The Joy of Children's Literature

I am very excited to announce the addition of author Tommy Greenwald to the list of presenters at the Joy of Children's Literature conference ! Tommy Greenwald is the author of the hilarious Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to NOT Reading . If you haven't had a chance to read it yet, definitely put it on your list! Tommy Greenwald has enjoyed reading all his life, which is why he's appalled that his kids Charlie, Joe and Jack, would prefer getting a dental check-up to checking out a book. After years of pleading, threatening, and bribing, Tommy finally decided the only way to get his kids to read was to write a book about how to get out of reading. This is the result. And they read it! (So they say.) The Executive Creative Director at SPOTCO, an entertainment advertising agency in New York City, Tommy lives in Connecticut with his wife, Cathy; his non-reading sons, Charlie, Joe and Jack; and his dogs, Moose and Coco. Below is a brief summary of Charlie Joe Ja...

Harry Potter in and out of the Classroom from NCTE With the last installment of the Harry Potter movies out, there seems to be renewed interested in the series by J.K. Rowling. Have you read all 4,370 pages of the Harry Potter books? Many people have! How can you capture the excitement over the movies and books and bring that enthusiasm into the classroom? NCTE and ReadWriteThink.org have several resources that can help do just that.   The School Talk issue " Literary Partnerships: Collaborating with Literature to Create Readers " (E-M) shares how Rowling and other authors and illustrators are literary partners who can lure kids to reading with their own form of "magic." In the Language Arts article " The Right to Be a Fan " (E), author Peter Gutiérrez asks and answers the question, "Becoming ardent followers of specific pop culture texts can't be a good thing for young readers -- or can it?" Harry Potter's popularity is also d...

The theme of this year's National Book Festival is  The Joy of Reading Aloud This amazing - free - event has been extended to two days: September 24-25. Below are a few of the amazing children's/YA authors/illustrators who are presenting. A more extensive list of all of the authors is here .  Sherman Alexie Harry Bliss Cassandra Clare Susan Cooper Carmen Agra Deedy Tomie dePaola Sarah Dessen Jack Gantos William Joyce Gordon Korman Uma Krishnaswami Gregory Maguire Sam McBratney Patricia McKissack Jon J Muth Kadir Nelson Katherine Paterson Allen Say Gary Schmidt Brian Selznick Rita Williams-Garcia

Announcing The Joy of Children's Literature Conference to be held October 15, 2011 at The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA.  This is something I've wanted to do for years, but have never had the facilities to do it. Now, the university has built the School of Education a brand new, beautiful building which includes a professional development center, so facilities problem solved!  The JCL conference will be a day of celebration, collaboration and connections with great children's literature, so please join us! To see more information, including a list of presenters, program, and registration, visit the JCL Conference website . Please contact me with any comments or questions.  Also, please help me spread the word about the conference . Please Facebook, Tweet, blog, or name-your-social-network about the conference. Thank you!

The picture to the left is the post my son made on his blog today after seeing Harry Potter 7, Part 2, last night at midnight. And it's soooooooooooo true! We arrived at the theater at 10:00pm  and the line was already around the building! I noticed that most of those in line were at least Derek's age (just graduated high school). I don't think that's just because it was too late for young kids to be out. I think it's because they are the Potter generation. Many of those in line were dressed as their favorite character or had on HP t-shirts. As the stood in line, they talked about their many experiences over the years with HP and as we moved into the theater, they talked in groups and even entire sections about their expectations for how certain main events in the book would be played out in the movie. It was wonderful! I loved being back in this environment one last time. I loved being with my son as we immersed ourselves in Harry's world one last time. I...

Catching up with Children's Literature from NCTE Inbox   Walking past an airport bookstore the other day, I saw a sign which read, "Summer is the perfect time to catch up on books you missed during the school year." Sara Mushegian's article in Language Arts is a perfect follow-up to this -- she recounts her family's summer reading and how it gave her a chance to talk with her children about books and, ultimately, about life. NCTE and ReadWriteThink.org offer tips for reading to and with children and share children’s literature titles.   The NCTE Commission on Reading pamphlet “ Read Together Pamphlet for Parents ” provides valuable information for anyone who reads with young children. Specifically targeted to parents, it includes read together book lists for different developmental reading levels. ReadWriteThink.org shares more read-aloud strategies .   "Reading" doesn't always have to mean a book or a story. Children feel pretty proud when th...

Do you remember where you were when you read the first book in the Harry Potter series? I do. I didn't read the first book until it was out in paperback and I picked it up in the airport on the way home from a conference. It was love at first read! I still think the first book is my favorite. It was the first glimpse at the magical world of Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, and Hogsmeade. I also remember watching the news the first time the midnight book release parties took place across the country. There was footage of kids and adults alike dressed up as their favorite characters standing in lines that went all the way around the building. I cried. I really did. I'm a reading teacher, you see, and there is nothing so beautiful and moving as watching hundreds of children across the country stand in line to get a book that is over 600 pages long. Bliss! Somewhere around book 4, I started reading the books aloud to my son who was in third grade. It was so wonderful to see Harry Potter...

From Unshelved

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my copy of Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading , which just released yesterday! Below is a review from Booklist and the book trailer (thanks to Audiobooker ). Enjoy! With his “deep-seated love of not reading,” this title’s young narrator, Charlie Joe, speaks straight to other book-averse middle-schoolers. But avid readers will equally enjoy Charlie Joe’s story, with its wild parodies and surprises that continue to the very end. The elaborate plot revolves around Charlie Joe’s complicated tactics to avoid reading. He sets up bookworm Jake with cheerleader Hannah, for example, so that grateful Jake will read Charlie Joe’s books for a class project about school cliques, but things don’t go as planned; as Charlie Joe warns, “Always be wary of plot twists.” Charlie Joe’s wry first-person narrative, interspersed with anti-reading tips and occasional small cartoons, mocks nearly everyone, also himself, and the hilarious wordp...

From NPR : How E. B. White Spun Charlotte's Web by Maureen Corrigan In a poll of librarians, teachers, publishers and authors, the trade magazine Publisher's Weekly asked for a list of the best children's books ever published in the United States. Hands down, the No. 1 book was E.B. White's Charlotte's Web. Now, a new book called The Story of Charlotte's Web explores how White's masterpiece came to be. One early fall morning in 1949, E.B. White walked into the barn of his farm in Maine and saw a spider web. That in itself was nothing new, but this web, with its elaborate loops and whorls that glistened with early morning dew, caught his attention. Weeks passed until one cold October evening when he noticed that the spider was spinning what turned out to be an egg sac. White never saw the spider again and, so, when he had to return later that fall to New York City to his job as a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, White took out ...