Tales from a Loud Librarian

The students and I created a video to share their take on the four books in Round 3 of our Mock BOB. The books left in the battle were: All the Truth that's in Me by Julie Berry, Far Far Away by Tom McNeal, Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgewick and The Thing about Luck by Cynthia Kadohata. The voting ends on Monday afternoon. Open here to find the video on the PFTSTA Library website . We know that SLJ finished the BOB last week , but it took us some time to get all the champions rounded up to record. The winning books will be announced on Tuesday. 

School Library Journa l has kept up a prolific online presence with the Battle of the Kids Books through blog posts, online articles, twitter, etc. Read this online article to see one of my student's picture prominently displayed and find out more about PFTSTA's participation in the Mock BOB .  The students had about four days to ponder and decide how they would vote in Round 2 of our ongoing Mock BOB. The hardest battle was the choice between Eleanor and Park and Far Far Away . Open here to see what the SLJ author judge had to say about this battle.   I used Survey Monkey to collect the votes. The free version only allows one hundred respondents. I was hoping to have close to that. We only have 350 students in our school so that would have been a nice percentage of students. Unfortunately, I only had fifty-five voters, and that is only 16% of the school. Maybe I can figure out a way to drum up more votes in Round 3. We are going to do that one online too, but I am ...

Today, I sent the students a link to the Survey Monkey with the pictures that you see below to help them in their quest for the best of the books in Round 2. The students who defended the books in Round 1 gave me the blurbs to add to the pictures below. Just click on each picture to enlarge it to read what the students had to say. I think the students did a phenomenal job. They gave just the right kind of info to try and sway their classmates to select their book as a winner. The poll will stay open until Monday the 24th. I will let you know the school's selections next week. I will also add the a link to the SLJ author judge decisions after they are posted next week.  For Battle 1 of Round 2, our selections at PFTSTA did not match the selections of SLJ's author judges. Tonya Bolden was given the task by SLJ for picking the best of two non-fiction works: The Animal Book and Boxers and Saints . Though our student presenters of those books loved the...

Today was our kick off for the Battle of the Books--what we are calling Mock BOB. Students were invited to bring their lunch to the commons area to hear their classmates talk about the books that they chose to defend. We are following the brackets set up by School Library Journal and want to see if our choices match their author judges. We kicked it off with Julie Berry's All the Truth That's in Me and Steve Jenkins The Animal Book . When the high school students voted, we ended in a tie between both books. The middle schoolers were able to break that tie. With the fiction book by Berry coming out on top. Though both Alexandra and George who read Jenkins' book loved it and explained how engaging it was, it was Hannah and Jasmine who fought hard as they were both big fans of the thriller. The author judge for SLJ's BOB was Vaunda Nelson. The students did not agree with her choice, but you can read what she said about both books here . ...