Industry News

My father is a Marine, so by the time I was eight I was quite adept at packing up my things. I vividly remember when we moved to Beaufort, SC. It was 1996, and it was the first time I ever took advantage of a move. Instead of trashing my old clothes and childish toys, I fixed up parts of my personality that needed improvement and tried out some new traits. I asked people to call me “Al”, giving the role of tomboy a spin. I also spoke up a little more and put myself in more social situations. I used this experience to invent a whole new me.

African-American writer, griot, and blues singer Arthur Flowers and Indian scroll painter Manu Chitrakar have combined their very distinctive storytelling traditions in an extraordinary jam session, creating I See the Promised Land, a stunning graphic narrative-style biography of Martin Luther King Jr. In honor of Black History Month, Groundwood Books will be giving away 10 signed copies.

What's a tweet up? Your chance to meet face-to-face with fellow educators who use Twitter to strengthen professional learning and to connect. This is the second ASCD Sham-rocksannual ASCD Tweet Up, sponsored by Herff Jones Nystrom, a provider of classroom teaching resources. The free event kicks off at 5:30 p.m. CST on Saturday, March 16, during ASCD's 2013 Annual Conference and Exhibit Show in Chicago.

The wonderful teacher librarians of the Washington Library Media Association (WLMA) recently released the five-minute video, Teacher Librarians at the Heart of Student Learning. The video, partially funded by Mackin, is designed to present school libraries and teacher librarians as a vital resource for student learning and to highlight the essential role teacher librarians play [...]

Gerald McDermott, award-winning author and illustrator best known for his original take on folktales, died on December 26. He was 71.

The Cooperative Children's Book Center has awarded Each Kindness, written by Jacqueline Woodson and illustrated by E. B. Lewis, its Charlotte Zolotow Award for outstanding writing in a picture book. The 2013 Zolotow committee also named Flabbersmashed About You, Me and Momma and Big John, and Sleep Like a Tiger as Honor Books. The awards will be presented on April 6, 2013.

Educators eager to implement the Common Core standards into their work need look no further than School Library Journal's newest column, Nonfiction Notes. This month, we examine titles that include biographies, the American Revolution, and exploration.

School Library Journal has a new editor. Karyn M. Peterson has joined the staff as news editor, replacing Debra Whelan, who left in October 2012.