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Youth Media Awards – Initial Reactions
This is one of my favorite days as a children’s librarian. I know there are those that don’t take much stock in the youth media awards, believing that many of the awards are given to quality literature, yet are not as interesting or accessible to the children reading them. But,…
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Book Review – Stubby the War Dog: The True Story of World War I's Bravest Dog
Stubby the War Dog: The True Story of World War I’s Bravest Dog by Ann Bausum is about an unlikely hero that I had never heard about until reading this informational text. This orphan dog found himself in good company during basic training on Yale’s campus in 1917. Did he…
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It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 1/26/15
I had a busy week of reading, specifically this weekend as my doctor put me on “vocal rest” to hopefully heal my month-long battle with laryngitis. Because I couldn’t talk all weekend, I spent the majority of my time reading, which was a great way to keep up with my…
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NYPL's 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2014
I’m currently working my way through the New York Public Library’s Children’s Books 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2014. I’ve read a number of the books already, but I figured it would be a great start to the new year to work towards these 100 books. I’m almost finished…
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Story Time Theme: Red
Today was our last storytime of the session and although I absolutely love storytime, this session has been rough! I don’t know what it was – the kids, adults, some combination of the two, but it seemed out of control each and every week. We’re changing the schedule a little…
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Story Time Theme: Yellow
We are continuing our color-themed story times this week with the color yellow! With only eight kids in attendance, I thought we’d be able to whiz through a lot of things, but the kids were very squirmy! Even so, I was able finally to use the nursery rhyme cube, but…
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Story Time Theme: Green
I think the universe finally saw it fit to provide me with a really great storytime (finally)! The past few weeks have been very busy, chaotic and not always the best storytimes I’ve offered. But today, it was awesome! We focused on the color green today and boy did we…
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National Book Award Finalists
It’s getting close to the time of year when the “Best of the Best” lists come out for just about everything – including books! The National Book Award just posted it’s finalists in its four areas Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature. As per usual, I’m really only interested…
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Storytime Theme: Purple
This was the first storytime of the fall session and I had far, far too much planned. Because it was the first one, I had to explain a lot of who I was, how storytime works, and our storytime rules. This took up so much time that we didn’t even…
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Cybils Nominations
Nominate your favorite books published between October 16, 2013 and October 15, 2014 in the following categories: Young Adult Non-fiction Young Adult Speculative Fiction Young Adult Fiction Poetry Book Apps Middle Grade Fiction Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction Elementary/Middle Grade Non-fiction Fiction Picture Books Graphics Easy Reader/Short Chapter Books for the…