The Joy of Children's Literature

Firehouse! is the newest book from author/illustrator Mark Teague .   In  Firehouse!, we join Edward and his cousin Judy as they spend a hilarious day learning how to be firefighters. From a fire drill that leads to a slippery slide down a fire pole, to a hysterical battle with an out-of-control fire hose, Edward is in for an action-packed adventure. And when faced with a real emergency, can Edward save the day? Firehouse!  will be a great read aloud for primary grade classrooms. Children will laugh and cheer for Edward as he figures out that being a firefighter is hard work. During a fire drill, he learns to hold on for dear life as the fire engine speeds away. But Edward isn't a quitter, and when the fire fighters are called to save a kitten stuck in a tree, he volunteers to to rescue her and saves the day! Teague uses perspective in interesting ways to keep the reader engaged throughout the story. Small...

Give yourself a treat today and watch this animoto presentation of the top 100 children's novels based on the survey conducted by Fuse#8. The Top 100 Children's Novels

Free for all--reading treasures from the past! For a special treat, especially during the summer vacation months, visit Children's Literature: Digitized Print Materials , a free Federal Resources for Educational Excellence website that provides 50 digitized texts of rare books: The Arabian Nights, A Child's Garden of Verses, Ballad of the Lost Hare, A Christmas Carol, Humpty Dumpty, The Grasshopper Stories, Mother Goose Finger Plays, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, The Rocket Book, The Secret Garden, Stories from Hans Andersen, The Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , and others from the Library of Congress. If there is a PDF link, you can use the Acrobat viewer to peruse the material, and print it in its entirety. The bibliographic information link will query the Library's online catalog and display the catalog record for the item.

I am a huge fan of audiobooks, so the following free webinar by Booklist looks good to me: Now Hear This: Audiobooks A to Z Tuesday, June 8, 2010 3:00 Eastern / 2:00 Central / 12:00 Pacific In this informative hourlong webinar, Booklist Media editor Sue-Ellen Beauregard and school librarian, Booklist columnist, and Booklist Online audiobook blogger Mary Burkey will be joined by representatives from Books on Tape/Listening Library, BBC Audiobooks America, and HighBridge Audio for an exciting discussion of audiobooks from A to Z, including the latest titles featuring popular readers, how to integrate audiobooks into book club promotions and discussions, finding backlist and crossover titles that fit the bill for summer listening, and much, much more. Register here .

Yesterday, I posted a wonderful book trailer for Instructions narrated by Neil Gaiman. Today, I'm posting another wonderful book trailer posted by Laurie Anderson and created by a young reader of Chains . What a creative way to respond to literature and share it with others. Enjoy!

In Neil Gaiman's new picturebook, Instructions , illustrated by Charles Vess, he reminds us to "Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story." What a great book to introduce kids to the fantasy genre and to think deeply about what makes fantasy so unique and wonderful. Listen to Neil read Instructions in its entirety in this new book trailer below. I love to hear him read -- what a treat!

Publisher's Weekly May/June The Pirate of Kindergarten by George Ella Lyon, illus. by Lynne Avril, Atheneum/Jackson, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4169-5024-0 Ginny has double vision, although she doesn't receive that diagnosis (and a treatment plan) until the final pages of this vividly empathetic book. Without lecturing or making Ginny the object of pity, Lyons (Sleepsong) and Avril (Every Cowgirl Needs a Horse), who works in cheery but remarkably expressive pastels, show how disorientating and alienating it feels when something as fundamental as visual perception goes awry. "If she didn't keep her mind tied tight when Ms. Cleo gave them rabbit pictures, she might cut out one ear and another and another. Once she got so mad, she stuck the scissors in the paste." The arrival of a vision screener at school is a little gem of narrative tension: since Ginny can see fine when one eye is covered, will her problem be caught? Readers will be reassured and gratified to k...

The Children’s Book Council (CBC) in association with Every Child a Reader, Inc. (the CBC Foundation), announced the winners of the third annual Children’s Choice Book Awards at a gala in New York City this evening. Children across the country voted for their favorite books, author, and illustrator at bookstores, school libraries, and at http://www.bookweekonline.com/ , casting over 115,000 votes. The Children’s Choice Book Award winners are as follows: Author of the Year James Patterson for Ma x (A Maximum Ride Novel) (Little, Brown) Illustrator of the Year Peter Brown for The Curious Garden (Little, Brown) Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year Lulu the Big Little Chick by Paulette Bogan (Bloomsbury USA) Third Grade to Fourth Grade Book of the Year Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Knopf/Random House) Fifth Grade to Sixth Grade Book of the Year Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life by Rachel Renée Russell (Aladd...

When I returned from the International Reading Association's Annual Conference in Chicago on Thursday, my copy of Monsters of Men , the third book in the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness, was waiting for me and  I was sooooooooooo thrilled!! I ordered it from the UK since it will not be released in the US until the end of September. A little treat for myself...and I'm loving every minute of it. Below is the book trailer. If you haven't read the first two books in the series ( The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer ), I highly recommend them!