Classroom

In honor of National Poetry Month, acclaimed poet Naomi Shihab Nye—whose anthology This Same Sky (Simon & Schuster, 1993) continues to be used in both college and fifth grade classrooms—offers us five of her “very favorite lovingly-used poetry collections.”

The fall of 2012 was a strong season for new series in American history and geography. In comparison, the spring of 2013 has a small turnout. However, that does not mean that these books are also-rans. Quite the contrary is true.

Kings and queens. Generals and enlisted men. Flamboyant outlaws and gangsters. Intrepid explorers and treasure hunters. Much of the world’s history has been made by people who lived outsized lives, pursued outsized dreams, or achieved outsized deeds.

From The Canadian Press: A recent dust-up between Wikipedia and Canada’s largest university raises questions about how collaborative the popular website that bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” truly is. The online information portal recently took a professor from the University of Toronto to task for one of his classroom assignments. [...]

In honor of National Poetry Month, children's poet laureate J. Patrick Lewis picks his favorite collections for kids.

With its emphasis on research, learning, investigating, and arriving at one's own conclusions, History Day is a perfect complement to the new education guidelines.

It’s spring! Just like the narrator says in the 1947 educational film Body Care and Grooming, "Ah, spring. When birds are on the wing, when flowers bloom... Spring, when a young man's fancy likely turns to...."—Author unknown. The answer has to be testing! High-stakes testing! Advanced Placement testing! American College Testing or even the SAT! Students feel pressured to work hard to prove themselves in this world of achievement.

April is National Poetry Month and a favorite part of this initiative by the Academy of American Poets is Poem in Your Pocket Day, coming April 18. It's a perfect time to see poetry all around us and reinforce that poetry infuses our lives. How will you be celebrating?

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.