Classroom

Investigative journalist Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World, shares highlights of her research into the world’s top performing educational systems—Finland, Korea, and Poland—and what the US can do to replicate that success. The Common Core is a great place to start, she says, but for real improvement, administrators, educators, parents, and students need to agree that education matters.

Junior Library Guild editors share fun sequels for independent readers. These follow-ups include new entries in favorite series by Lemony Snicket and Jack Gantos, and will have kids anxiously waiting for their next titles.

When the new social studies and the Common Core standards are used together to plan curriculum, the result is a truly powerful, integrated approach to learning. Here's a lesson that shows the way.

American students’ skill levels in mathematics and reading have risen marginally since 2011, according to the National Center for Education Statistics . However, The Nation’s Report Card: 2013 Mathematics and Reading shows challenges to student success remain. Gains in reading have not quite kept pace with those in math, and achievement gaps are still evident between racial/ethnic groups and among states.

SLJ has compiled an expansive page of diversity resources—including materials on people of color, non-American cultures, LGBTQ issues, and disability—to help librarians better serve children and teens. From author interviews to collection development tools and from blogs to news coverage, these articles and reviews aim to give insight into issues that are becoming more relevant for kids each day.

If the "Harry Potter" books opened up fantasy for generations of readers, what will be the "gateway drug" for nonfiction readers? The author considers Jonathan Hunt's question.

"Librarians are ideally positioned to become cultivators of students' interests," according to Annie Murphy Paul. A journalist and author, Murphy Paul sheds light on the latest cognitive research on this critical component to reading and learning in SLJ's November 2013 cover story.

Animals with transparent guts! Fish that make their own light! An underwater bird? Booktalk audiences hungry for adventure and monsters can find both in remarkable books on marine mysteries. While the following titles are aimed at fourth grade and above, even younger readers will find the pictures irresistible.

Make It @ Your Library, in collaboration with Instructables.com and the American Library Association, has finally launched its searchable website, makeitatyourlibrary.org, for librarians seeking maker space ideas and projects. Make It @ Your Library—an initiative developed through the ILEAD USA program over the past year—aims to help librarians realize maker projects in their own communities at low cost.