News & Features

Encourage your students to harness their creative energies, follow their interests and passions, and put their 21st-century skills to good use. That's exactly what a contest for K–12 students from ThingLink and Rosen Digital aims to do. Thanks to the new contest, kids have an opportunity to create interactive ThingLink images, connect multiple resources into a cohesive presentation, and share their projects with a large community. And even better, they can win an iPad Mini or an annual subscription to one of Rosen Digital's online databases.

Blogger and teacher-librarian Joyce Valenza will join Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information (SC&I) early next year, the university announced today. Valenza, who SLJ once dubbed a “rock star librarian,” will use her extensive experience in education and technology to lead courses in school media, social media and learning, and digital youth in SC&I’s undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. programs.

This sci-fi thriller from Universal Pictures opens in theaters on April 19, 2013. Based on a yet-to-be-published graphic novel (Radical Publishing) by movie director/writer Joseph Kosinki, Oblivion (PG-13) is set 60 years after Earth is attacked by alien invaders. The entire human population has been relocated, and Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), a drone repairmen and part of a large-scale venture to extract vital resources, is one of the few remaining individuals stationed on a planet left in ruins. Update your collections with a selection of novels that prophesize an often earth-shattering (sometimes literally), tantalizingly thought-provoking, and always page-turning future for our planet and humankind.

Amazon’s recent acquisition of Goodreads will likely have a ripple effect on other social media sites targeted at book lovers, with LibraryThing and Bookish potentially drawing membership from any defectors unhappy with the sale. Meanwhile, many Kindle owners will be introduced to Goodreads for the first time, as the site’s social media functions are integrated with Kindle devices. “Goodreads was fully independent…. it made them the natural allies of people who wanted to avoid the consolidation of the industry, in particular publishers,” LibraryThing founder Tim Spalding told LJ.

Add depth to your poetry collections with these new titles: Gail Bush & Randy Meyer’s Indivisible Poems for Social Justice, J. Patrick Lewis’s When Thunder Comes: Poems for Civil Rights Leaders, and Marilyn Singer’s Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems.

Be sure to check out new easy readers by Michael Garland, Betsy Lewin, and Mo Willems as well as many other exciting new selections for spring.

In support of New York Times best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson’s classic young adult novel, Speak, its publisher, Macmillan, is teaming up with RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) to raise funds for programs to end sexual violence. The campaign, nicknamed #Speak4RAINN, will be launched on April 2 (coinciding with the National Sexual Assault and Awareness Day of Action) and will run through April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Our fifth annual Battle of the Kids’ Books—an online elimination contest between 16 of 2012’s best children’s and teens’ fiction and nonfiction books—has crowned a winner: Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s No Crystal Stair (Lerner/Carolrhoda). The final match was decided on April 1 by last year’s victor and the 2013 Big Kahuna, Frank Cottrell Boyce.

From a teen eyewitness account of the Battle of Gettysburg to an investigation of those pointy-nose Darwin frogs (with some very unusual brooding habits) to an examination of science myths, we’ve selected a few nonfiction books publishing this month that you’ll want to display, booktalk, and put in the hands of your patrons.