Tales from a Loud Librarian

I love author visits either face to face or virtual. Authors are my rock stars, and I love making connections with them that I can then bring back and share with my students. On a recent face to face visit at our school by T. A. Barron, one of the teachers came to school the next day and explained her surprise when she went home to tell her son about our author visit. Her son was a fan of Barron and had read every one of his books in his school library. She had no clue that the author who was at our school the day before was nationally recognized. I only want the best for my students. I first met Ruta Sepetys in 2011 at ALA, but that was only for a simple book signing for her first book. In 2013 when her book that took place in New Orleans came out, I figured out a way to get her to visit school when she hit New Orleans on her book tour . She was a phenomenal speaker and had the juniors eating out of her hand. We met again in 2014 at the Louisiana Book Festival and at the...

Final meeting of BRiMS, that 's me in white Even though it was standardized testing week, I held our last regularly scheduled monthly  BRiMS  (Books Rule in Middle School) meeting on Wednesday during lunch. It seemed silly to cancel it since the students' lunch period was actually longer than usual last week. I liked the fact that I didn't have to cancel just because testing was being held in the morning--in some schools I would have to do so. We did have a lower turnout than usual, but I had been reminding kids about the meeting in emails, the daily school memo, and signage in the library. I do believe that the students need to learn how to take responsibility and keep track of meeting dates and times. Some forgot, some didn't read the book, and others just chose to go to the cafeteria for lunch. This year, I finally found a rhythm with the way that I organize what we read for each monthly meeting. For half the meetings, there was an assigned book and t...