News & Features

You've heard of the Follett Challenge, right? The grand-prize winner will receive $60,000 in Follett products and services. More than 100 educators have applied and sent in their three- to five-minute videos, and voting is now officially open. And here's a shameless plug: the home of our teen reviewers, Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology Academy, is one of the applicants, and it sure would love to have you vote for its video submission. The video with the most votes is up for a $5,000 prize; voting closes on March 18, and you can vote every day.

Have you heard about "The Hub Reading Challenge," sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)? As reported in SLJ’s Good Comics for Kids blog, YALSA is hosting an expanded, new and improved The Hub Reading Challenge for 2013. This is how it works: you have until June 22 to read as many titles as you can from YALSA’s official challenge list. Once you hit the 25 book mark, you're eligible to submit a reader’s response for any of the titles you’ve read. Sure, there’s a prize, and you can earn a badge too!

The Legend of Zelda is one of the few video games my son plays that tempts me to park on the couch and watch. Valiant effort, haunting melodies, faerie-like creatures, and lots of swordplay are part of this hero’s journey tale. We even have some Zelda memorabilia around the house, including a not-often-played ocarina. Zelda fans are legion and loyal, and they proved it by pushing The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, the 274-page chronological account on The Legend of Zelda universe, to the top of the New York Times Advice and Miscellaneous Hardcover bestseller list on February 10, where it still sits as of this writing.

A powerful and uplifting biography of a 19th-century slave who was also a talented artist.

It’s Nevada, 1869, and 15-year-old Jim and his injured horse, Promise, are struggling to make it across the 40-Mile Desert. They're rescued by Mutt, Golgotha’s Native American deputy, who encourages Jim to settle in his town. And it’s a good thing he agrees, because along with the sheriff and a few other key residents, they are about to fight a great battle to save the Earth, heaven, and hell—one whose seeds were planted when the world was first created.

As promised, this week we’ll be featuring the top ten read-alikes for the recently discussed award-winner Drama by Raina Telgemeier.  You can read us investigating just what makes this title great in last week’s post, but this week is about finding more titles for your Drama fans to love. Read on for our contributors picks! [...]

There's still time to make good on those New Year resolutions, and if yours was to get in shape, you'll want to check out Nike + Kinect Training. Fine motor skills can get a workout from all the axe swinging and scything in Devil May Cry. Been looking for some romantic listening? Love Charlie from Charlie Wilson may just be the ticket for your next date night.

As this article goes live, we are three—count 'em!— three days away from opening the new Gum Spring Library. I've been here since mid-January, and I'm just beginning to realize that the expectations I had in my head were way off base. Between preparing volunteers, planning opening day activities, and training pages, few things have gone exactly as planned. Yet despite the many changes we've made in our schedule, our confidence grows as we learn what must be done now and what can wait.

The only problem with inspirational movies is that they can be kind of corny. Know what I mean? I’m not talking about message movies, although plenty of those attempt to inspire us–it’s just that their attempts are so transparent that the audience feels like it’s being treated like idiots. (And for some reason we educators, [...]