Featured Resources

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Children’s Book Festival Author Alyssa Satin Capucilli

Check out Alyssa Satin Capucilli at the upcoming Children’s Book Festival held annually at MCC in Henrietta.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The books above are available in the Monroe One Overdrive account.

Alyssa Satin Capucilli is the author of over 100 books including Biscuit, the popular bestseller used to launch the My First I Can Read Series from HarperCollins. With over twenty-eight million books in print, Biscuit has been deemed a modern classic and has been translated into numerous languages worldwide. Other works include the Katy Duck series, the My First non-fiction photo series and numerous picture books.

There are lots of resources about Alyssa Satin Capucilli, including interviews, a book list, and audio excerpts on teachingbooks.net. If you do not remember our password, please contact me.

Alyssa is available to schedule school visits November 1st (Primary Grades). For details contact Wendy Petry.

 

 

Reflections on RRLC’s “We Need Diverse Libraries”

“Imagine a world where everyone could see themselves in the pages of a book.”

These were the first words of the presentation last Tuesday by We Need Diverse Books. They then asked us to close our eyes for a minute and think about what that would look like. What would you see or hear, and what would that mean for everyone?

The responses from the audience were, “More possibilities would be open to people”; “There would be more avid readers”; “People would know that their narratives are important as well, regardless of their abilities, of what they looked like, or who they were”; “There would be more diversity in careers, in life in general”; “We would see an increase in overall well-being”. It sounds Utopian, doesn’t it? This is within reach.

It can still be difficult to find great books that tell diverse stories, but it is not impossible. The folks at We Need Diverse Books have made it their mission to help us accomplish this goal. If you know where to look it will make your life easier. Some publishers offering diverse reads are:

On their diversebooks.org website is a listing of sites that provide diverse book lists. Under the Resources tab on their site, they also include a book talking kit.

Most helpfully, they have also created an app, currently accessible through your browser, called OurStory, which highlights books with diverse content and by content creators from marginalized communities. It is basically a database designed for you to find books for your libraries.

Look at our Libguide for more resources on diversifying your collection. *The page is currently under construction, so please continue to check back frequently.* Which reminds me: Diversifying your collection is an ongoing process. We live in a constant state of growth and change. Informally audit your collection and add to it frequently.

Children’s Book Festival Author Julie Berry

Check out Julie Berry at the upcoming Children’s Book Festival held annually at MCC in Henrietta.

Julie is the author of the 2017 Printz Honor and Los Angeles Times Book Prize shortlisted novel The Passion of Dolssa (available in the Monroe One Overdrive Collection as an ebook), the Carnegie and Edgar shortlisted All the Truth That’s In Me (available in the Monroe One Overdrive Collection as an ebook), The Odyssey Honor Title The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, and The Emperor’s Ostrich. Her new young adult novel, Lovely War, has received four starred reviews, and her first picture books will release in fall 2019.

There are lots of resources about Julie Berry, including interviews, book lists, and audio excerpts on teachingbooks.net. If you do not remember our password, please contact me. She also published this video on YouTube outlining the historical backdrop for The Passion of Dolssa.

Julie is available to schedule school visits on October 31st and November 1st (Grades K-3 or 6-12). For details contact Wendy Petry.

Above, the trailer for The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place.

Featured Resources: Author Grace Lin

Today we feature Caldecott Honor Book author, Grace Lin, and highlight the many resources we have for her.

In a video interview by Reading Rockets in Safari Montage, Grace talks about her childhood as a young Chinese-American girl in upstate NY where she was in the minority among mostly caucasian kids. She discusses how she tended to forget that she is Asian, and to the chagrin of her mother, had no interest in her Chinese heritage. She discusses how she thinks her books can be both “windows and mirrors” for students.

Check out her full book list and find teaching resources for them at our teachingbooks.net account. (Contact me if you don’t remember how to log in).

Also, check out the Monroe One BOCES Overdrive/SORA account for audio versions of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and Ling & Ting: Twice as Silly. (Again, contact us if you need help logging in or navigating SORA.)

Featured Media: LOST IN THE LIBRARY eBook

LOST IN THE LIBRARY, by Josh Funk, is a beautiful picture book that tells the story of the two stone lions in front of the Stephen Schwarzman branch of the New York Public Library. The two stone statues are called “Patience” and “Fortitude”. One night, Patience goes missing, and Fortitude discerns that his best friend has gone into the huge library.

Available in our Monroe One SORA/Overdrive collection as an ebook, this story not only tells the reader about the history and collection inside of the flagship branch of the New York Public Library, it also conveys the importance of friends to each and every one of us.

A simple activity kit is available on Josh Funk’s website.

 

Creative Commons Search Engine

Did you know? This past spring, Creative Commons launched a search engine that indexes over 300 million public domain images. These are images from 19 image collections and they include works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Flickr, and even some CC0 3D designs from Thingiverse.

All of these images are in the public domain or released under Creative Commons licenses, which means they are free to use in a non-commercial setting. It also means they have the licensing information readily available to quick copy and paste.

Click here to start searching.

“UnknownFlower”by ksoon71 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Reading without Walls: Free Comic Book!

Did you know that the first Saturday in May is always “Free Comic Book Day”? If you’re into comics, you probably already know this.

But if you’re not into comics, this is a great opportunity to check them out! Maybe you’ll find something you’ll truly love. When Gene Luen Yang was named the National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature in 2016, he issued a challenge to readers everywhere called The Reading Without Walls Challenge. Which calls for readers to pick up a book that they normally wouldn’t. Choose something that fits one of the three criteria for this challenge:

  1. Read a book about a character who doesn’t look like you or live like you.
  2.  Read a book about a topic you don’t know much about.
  3. Read a book in a format that you don’t normally read for fun. This might be a chapter book, a graphic novel, a book in verse, a picture book, or a hybrid book. Or it could be a comic book!

Let’s keep this challenge going and pick up your free comic book tomorrow.

Books Online at the Library of Congress

In its quest to make information equally available to everyone, the Library of Congress has digitized books that were published over 100 years ago and made the collection available to the public online. The site explains, “This special collection presents children’s books selected from the General and Rare Book Collections at the Library of Congress.”

However rare, many of the books are still widely read today, such as The Secret Garden, and The Arabian Nights. These books are now in the public domain, and you can use them as freely as you like.

Access the entire collection here: https://www.loc.gov/collections/childrens-book-selections/

 

School Library Impact Studies and Support Articles

We all know that school librarians make a huge difference for student achievement and well-being, but sometimes this fact gets overlooked. So for those moments when you need to prove your worth (hopefully these moments are few and far between), we’ve collected articles and impact studies so that you have them at your fingertips whenever you may need them.

We have housed them at our MonroeOneSLS libguide on the Professional Resources page. If you have any that you would like to add, please send the info my way at liesl_toates@boces.monroe.edu.

For additional lists of articles and studies, check out the Library Research Service and the Antioch University School Library Research LibGuide.