a panel of children’s books publishers as they discuss upcoming picture and board books to entice future lifelong readers.
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From sf/fantasy and coming of age to shonen/shojo manga, superhero twists of fate, an accidental adventure, and YA memoir, the hottest titles for fall offer a mashup of genres and characters from all walks of life. Join
LJ Assistant Managing Editor Annalisa Pešek and publishers as they discuss the latest must-have graphic novels.
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Be the first to hear about the exciting YA debuts from authors S.K. Ali, Janelle Milanes, and Margaret Rogerson. They will share their experiences of writing for teens and discuss the journey of having a book published for the first time.
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A successful makerspace requires planning. Here, experts offer tips on how to ensure a great program, from gauging the needs of your community to making the most of your space and budget. Whether you’re already up and running or just getting started, you won’t want to miss this informative session.
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Students are heading back to school – is your nonfiction collection ready? From early readers to young adults, this webcast highlights exciting new titles that are sure to please. Join moderator Steven Engelfried along with Amicus, Mason Press and Scholastic as they discuss the newest must-reads!
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On Monday the family and I drove down from the DFW area to the Houston area, Katy to be specific, to help out a friend whose home was flooded during Hurricane Harvey. The Mr. works on cars and he went to look at their cars and see if they could be fixed or were a […]
Entice the inquisitive minds of your nonfiction fans with informative and engaging titles! This must-see webinar highlights a variety of fascinating subjects that will appeal to students and patrons of all ages.
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Don’t miss your chance to discover the hottest new titles in this SLJ 2017 Teen Book Buzz webcast! From ghost stories to tales of unlikely friendships, travel and adventure to KGB spies, these hot off the press selections are chock full of teen appeal.
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A new school year always inspires creativity. This year, librarians around the country are stepping up programming connected to learning goals.
SLJ's sixth annual virtual conference on all things teen took place on August 9, 2017. The archive and Storify for the free, all-day event is now available.
The results are in! Almost 300 librarians weighed on SLJ's Top 100 Must-Have YA poll. Download a PDF of the full list.
SLJ editors have chosen the following 42 works as must-have diverse YA titles for every teen librarian’s collection.
"Teen Librarian Toolbox" blogger and SLJTeen Live! panelist Karen Jensen shares some ideas and resources for low-budget maker spaces.
The CEO of Girls Who Code, and SLJTeen Live! closing keynoter, speaks to SLJ about her latest and upcoming projects.
While it’s not a new idea that kids learn as they play, adults can take a page from their example: play more as we learn—and play in order to learn.
North Texas Teen Book Festival cofounder Dr. Rose Brock and SLJTeen Live! speaker offers how-to advice on developing a youth-centered event.
Lukavics spins a tale of sisterhood and cannibalism sure to send chills up readers' spines.
SLJTeen Live! panelist Jason Reynolds talked with SLJ about superpowers, how he fleshed out the Afro-Puerto Rican webslinger’s backstory, and his favorite superhero.
Join us for this engaging session with library specialists Joshua Pease and Lori Slingerland from the Connect Information Technology Center. Pease and Slingerland will provide valuable insight into how Connect delivers eBooks and audiobooks to its member schools and districts across Northeast Ohio through a cost-effective shared digital collection.
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Reaching all young readers can be challenging. Attend this webcast to explore ways to help increase interest in all YA and middle readers in your public or school library. You will hear from public and school librarians on how they reach their reluctant and struggling readers and how they work together to ensure every reader is engaged.
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This past Sunday I had the honor of presenting with a panel of fabulous librarians about how libraries are NOT neutral spaces. Like most librarians, I spent a major part of my career proclaiming that we were. But over time, I have come to realize that we are, in fact, not. For example, if during […]
Debut author and SLJTeen Live! speaker Ibi Zoboi talks about her writing initiatives for teens in immigrant communities.
Attendees at SLJ’s ninth annual Day of Dialog on May 31 in New York City were treated to a lunch keynote from the acclaimed Megan Whalen Turner and a panel of blockbuster YA authors.
Picture book creators Sean Qualls, Selina Alko, Sydney Smith, Philip Stead, Brendan Wenzel, and Hervé Tullet touched on collaboration, a sense of place, and whimsy during a panel.
A riveting conversation with Tracey Baptiste, Paul Griffin, Katherine Paterson, Jason Reynolds, and Karina Yan Glaser.
Insight into writing and illustrating nonfiction from Steve Sheinkin, Sue Macy, Michelle Markel, Alexandra Siy, and R. Gregory Christie.
Gene Luen Yang, U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, kicked off SLJ’s Day of Dialog with a witty, dynamic presentation about superhero comics, computers, reading, and his life as a nerd.
Sandhya Menon talks about her inspiration, writing process, and her YA debut When Dimple Met Rishi about two first-generation Indian American teens who (just might) be meant for each other.
I am just home from Boston where I attended SLJ’s inaugural Innovator Basecamp. Don’t get me wrong. I love attending conferences where I see my dear friends, some of whom I grew up with as a baby librarian. But yesterday, when I asked how many of the participants in my morning session were new librarians, nearly […]
Literacy—and how libraries are reimagining services to address it for patrons of all ages—took center stage at the Northeast Dade–Aventura Branch, Miami Dade (FL) Public Library System, March 9–10, at LJ and School Library Journal’s 2017 Public Library Think Tank.
Hear from a panel of experts who are sharing their eBook collections with locals schools about how resource sharing increases utilization of the library’s digital collections, engages students as public library patrons and broadens the library’s impact in its community.
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Join this free, resource-rich program for tips on how to leverage technology to help new and struggling readers. Learn about the best storytelling apps, digital sources of high-interest content for kids and teens, and more.
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Join Brigid Alverson, Editor and Writer at
School Library Journal, along with a panel of insiders who will share their views on the hottest graphic novels hitting book shelves this spring. You’ll hear all about upcoming releases from Diamond Books, Viz Media and Dark Horse Books.
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The Lilead Fellows program is a long-term professional development opportunity for a select group of school district library supervisors.
How we engage in programming and teaching literacy is getting more interesting as librarians creatively tackle the massive literacy challenge, even crisis, we face.
Join Penguin’s chapter book superstars for a webinar dedicated to your transitional readers. Listen to the authors and illustrators talk about their chapter book series and what it’s like to work with one another. The first 100 people to register for this webinar will receive a Chapter Book Swag Pack!
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Get ready for a rapid fire tool share in this next webcast in the SLJ/ISTE series. We’ll explore the best applications and gear for your school or library, including must-have multimedia content, cool coding platforms, and top choices for your maker space.
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In this timely webinar, you'll learn about best practices for introducing coding to your library makerspace and how you can support coding initiatives in your school or district. You'll also learn how tools like littleBits can give students the foundations in engineering and coding that will be useful no matter what changes lie around the corner.
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Join Shelley Diaz,
School Library Journal's reviews manager, for an in-depth conversation with editors and publishing insiders, Francisca Goldsmith of Library Ronin, Christopher Johns of Tuttle Publishing, Cheryl Klein of Lee & Low and Carrie Gleason of James Lorimer & Company. They’ll dig deeper into publishing diverse children’s and young adult literature with a focus on #OwnVoices titles.
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School librarians and teachers uncovered new ideas to help students tell fact from fiction with the ISTE/SLJ "Information Literacy in the Age of Fake News" webinar.
While writing her latest YA fantasy, Laini Taylor followed her hearts.
Everyone who works with teens in an educational library setting knows it’s a struggle to compete for a their time and attention. We’re up against schoolwork, sports, various extracurricular activities, part-time jobs, social media and technology. We want teens to spend time in our libraries and love reading, but it can be challenging to get […]
On paper, it’s the perfect program. An afternoon spent making as we help teens learn various tasks they may need to participate in cosplay? Sounds like a great idea. It was an idea sparked by a comment made by a presenter at ALA in 2016. And we ran with it because 1) we have an […]
Want to start a baking club at your library but not sure where to start? Teen librarian Lindsey Tomsu has you covered.
A new season of the SLJ ISTE webcast series launches with “Information Literacy in the Age of Fake News” on March 16.
Barry Lyga talks about what inspired his hard-hitting novel Bang, an SLJ February 2017 Popular Pick.
Join Lynda Mullaly Hunt, author of Fish in a Tree, for a LIVE webcast from the Free Library of Philadelphia! Listen to the author talk about her inspiration for
Fish in a Tree, her upcoming projects and her visits with students from across the country.
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Critical thinking is more important than ever. As part of our popular series on technology in the education space, our panelists will cover how to vet information and establish best practices for students to manage the digital firehose, and consider perspective and bias.
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Looking for something new to entice your nonfiction fans? Look no further. Titles that inform, fulfill the needs of classroom teachers, and entertain students are right around the corner.
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With funds always tight, you may assume a digital reading platform is out of reach for your school or district. Think again. Join us for this eye-opening webinar where we’ll hear how the Southwest Educational Development Center (UT) delivers eBooks and audiobooks to schools across six districts with an affordable shared collection.
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Join Shelley Diaz, School Library Journal's reviews manager, for a rich conversation with four editors and publishing insiders, Jennifer Brown of Alfred A. Knopf, Jean Feiwel of Macmillan, Deirdre Jones of Little, Brown Books, and Namrata Tripathi of Dial Books. They’ll discuss finding great new talent, cultivating relationships with authors and illustrators, and how they feel about award season buzz. Each editor will also offer a special sneak peek at several upcoming titles.
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Does the thought of building out a Professional Development (PD) program across an entire school district seem like an insurmountable task to you? How do you overcome obstacles such as distance or diverse needs? Learn from someone who has been there. In this webinar, Melissa Jacobs of the NYC Department of Education shares how they were able to roll out a comprehensive city-wide PD program using ASCD eBooks to improve teacher practice and evaluations modeled after Charlotte Danielson’s rubric.
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SLJ chats with Renée Watson about her stirring YA novel Piecing Me Together .
Sometimes inspiration comes in the strangest moments. Yesterday on Twitter I was thinking about what it means to me now to be a librarian. So I started tweeting and ended up with a long string of tweets highlighting the things that I think we – and that we includes me – can do now in […]
Join us for a live webcast featuring the five finalists for the 2017 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award. Register now to learn a bit about these terrific titles; hear from the authors about their research and writing processes; and glean some insights into publishing decisions that make the best nonfiction titles accessible and engaging to today’s teens. Don’t miss out on this exclusive event, which will take place right before the award announcement at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Atlanta.
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This week, I have been desperately ill. It’s only a head cold and strep throat, but I will swear to you I have the plague. So yesterday I texted my boss and told her, “When I die, please bring the Teen MakerSpace manual to my funeral and tell everyone it was my greatest professional achievement.” […]
Among the hottest trends in education, STEAM has thus far focused predominantly on science, tech, engineering and math. We’ll explore art, how it integrates with STEM, with advice from educator experts.
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(This is slightly edited cross post with Tiffany Whitehead’s Mighty Little Librarian blog.) Seven years ago, our amazing tribe of Teacher Librarians embarked on a journey to deliver much needed professional development on library and technology topics. At the time, there were few such free opportunities to meet this need, so the TL Virtual Cafe […]
Join Library Journal/School Library Journal reviews director Kiera Parrott for an in-depth conversation with three top-notch children’s and teen book editors. They’ll discuss their how they build relationships with their authors and find new voices, share insider stories about working on manuscripts, and chat about what they make of all that award-season buzz. Each editor will also give a sneak peek at several upcoming titles.
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In this webinar, you will learn what several experts are doing to help schools build a 21st century library. Our panelists will explain that it’s not enough to simply purchase digital assets – educators need professional development opportunities that concentrate on why students benefit from modern technology. They will also discuss how school librarians can leverage digital and print resources to become instructional and technological leaders, ultimately outfitting students with the skills they’ll need to succeed in the digital future.
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Emboldened attendees left Washington, D.C. with a fresh perspective, new energy, and actionable ideas.
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