Ideas

“We’re bringing services to people who either would not or could not access them otherwise….[it] truly does change lives,” says Library Journal Mover & Shaker Richard Lyda, outreach librarian at Arapahoe Library District in Centennial, CO. In our follow-up interview, Lyda shares with SLJ his strategies for effective community outreach, what’s next for him in his district, and much more.

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

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.

My friend Hornberger and I are having a conversation about nonfiction ebooks. In a recent post I chatted about my students’ eager acceptance of the EBSCO e-Book Academic Collection. Karen, the librarian at Palisades High School, as well as our PSLA Tech Committee co-chair and blogger, decided to test drive the database herself.  She also [...]

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?

The task for educators is not to drain this sense of open-ended exploration from student-fans but rather to make sure that it is accompanied by the Jiminy Cricket-like voice of critical literacy...

From haiku to animal poems to riffs on classic tales, this season's new poetry titles open readers to the world around them—and some exquisite wordplay.

Many people hold on to the belief that nonfiction writing is “just the facts,” often synonymous with formulaic, dull writing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Writers for young people model both substance and style, and can serve as mentors to their readers.

Can kids garner a passion for literature without Shakespeare, Silverstein, Salinger, or Sendak? Not in the opinion of the "lead architect of the Common Core Standards Initiative." In celebration of National Poetry Month, we offer three titles that illuminate the intersection between the study of poetry and the goals of the CCSS.