Top Childrens Books: June 2012

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Please Join the WONDER Book Club!

Borrow Wonder from your school or public library. Whenever possible, please support independent bookshops.

I am giving away one copy of Wonder and a Wonder T-shirt. (Thank you, R.J. Palacio.)

Here is @Katsok modeling a Wonder T-shirt.

Rules for the Giveaway

1. The giveaway will run from July 1 to July 2 at 11:59 p.m.

2. You must be at least 13 to enter.

3. Please pay it forward.

Lit in the Sticks

Can a Pacific Northwest town of just 230 people support an literary festival? We’ll see in August, when the inaugural Mazama Festival of Books takes place in Mazama, Washington, located about 3.5 hours east of Seattle and even farther west from Spokane.

The Los Angeles Times reports that admission to this event, which is scheduled to take place on the weekend of August 18-19, will be free. “Its

Friday, June 29, 2012

The Newbery Challenge: Strawberry Girl

It's time to CELEBRATE the winner of the 1946 Newbery Medal.

Visit Colby's blog to see what he thinks of Strawberry Girl.

This photo is rather artistic, eh?

Illinois State University received a portion of Lois Lenski's collection.

Travis Jonker is "Covering the Newbery." He designed the cover on the right.

Borrow Strawberry Girl from your school or public library. Whenever possible, please support independent bookshops.

Here's today's bonus video.

"Celebrate good times..."

LP Store Takes Flight

Why shouldn’t the largest producer of travel guidebooks in the world have its very own specialty outlet? And what better location for it than inside an airport?

That was presumably the thinking behind Lonely Planet’s decision to open -- just today -- a single-brand bookshop in Manchester, England’s international airport. Located at Terminal 1, it’s the only Lonely Planet store operating in

Video of the Day: Al Roker's Book Club Chats with Newbery Medalist Rebecca Stead

Too bad Colby Sharp and I are not up to When You Reach Me in the Newbery Challenge. We could have convinced Al Roker to let us participate in his book club discussion (Dream big, Mr. Schu!) I'm determined to film my When You Reach Me video in NYC.

OK, enough about me. It's time to hear what kids, Rebecca Stead, and Al Roker said about When You Reach Me.

Thank you, Al Roker, for selecting Rebecca Stead's award-winning book.

Borrow When You Reach Me from your school or public library. Whenever possible, please support independent bookshops.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Colby Sharp Discusses Linda Urban's School Visit

Mr. Colby Sharp is a children’s literature enthusiast. He connects his fourth graders with authors and members of his professional learning network. I invited him on Watch. Connect. Read. to discuss Linda Urban’s visit to his classroom.

I wrote seven sentence starters and asked Colby to complete each sentence using fewer than twenty words.

*We prepared for. Ms. Urban's visit by reading Hound Dog True, studying Linda's website, reading about her visit to Brook Forest, and decorating the classroom.

*Ms. Linda Urban is one of the nicest, most generous, and intelligent people I have ever met.

*My fourth graders learned more from Mattie Breen than any other character they read all year.

l recommend A Crooked Kind of Perfect to boys, girls, adults, former students, current students, and anyone else who I think would benefit from Zoe's story (EVERYONE).

*Hound Dog True is well written, as powerful, and as important as Because of Winn-Dixie.

*Twenty years from now my students and I will remember Linda's story about when she was bullied as a child, and how that story helped lead to Hound Dog True.

*Mr. Schu, you should have asked me about how Linda found out a boy in our class was a huge fan of one of Linda's writing fans. Linda took a letter that he had written to the author and delivered it to the author.

Borrow Linda Urban's books from your school or public library. Whenever possible, please support independent bookshop s.

The One and Only Ivan Twitter Book Club

Colby Sharp, enthusiastic readers, and I connected last night to discuss Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan. Below are some randomly selected tweets from the discussion. If you would like to view the archive, please click here.