Friday, December 19, 2014

Books make great gifts!

Last weekend, I went to the Wake County Library Annual Book Sale at the State Fairgrounds, thinking that I would casually browse for some books for the library. Little did I know the enormity of this book sale! There was no way that I could simply meander through the aisles of books - I needed a plan, a strategy!


Unfortunately, I didn't have one, so I picked up a couple armloads of books, and a couple hours later headed to the checkout table. The books were in great condition and dirt cheap, so I'm excited that I was able to find some gems for our library!

As you are shopping for your loved ones this holiday season (or anytime, really!), consider these fantastic Best Books of 2014 and book-buying guides:

BCCB Guide Book to Gift Books: An Annotated List of Books for Youth 2014 is my absolute favorite go-to guide for gifts. Created by the Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books out of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (my alma mater!), this guide includes the best of the best children's books from the past few years and is the most organized and thoughtful that I've found. 


If you've ever visited the Brain Pickings site, you'll appreciate Maria Popova's Best Children's Books of 2014 list with detailed descriptions and tons of illustrations. 

Finally, every newspaper and news website/blog likes to chime in with these Best of lists, too. Here are a few:
We have some of these new and noteworthy books in our library and would welcome any as gifts to us as well! :) 

Happy holidays & happy reading!



Thursday, December 4, 2014

How we celebrated Picture Book Month

Recently, Jenni (Forest class teacher) and I hosted a "Celebrate Picture Book Month!" Discovery Group for third and fourth year students. Discovery Groups took place during two Fridays in November for an hour and fifteen minutes each.

For our first meeting, we all found cozy spots in the library to read some of the library's new picture books. Books were passed around from student to teacher to student ("You HAVE to read this book!") in a flurry of excitement. This got us talking about our favorite parts, things we didn't understand, and parts we may have missed the first time. Book lovers united in this short time of reading and sharing books!

But we wanted to celebrate picture books beyond the library and our own reading. We wanted to promote these books in BIGGER ways! So, students chose to create book trailers using iMovie or create a poster display for the library. Here are the fruits of our labor!  

Oliver Jeffers author/illustrator door poster 


Chris Van Allsburg author/illustrator door poster


The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak window poster (Okay, yes, it doesn't have pictures in it, so technically, it's not a picture book. But we still call it that anyway!)


I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen


Journey by Andrew Becker


Quest by Andrew Becker


The Dark by Lemony Snicket (warning: this one's spooky, folks!)


Once Upon an Alphabet by Oliver Jeffers


We loved celebrating Picture Book Month and can't wait to do it again next November! 



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