News & Features

When the new social studies and the Common Core standards are used together to plan curriculum, the result is a truly powerful, integrated approach to learning. Here's a lesson that shows the way.

There’s an interesting article over at The New York Times called Mormons Offer Cautionary Lesson on Sunny Outlook vs. Literary Greatness. It looks,  in part, at the influence on one’s culture on the stories authors write. The problems I have with it is that at times it lacks nuance and offers sweeping generalization. Look, for [...]

UPDATE November 15 Large Collection Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda: Health-Related Information Resources (via NLM’s Disaster Information Management Research Center) UPDATE November 14 Super Typhoon Haiyan Crowdsource Mapping Project Info (via Digital Globe) UPDATE November 13 Collection of Maps from MapAction Field Team in the Philippines UPDATE November 12 FirstLook Satellite Imagery of Damage to Tacloban City, Philippines (via […]

Last week, Tammy Pirmann and our STEM 1 Class hosted, what we think, may be the first ever Cell Phone Carnival. Tammy, K12 Coordinator for Computer Science, is also our high school STEM teacher. The curriculum for her two mixed-grade classes called for a Rube Goldberg-type of machine as the students’ first project.   But [...]

Awards season is finally upon us and, as the SLJ Book Review team puts the finishing touches on its Best Books of 2013 list, we’ve been comparing notes and keeping tabs on other reviewers’ top picks. Fan favorite and SLJ starred book, Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park has even made Amazon’s top 10 books of the year.

Oh, you lucky bugs.  Do you know what today is?  Today is the first day of Kidlitcon and for those of you still interested in joining (and who wouldn’t be?) you have a last minute chance to be a part of the fun.  Always assuming you’re in the Austin area, of course, but I bet [...]

Spurred by recent findings by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, the topic of diversity (or rather, lack thereof) in children’s books has been receiving a lot of attention lately. The BBC has picked up on the topic and recently ran t...

AASL needs volunteers for its conference next week in Hartford, Connecticut. The New York Public Library has launched new after-school programs. AAAS/Subaru have announced finalists for the SB&F Prize for children’s science books. Kid lit submissions are being accepted for the PEN Literary Awards. Through November 15, ALA seeks nominations for its cutting-edge library practices technology award.

For those who can’t wait two more weeks to see Catching Fire, relief is at hand. The taut How I Live Now offers a slimmed down dystopian world at its most bucolic—a survival tale meets hot-and-heavy first love with a punkish swagger. The screenwriters have tweaked the snarky-but-soft-hearted narration of Meg Rosoff’s absorbing novel (Random, 2004), but given the heroine a still-defiant voice.