Emily Gravett's artwork

Straight from the Waking Brain Cells blog:


  
The Guardian has a fabulous slideshow of some of award-winning illustrator Emily Gravett’s artwork.  Her illustrations are always filled with a warm humor no matter what the subject.  From multiplying rabbits to mouse-ravaged pages to a fear of wolves, her books are all gems to be enjoyed and shared.  Enjoy the slideshow!

SFWA's 2010 Nominees for the Andre Norton Award for YA Scifi

SFWA announces the 2010 Nebula Award Nominees

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

 Nominations for this year's Andre Norton award follow:

• Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
• White Cat, Holly Black (McElderry)
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press; Scholastic UK)
• Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, Barry Deutsch (Amulet)
• The Boy from Ilysies, Pearl North (Tor Teen)
• I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper)
• A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner (Greenwillow)
• Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

I've read all but two and even though I "think" I know which book will win, I love a good surprise! What about you?

For more information, visit www.nebulaawards.com or www.sfwa.org

Share a Story - Shape a Future: A Blog Tour for Literacy

Share a Story - Shape a Future:

A Blog Tour for Literacy
March 7-11, 2011

 Announcing the third annual Share a Story ~ Shape a Future blog tour for literacy. This year's theme: Unwrapping the Gift of Literacy

Topics:

• The Power of a Book - From the literal power of owning a book and a good story to the intangible power that comes with knowing how to read. 
• The Gift of Reading - Whether you're looking for a book to excite a reader, want to help someone learn to read or celebrate the "gift" ... it's covered.
• Unwrapping Literacy 2.0 - With all of the talk of digital literacy, e-readers, etc. What does "literacy" look like in this new century?
• Love of Reading v. Homework - Do they have to be at odds? We'll talk about ways to help readers at home and at school.
• The Gift that Keeps on Giving - To wrap up the week we'll be remembering "that moment" when we realized we were a reader or writer and how to celebrate it with others. Lots(!) of interviews this day.

Line up of bloggers:

• Riley Carney will be visiting with Carol Rasco at Rasco from RIF. (Monday)
• Chris Singer (BookDads) has lined up nearly two dozen (!) dad bloggers (who also happen to be readers, writers, educators) to talk about the gift of reading. (Tuesday)
• Mary Ann Scheur (Great Kids Books) will be reviewing iPad books and talk about them in the context of promoting literacy when Danielle Smith hosts Literacy 2.0 at There's a Book. (Wednesday)
• At a Year of Reading, Mary Lee Hahn and Franki Sibberson will be talking about ways to balance literacy fun and school. Mitali Perkins, Barbara Dee, Katie Davis, Courtney Sheinmel, and others will be sharing Writer's Notebook ideas/photos at The Reading Zone. (Thursday)
• In her post today, Sarah Mulhern (The Reading Zone) said that "A great group of authors have volunteered to share their stories about the gift of reading- both giving the gift and receiving it. It’s going to be a fantastic day!" (Friday)
• Also on Friday, author / illustrator Elizabeth Dulemba will be sharing authors' stories about when they fell in love with reading.

 You can learn more about the history of the literacy blog tour, by clicking here.

Article of the Week: eVoc Strategies

The article for this week is eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to build Vocabulary by Bridget Dalton and Dana L. Grisham, published in The Reading Teacher (February 2011/vol. 64, No. 5).

Abstract:

Vocabulary knowledge is key to comprehension and expression. For students in the intermediate grades, the need for breadth and depth of vocabulary accelerates as they encounter more challenging academic texts in print and on the Internet. Drawing on research-based principles of vocabulary instruction and multimedia learning, this article presents 10 eVoc strategies that use free digital tools and Internet resources to evoke students' engaged vocabulary learning. The strategies are designed to support the teaching of words and word learning strategies, promote students' strategic use of on-demand web-based vocabulary tools, and increase students' volume of reading and incidental word learning. The strategies emphasize developing students' interest in words as they read, view, interact with, and create word meanings in digital and multimedia contexts. Teachers are invited to ‘go digital with word learning’ and experiment with integrating technology to improve their students' vocabulary and reading comprehension.

The first 5 strategies focus on explicit teaching of vocabulary and helping students become independent word learners.

1. Learn from Visual Displays of Word Relationships within Text
"Graphic organizers and visual displays highlight the relationships between words (Baumann & Kame'enui, 2004)" (p. 308). The authors suggest two free web tools that allow students to create word clouds based on the frequency of the words entered from a particular text.

Wordle: "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes" (reprinted from the Wordle website).

Wordsift:  "WordSift helps anyone easily sift through texts -- just cut and paste any text into WordSift and you can engage in a verbal quick-capture! The program helps to quickly identify important words that appear in the text. This function is widely available in various Tag Cloud programs on the web, but we have added the ability to mark and sort different lists of words important to educators. We have also integrated it with a few other functions, such as visualization of word thesaurus relationships (incorporating the amazing Visual Thesaurus® that we highly recommend in its own right) and Google® searches of images and videos" (reprinted from the Wordshift website).

2. Take a Digital Vocabulary Trip
"In the original vocabulary field trip (Blachowicz & Obrochta, 2005), the teacher begins with a large poster of a topic, such as weather...records what [students] saw as they read books and other materials" (p. 309).

Teachers can create a digital version of the vocabulary field trip using TrackStar: "TrackStar is your starting point for online lessons and activities. Simply collect Web sites, enter them into TrackStar, add annotations for your students, and you have an interactive, online lesson called a Track" (reprinted from the TrackStar website).

3. Connect Fun and Learning with Online Vocabulary Games
Two websites that offer a variety of activities to engage students in playing with words and word meanings:

www.vocabulary.co.il and www.vocabulary.com

4. Have students use media to express vocabulary knowledge
"This strategy focuses on students' vocabulary representations in multiple modes--writing, audio, graphic, video, and animation (Nikolova, 2002; Xin & Rieth, 2001)" (p. 311). Here, the authors suggest using a presentation program such as PowerPoint to create multimedia representations of vocabulary words. More ideas here.

5. Take advantage of online word reference tools that are also teaching tools
Back in School webpage of Dictionary.com

The next two strategies provide just-in-time support while reading.

6. Support reading and word learning with just-in-time vocabulary reference support
"Some word reference tools can be mounted on the browser toolbar, allowing you to right click on any word to look it up and have a brief definition display" (p. 312).

Internet Explorer and Mozilla dictionary addon
Dictionary.reference.com
Back in School from Dictionary.com
Merriam Webster's Word Central
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Langauge

Visual Dictionaries

Enchanted Learning
Merriam-Webster's Online Visual Dictionary

7. Use language translators to provide just-in-time help for ELs
"Online dictionaries often support multiple languages (e.g., the Yahoo! Kids dictionary supports 90 languages), and EL students should be taught to look for the option. Another resources is the language translator. the value of a translator is that it supports learning words as they occur naturally in authentic text and allows students to view bilingual versions of a text side by side so that they can use their first language knowledge to develop their English vocabulary" (p. 313).

Babelfish
Google translator
Bing translator
Toolbar extension that translates any webpage automatically

The next two strategies help increase students' volume of reading, and indirectly, their incidental word learning.

8. Increase reading volume by reading digital text
"Many educational publishers and organizations provide free online content, including articles and media about current events, some of which are generated by students themselves. A few of our favorites include the following" (p. 314):

Time for Kids
Weekly Reader
National Geographic Kids
National Geographic Kids blogs
Science News for Kids

9. Increase reading volume by listening to digital text with a text-to-speech tool and audio books
"One powerful strategy is to allow students to listen to text with a text-to-speech (TTS) tool or, when available, listen to audio narration. This provides students with access to age-appropriate content and grade-level curriculum, a right mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. For struggling readers, TTS increases their reading speed, reduces stress, and for some, but not all, improves comprehension (Elkind & Elkind, 2007)" (p. 314).

TTS Tools

Click, Speak for Firefox
NaturalReader
Balabolka

Audio Books

Learning Through Listening
Audiobooks: Ear-resistible!

10. Combine vocabulary learning and social service
"The final eVoc strategy is a free online vocabulary game, Free Rice that has attracted millions of users, young and old. We believe it offers an opportunity to promote students' engagement with words while contributing to the social good.

From the Free Rice website: "FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme. In the middle of the Freerice Home page you will see something like:

• small means:
  • little
  • old
  • big
  • yellow

To play the game, click on one of the four definitions ("little", "old", "big" or "yellow") that you think is correct. If you get it right, Freerice donates 10 grains of rice to help end hunger. In the example above, you would want to click on "little", which means "small". When you select the correct answer, you earn 10 grains of rice - your donation is automatically counted without any further action required on your part. You will then get a chance to play another question in the same way. You can play as long as you like and donate as much rice as you like."

This article provides many ways to engage students in meaningful development of vocabulary.  Have you tried any of these strategies? Do you have others to share?

2010 Cybils Awards Announced

The 2010 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards were announced today:

Winners, elementary & middle grade

Fiction Picture Books

Interrupting Chicken
by David Ezra Stein
Candlewick




Nonfiction Picture Books
The Extraordinary Life of Mark Twain (According to Susy)
by Barbara Kerley
Scholastic






Easy Readers
We Are in a Book!
by Mo Willems
Hyperion







Short Chapter Books
Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Takes Off
by Jacqueline Jules; illustrated by Miguel Benitez
Albert Whitman & Co






Poetry
Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse
by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Josée Masse
Penguin Young Readers





Graphic Novels
Meanwhile: Pick Any Path. 3856 Story Possibilities.
by Jason Shiga
Abrams Books





Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Shadows
The Books of Elsewhere, Vol. 1
by Jacqueline West
Dial






Middle Grade Fiction
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda
By Tom Angleberger
Amulet

Winners, young adult

Non-fiction
The Secret of the Yellow Death: A True Story of Medical Sleuthing
by Suzanne Jurmain
Houghton Mifflin





Graphic Novels
Yummy; The Last Days of a Southside Shorty
by G. Neri, illustrated by Randy duBurke
Lee & Low Books







Fantasy & Science Fiction
Rot & Ruin
by Jonathan Maberry
Simon & Schuster







Young Adult Fiction
Split
by Swati Avasthi
Knopf







Background on the Cybils awards

Our purpose is two-fold:

• Reward the children’s and young adult authors (and illustrators, let’s not forget them) whose books combine the highest literary merit and "kid appeal." What’s that mean? If some la-di-dah awards can be compared to brussel sprouts, and other, more populist ones to gummy bears, we’re thinking more like organic chicken nuggets. We’re yummy and nutritious.
• Foster a sense of community among bloggers who write about children’s and YA literature, highlight our best reviewers (and shamelessly promote their blogs) and provide a forum for the similarly obsessed.

The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen

I have been running for many years, inspired by my son who has run cross country since 7th grade. One of my New Year's resolutions is to run a marathon -- crazy right? So, in the process of ramping up my training, I subscribed to Running Times magazine. In the most recent edition, to my surprise, I found a YA book review for The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen.

The book review follows:

Writing about running with eloquence isn't an easy thing to do. Nor is writing from a teenager's perspective. Award-winning children's book author Wendelin Van Draanen pulls both off with flying colors in her latest novel about a high school junior who loses part of her right leg after a bus accident on the way home from a track meet. Van Draanen's astute writing and attention to detail bring Jessica Carisle to life in a heartstring-jerking story about pain, suffering and overcoming enormous challenges, all set against the backdrop of the love of running. It's that intangible passion for running and racing that helps guide Jessica from the pit of despair through a year-long process of self-discovery. While the book centers around Carlisle's injury. Van Draanen's crafty prose compels readers to understand the person and not dwell on the disability. It's an engaging read for anyone who's ever run high school track or cross country, but just as gripping for any parent of a teenager in competitive sports. ($18.99, Alfred A. Knopf)

I've put The Running Dream on my "to read" list! What about you?

New Issue of Notes from the Horn Book

V O L U M E  4 ,   N U M B E R  2  •  F E B R U A R Y   2 0 1 1

In this issue

Five questions for Tomie dePaola • Newbery winners • Caldecott winners • Coretta Scott King and Pura Belpré winners • Sibert winners • Printz winners • From the Editor

Smithsonian on ePals

Author Brian Jacques Dies at 71

British author Brian Jacques, author of the popular Redwall series of adventure books for kids, has died. He was 71. When my son was in middle school, he loved the Redwall books and read quite a few. Read the NPR story here.

National Book Festival to be a Two-Day Event!!!

I LOVE the National Book Festival so the post that follows from the Library of Congress blog made me SOOO happy!

Word’s going out today that the National Book Festival, heading into its 11th year on the National Mall, will be a two-day event for 2011.

The festival will take place on the National Mall, from 9th Street to 14th Street, on Saturday, Sept. 24 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and on Sunday, Sept. 25 from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.. rain or shine.  Watch our website at www.loc.gov/bookfest for more developments.

For a decade, the excitement has been crammed into a single late-morning-to-late-afternoon window, with more than 70 authors speaking about their works and signing books for fans in massive pavilions that shelter attendees from the sun and rain.

This year, plans are for author sessions to be several minutes longer, to allow for more Q & A from festival-goers, and for more time to be allotted between sessions so authors and fans alike will have a better opportunity to navigate the grounds.  The added day will let us plan for at least 90 authors over the entire weekend.

Parents can also bring their kids to mingle with characters familiar from TV and sample many child-friendly reading and literacy programs, and families can enjoy the ever-popular Pavilion of the States, where representatives of Centers for the Book in the nation’s states and territories offer a fun take on reading and writing across America.

“Fans of the National Book Festival have urged us to make it a weekend-long event for many years,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

He notes that in 2010 – at the 10th anniversary National Book Festival – attendance over the history of the festivals topped 1 million.

“We look forward to welcoming millions more festival-goers of all ages for many years to come,” he said.