Tales from a Loud Librarian

SLJ Teen Live August 10, 2016 Interface to navigate the online conference On August 10th, I spoke on a panel during the annual SLJ Teen Live online conference sponsored by School Library Journal. In the past, the focus of this one day conference was on young adult literature, books and authors, but this year a number of sessions were included dealing with teen programming in school and public libraries. The session in which I participated was called College and Career for the Under-served .  I spoke to the 250 attendees over the phone and manipulated my slides on the computer The college application process has been an area that is near and dear to me. I have been developing quality resources for my seniors for many years. I believe that as librarian I can help support the counseling department at my school in a big way. My school is small with 600 students, and the class of 2017 has only 30 students. Our counselor must assist students with the college pro...

There are only a few hours left of summer break for 2016. I start back to work on Monday, and our students will start on Thursday. Am I ready to go back? Yes and no. This has been a wonderful summer of rest and relaxation. I did not attend any conferences this summer nor did I spend hours making preparations for the new year. However, when I do reflect on the summer, I realize that my mind was never very far from the library.  I read. I am always reading something and though I don't like reading two print books at one time, I usually have one print book going and one audio book. I review books for both School Library Journal and School Library Connection . This means that I don't always get to choose what I read, but I didn't review much this summer, though I have 5 books by my bed to review right now. I am on the committee for the state library that selects the books for Louisiana Teen Readers' Choice (LTRC). At the beginning of the summer, we narrowed our list ...

When I was in library school, I had to take a course called school library management. It was a very straight forward course in terms of what school library management actually meant. What they didn't teach us was how to juggle getting all the management tasks done in between teaching classes, fielding research questions, readers' advisory, running clubs, dealing with technology issues, helping with whatever problem walked through the door, etc.  Download your own copy of this sign I have a sign in front of the circulation desk that encourages all who enter to interrupt me . Yes, I really do mean for the students, teachers, administrators, staff, and parents who walk through the doors to talk to me and ask me for help or assistance. That is a big part of my job--to be a support to all members of the school community. Also, a part of my job is to deal with all library resources including print and electronic materials as well as hardware that gets checked in and out of t...

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...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/purplesherbet/10915033606 I was interviewed and mentioned in this article in School Library Journal on preparing LBGTQ students for college   . It seems quite timely after the recent ruling on gay marriage by the Supreme Court of the United States. 

Collins Bird Guide Today I got an email that a review that I wrote for School Library Journal in September was just published. The review was for an app that helps you identify birds. You can open here to read the review . In 2013, I reviewed the National Geographic bird app which I think is much more useful. than the one by Collins.  You can open here to read that review . 

The following books will be competing in Round 3: Battle 1: Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett     16    55.2% The Crossover by Kwame Alexander          13    44.8% Children of the King will go up against Grasshopper Jungle Battle 2: El Deafo by Cece Bell                              10      34.5% Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith   19      65.5%   Battle 3: Poisoned Apples by Christine Hepperman 19    65.5% The Story of Owen by E. K. Johnston            9    31% Poisoned Apples will go up against We Were Liars Battle 4: This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki & Jillian Tamaki     9    31% We Were Liars by E. Lockhart                       ...

SLJ Battle of the Kids Books For the 2015 Battle of the Books or Mock BOB, the students made their selections of their favorite books in Round 1 by completing a Google form that I created.  I was hoping to get more kids to participate this year by asking them to vote virtually rather than last year's battle when students made live presentations defending each of the titles. Only 45 students cast their vote in this first round, which is 10% of the school and about the same number as participated in each round in 2014. I sent the students a link to the form via email, put the link in the daily announcements that are sent to all students and teachers, and gave the students five days to make their selections. The Google form was an easy way to set up the voting because I could insert a picture of the book covers with blurbs. I had students help me create the blurbs about each of the books. You can see two examples of the 8 battles below.  Battle 4 click the pictu...

SLJ BOB 2015 -- Book Covers Last year my school participated in the School Library Journal sponsored Battle of the Kids  Books. Any school or library or anyone can participate, but SLJ   highlighted my school online as we put on an all out battle to the death   among the 16  books.   It was a blast, and both the middle school students and high school students really got into it. This year we have started slow, and I am waiting for copies of all the books to arrive after ordering them last week. Today as I was reading the February 2015 issue of SLJ,  I found a mention of my school library and myself concerning our participation in the BOB for 2014.  That was a nice surprise.  If you want to get your students involved, you need to have the following books available in your library:  BROWN GIRL DREAMING by Jacqueline Woodson CHILDREN OF THE KING by Sonya Hartnett CROSSOVER by Kwame Alexander EGG & SPOON...

Motto for Mock BOB: May the Best Book Win! It did:  Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell We started the Mock BOB at PFTSTA on March 10th. It took a month to get through 15 battles in four rounds. In Round 1 , there were eight battles that were fought live during lunch in the commons area. Students stood up to speak as a champion for their book. For Round 2 and 3, the students picked their selections online. In Round 2 , the champions wrote a brief pitch for their book, but in Round 3 , the champions created a brief video. The events brought some excitement to the library and with multiple copies of the original sixteen books, students eager to read the books that their friends were defending could check them out and read throughout the month of battles. Championing Far Far Away Going to Bat for The Thing about Luck Middle School Students Listen Attentively More Words for Far Far Away Since this was the end of a long process, we decided tha...

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. 

Find the PFTSTA Mock BOB featured in this week's Peanut Gallery from the Battle Commander in the SLJ Battle of the Kids Books. The students won't finish voting in our Round 3 until we put together the video later this week. For Round 4, the final round, we will go live at lunch in the commons area next week. 

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...