Industry News

In this week's News Bites: As an incentive to get children in the library during the summer, Bedtime Math is offering two free math-focused program kits. National Geographic Kids content is being added to Cengage Learning's National Geographic Virtual Library product line. Four S. E. Hinton novels are now available in ebook format for the first time. Capstone partners with Save the Children.

Hachette Book Group today announced that it will once again sell its frontlist ebook titles to libraries, beginning on May 8. Hachette’s entire catalog of 5,000 ebooks will now be available through OverDrive, Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 platform, and the 3M Cloud Library, under a pricing and licensing model similar to the one employed by Random House.

Johnsonville Sausage wants to learn about the educators that make your school, town and community a better place to be. If you or a colleague are helping to "create better places to live through actions taken both inside and outside the walls of the classroom," are a U.S. citizen over the age of 18, and are employed in a school or organization that supports education, you're eligible to apply for the 2013 Johnsonville Best of Us award.

Fifth grader Louie Burger figures that with a goofy name like his, he must be destined to be a king of comedy like his idol Lou Lafferman. One huge problem: he has stage fright. With the school talent show coming up, Louie’s wondering if now is his moment to kill (that’s comedian talk for “make actual people laugh”). Four lucky winners will receive a copy of The Barftastic Life of Louie Burger by Jenny Meyerhoff, and one grand prize winner will receive a Barftastic Backpack of Boredom Busters (great for summer reading programs!) filled with joke items including a whoopee cushion, a rubber chicken, Groucho glasses, and more, plus a copy of the book and a T-shirt.

Bill Gates, John Legend, and Sir Ken Robinson are among some of the bigger names joining TED next week to discuss education in the conference series’ first ever televised special. Here is a preview of the event, which was recorded earlier this month in New York City.

In the fifth and final installment of our series celebrating National Poetry Month, Jack Prelutsky, America’s first children’s poet laureate, offers us five of his top poetry collections for kids.

Kathleen Reif, director of St. Mary’s County Library, Leonardtown, MD, is the 2013 recipient of Peggy Sullivan Award for Public Library Administrators Supporting Services to Children. The Sullivan Award, administered by the American Library Association (ALA), is presented annually to an individual in a library administrator role who has shown exceptional understanding and support of public library service to children. The award will be presented at the ALA President's Program, Sunday, June 30, at the Annual Conference in Chicago.

From San Antonio to Fort Worth, literacy educators and librarians converged on Texas last week to celebrate books and reading.

Kathy Ishizuka has been named executive editor of School Library Journal. Previously assistant editor of book review, Shelley Diaz has been promoted to SLJ associate editor.