News & Features

To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Open Circle Program at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), a provider of evidence-based social and emotional learning for K–5 kids, has released its list of the top 25 children's books that connect to kids’ social and emotional development . The chosen books cover a range of important skills, such as self-awareness, self-management, empathy, dealing with conflict, and problem-solving.

With the ALA Youth Media Awards just around the corner, Junior Library Guild takes a look at some star-studded titles.

Popcorn Maker, a tool for enhancing and remixing Web video from Mozilla, gets the screencast treatment by Linda W. Braun, who says the free, browser-based application would help librarians, both school and public, curate the Web.

Beautiful Creatures is a story of star-crossed lovers with a supernatural edge and atmospheric Southern setting. The film adaptation of the first novel in Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s fan-favorite series (2009, Little, Brown) is fittingly scheduled for release on Valentine’s Day, 2013. Tempt teens who just can’t get enough of these Beautiful Creatures to keep reading by booktalking or displaying a selection of page-turning tales forged with mystical wonder and touched by true love. Encompassing copious coming-of-age themes and a variety of writing styles, these titles also make excellent choices for book discussion groups.

An ambitious partnership between Nashville Public Library (NPL) and Metro Nashville Schools has resulted in a successful program called Limitless Libraries.

The number of kids reading ebooks has nearly doubled since 2010, according to Scholastic’s Kids & Family Reading Report, which was released today. The national survey of kids age 6–17 and their parents also found that half of kids age 9–17 say they would read more books for fun if they had greater access to ebooks—although 80 percent of kids who read ebooks say they still read books for fun primarily in print.

Titanic: Voices From The Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson. Scholastic 2012. Review copy from publisher. Finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award. It’s About: The sinking of the “unsinkable” Titanic on April 15, 1912, resulting in the loss of over 1,400 men, women and children. The Good: I believe the first Titanic movie I [...]