Tales from a Loud Librarian

One of the ways that I like to use this blog space is to share some of the titles that I am reading and write about which books are my new favorites. So far this summer I have finished ten books and are in the middle of two books as I type this post.  I choose the books that I read for a lot of different reasons. I am a book reviewer for both School Library Journal and School Media Connection (formerly Library Media Connection) . That means that I am sent books to read and review. I get to choose favorite genres and age ranges, but what I get is a crap shoot. Sometimes I love the books but very often I am underwhelmed.  SLJ asks all reviewers not to broadcast to publishers or authors what books that they will be reviewing. I am also asked not to publish, like on this blog, my reviews until six months after the review has been published in the print magazine. LMC has never given me any such guidelines, so I just follow what I do for SLJ. By the time that my review h...

I started a book on April 19th. I know this because I logged it in on Good Reads . I just finished it on Sunday. Whew! I was off for a week during that time. You would think that I could read a young adult book faster than that. I liked the book, but my life got in the way. I will spend lots of my free time reading, but when visitors come in to town, and the festival season starts in New Orleans; it is hard to curl up with a book. When I attended the AASL conference in October, a member of the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults committee told me that she reads a book a day. I love to read, but I want to savor a book, so racing through it in a day will not allow me to enjoy or internalize it at all. I can never remember character names now. If I read a book a day, then reading the book would be useless to me because I would not remember how the book made me feel or allowed the book to get under my skin and change how I think. Right now I have some reading deadlines looming over me....

I was first published in print several years ago, but I haven't had much in the way of bylines since then. Until now. Below is a copy of the table of contents page for the current issue of Library Media Connection. The Gale TEAMS Award that we won in fall 2011 was also sponsored by LMC. The editorial staff asked if Lisa Valence and I would write an article describing the project that won us the award. If you have the current copy of LMC, you can read all about it on page 40. If you can't get a copy, click the link underneath the table of contents below to read a pdf version. One of my colleagues in Jefferson Parish, TerryYoung, has an article on page 14 in this edition, and it is all about STEM resources.  Collaboration is the Key to Successful Research

I love to read, though I am picky about what I read. Generally, I will read several YA titles that appeal to me and then read an adult book to keep up with what my adult friends recommend. I like fiction, and only read a non-fiction title if the subject is one of my passions. Sometimes I need to read a book because a student has begged me to or because someone objects to a book's content and I need to see if I agree (usually I don't) or because the author is going to visit my school. I have always thought that I was capable of writing book reviews for the journals for librarians. I am reading all the time, and I have been writing reviews on this blog for years. I would see the call for reviewers in School Library Journal  (SLJ) but never respond. I was gun shy and didn't know if I could live up to their standards. After winning the Gale TEAMS Award in October, I was asked by Library Media Connection   (LMC) if I would review for their magazine.  Then I got a call from ...