News & Features

ALA's Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has announced the 10 recipients of its 2013 Teen Read Week Grants. Funded by the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, the grants of $1,000 each will be used by the libraries to fund their Teen Read Week programs.

A group of forward-thinking and trailblazing school librarians will soon be gathering at School Library Journal’s ninth annual Leadership Summit. Taking place in Austin, Texas from September 28-29, the event will showcase the transformative work that educators are doing all over the country through effective collaboration. Check out the full schedule here.

Simon & Schuster has announced the creation of a pilot program that would make available as digital editions a specially selected collection of its most popular and award-winning PreK–12 books for school classrooms nationwide. Each ebook purchased may be used in the classroom for one year from the purchase date, and may only be used by one student at a time.

First Book today pledged $9 million over three years to expand its distribution model globally, with the aim of bringing high quality books and resources—including ebooks and digital content—to 10 million children living in poverty worldwide by 2016. First Book made the pledge at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI)’s annual meeting in New York City, hosted by former President Bill Clinton.

Now that the 2013-14 school year is rolling, it’s time to take a look at the books kids are anxious to get their hands on. John Schumacher and I will be posting our first #holdshelf of the year at Watch. Connect. Read. on Monday, September 30 – will you join us? Head over to Watch. [...]

Torrential downpours did not dampen the crowd’s enthusiasm for the over one hundred authors and illustrators who participated in the Library of Congress’s 13th annual National Book Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., this weekend. Hundreds of attendees jammed the festival tents to see and hear such favorite authors as Richard Peck, Katherine Paterson, Phyllis Naylor Reynolds, Oliver Jeffers, Veronica Roth, and Jon Klassen.

NY middle school librarian Deven Black has been named the 2013 Bammy Award recipient in the inaugural school librarian category, presented by the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences International. Sylvia Knight Norton, incoming executive director of AASL, presented the award on Saturday, September 21, 2013. Jennifer Lagarde, Shannon Miller, Joyce Valenza, and Matthew Winner joined Black as nominees for the award.

This compendium of new and backlist titles is recommended to get Latino kids hooked on reading. It includes books in Spanish, a few in English with Latino/a characters, and those by Latino authors and illustrators.

Friends and family gathered in New York City on Saturday, September 21, to pay tribute to storyteller, folklorist, and picture book author Diane Wolkstein, who died on January 31, 2013. During the memorial, Wolkstein was honored for her contributions to the world of storytelling through her performances and numerous books, audiobooks, and DVDs of tales she collected from around the world.