This post was originally published in Nick Glass’ monthly column for Curriculum Connections, an e-newsletter published by School Library Journal in partnership with TeachingBooks.net. Subscribe to this free newsletter here.

Twitter’s momentum as a social networking service has been extraordinary; just last December more than one billion tweets were sent. These text messages of up to 140 characters can incorporate links to Web sites, movies, audio recordings, or any address on the Internet. But how are educators harnessing this tool to support K-12 pedagogical practices? In this month’s post, sample TeachingBooks.net tweets that were posted to demonstrate to educators easy and fun ways to integrate multimedia into their author and book studies.

1. Build awareness about relevant educational communities

Do you know about Poetry Friday—celebrated each week on numerous blogs? Here’s Marilyn Nelson introducing Carver (Front Street, 2001).

2. Share links by retweeting them (RT)

RT: If you like Where the Wild Things Are (Harper, 1963), check this out. Cool.

3. Provide easy-to-follow professional development tips

Find book and author resources you need on TeachingBooks.net with this hint!

4. Build connections to new books

A book for 2010: The Carbon Diaries 2015 (Holiday House, 2009). Read an interview with the author.

5. Allow poets to share their work

Lee Bennett Hopkins shares a tongue twisting poem about weather and explains homonyms to students.

6. Learn stories about authors’ names

Listen to Louise Erdrich pronounce her name and illuminate its meaning.

7. Connect students to authors in the classroom, online, anytime

Fast Food Nation (Houghton, 2001) co-authors Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson explore nutrition and food choices for teens.

8. Support curriculum calendar highlights

Celebrate Native-American heritage with author Tim Tingle’s discussion of and reading from his Crossing Bok Chitto (Cinco Puntos, 2008).

9. Prompt imaginative journeys

Just took a tour “Around the World in 35 Names!” Wow!

Posted by Nick Glass, Founder & Principal of TeachingBooks.net

Here at TeachingBooks.net, we think a lot about the wonderful ways that technology, the Internet, and Web 2.0 can enhance student and teacher enjoyment of poetry and poets (and books and authors in general). There are excellent web tools and strategies for using technology to help connect with the work of deceased poets and to nurture student enthusiasm for poetry.

Below you’ll find a few ideas to try. Each features a poem from Langston Hughes. Please feel free to add your strategies for bringing poetry and poets to life via technology in the comments section, and I look forward to your Poetry Friday posts!

Give poets a voice!

Hearing poetry read aloud is important to comprehending and connecting to it. In some cases a deceased poet’s voice has been captured on an audio recording, like the clip below of Langston Hughes. However, just hearing a skilled actor perform Shakespeare’s sonnets aloud is invaluable. A wealth of audio poetry resources exist online. I found the following audio clip by searching the TeachingBooks.net database:

Listen to Langston Hughes himself share the backstory for and read his poem THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS.

Remember, too, that there are some great (and free) poetry podcasts available. Two that I found are Classic Poetry Aloud and Poem of the Day.

Give poets a face!

Watching video of a poet performing a poem enriches a listener’s connection to both the poet and to the poem’s message. I realized this for myself when I recently watched online videos of Lucille Clifton reading selected poems. On TeachingBooks you can search for video Author Programs with poets (hint: use Guided Search). Various other sites, such as Poetry.org, are also including videos of poets reading and/or discussing their work.

For less contemporary poets, video is still an option to enhance connections to poetry. For example, I found a multitude of YouTube videos somehow tied to the poetry of Langston Hughes. I especially enjoyed watching actor Danny Glover read Langston’s “Ballad of Roosevelt.”

Danny Glover reads “Ballad of Roosevelt” by Langston Hughes.

Encourage students to interpret poetry through art!

TeachingBooks.net has recently begun recording audio clips with illustrators of children’s books. We ask the illustrators to choose a page and speak about their thought processes and media choices when illustrating the text on that page. Hearing directly from illustrators who are working to create imagery of poems is fascinating.

For example, listen to illustrator and photographer Charles R. Smith, Jr. describe his approach and the challenges he faced in taking the photos to illustrate Langston Hughes’ poem, “My People.”

As an activity, imagine asking students to create an illustration for all or part of a selected poem.

Charles R. Smith, Jr. shares how he illustrated the book My People (S&S, 2009).

Socially network with poets and poetry!

Twitter updates and Facebook statuses are a great place to share poetry and to disseminate online poetry resources. And, many poets have Facebook fan pages, including Langston Hughes, where individuals can connect to discuss and analyze the work of their favorite poets and share news of poetry events. On Langston’s discussion board, for example, fans post about their favorite Langston Hughes poem.

Check out the Langston Hughes Facebook fan page.

And an image from a Twitter search for “Langston Hughes”:

Go mobile!

Poets.org has created a mobile site for cell phone web browsing of poems.

Here’s the mobile site version of Langston’s amazing poem “Dream Variations.” It’s a pared down version of the site to make for easy reading on your mobile phone if it has web browsing capabilities.

There are also poetry iPhone applications, such as the free Poem Flow.

Put ‘em in your pocket!

April 29th, 2010 is Poem in Your Pocket Day. You can find many great poetry resources and activities to celebrate the day here. Essentially, Poem in Your Pocket Day encourages creative ways to integrate poetry into your daily life, many of which advocate for the use of technology in creative ways.  Some ideas include, “add a poem to your email footer” and “post a poem on your blog or social networking page.”

Other ideas are “offline” strategies, such as “post pocket-sized verses in public places” and “start a street team to pass out poems in your community.” Sounds like fun! Which Langston Hughes poem will you put in your pocket?

What strategies do you have for bringing poetry and poets to life?

Use the link tool below to add your links.

Update: Fixed the funky display of the link tool. If it doesn’t work for you, just leave a comment and I’ll add your link.  You can also email me at danika@teachingbooks.net   Thanks!
You’ll be asked for url, then your name.
In the name field, in addition to your name, would you please also put what sort of poem you have to share? Thanks!

Posted by Danika Brubaker, MLS, Web 2.0 Content Producer

TeachingBooks.net is delighted to welcome award-winning author Laurie Halse Anderson as our featured guest blogger.

Each month, we ask one distinguished author or illustrator to write an original post that reveals insights about their process and craft. Enjoy!

“Mad Woman”

by Laurie Halse Anderson

Photo provided by Laurie Halse Anderson, 2010

When I was kid I used to make movies in my head. Many of them were vaguely Arthurian in tone, with a dash of Tolkien reconfigured with strong female characters who liked to read. I tried putting myself in the lead role—warrior princess or pirate queen. But because I am, at heart, a profoundly shy person, even an imaginary spotlight was uncomfortable.

I pretended to be that unusual girl who lives deep in the forest at the edge of the village. In European storytelling, the girl/woman who occupies this space is a healer, or a witch, or a storyteller, and often is all three. She lives alone. She is friends with all of the creatures of the forest. She has magical powers, of course, but they are tools, not the purpose of her existence. 

Then I grew up and a funny thing happened. My dream became my reality. I turned into a storyteller, an author who writes in a cottage in the woods. I spend much of my time in the liminal world between your reality and my imagination. This is why my blog is called Mad Woman in the Forest.

My books feature a wide range of characters, from silly picture book heroines and animal-loving tweens to kids caught in intense historical situations to teenagers struggling to come to grips with the real world. This vast expanse of topic and tone confuses some readers. I am commonly asked, “How do you write about such different things? And why?”

Answer #1: it’s easy. Answer #2: it makes me happy.

It’s easy because the condition of the human heart is unchanging. Your age, the period you live in, and your economic or cultural background don’t matter; we are all linked by our need to be loved and understood, and our fear of loneliness and sorrow.

It is clearly more challenging to write about someone whose life is different than mine. I have to approach the research with humility and without assumptions. But the core desires of all characters are consistent; I just have to get the details right.

I spin memory with emotion and weave the shimmering threads into a cloth called “Story” to keep my readers warm. When my stories connect with you, when you feel the threads reaching out to join the fabric of your soul, I have done my job. I can go back into the Forest to spin and weave anew.

- An original article by author Laurie Halse Anderson.

This material may not be used without the express written consent of Laurie Halse Anderson.

More online resources about Laurie Halse Anderson:

Hear Laurie Halse Anderson tell the story of her name, including how one part of her name is frequently mispronounced.  Listen Now

Hear Laurie Halse Anderson introduce and read from her book Speak (FSG, 1999) Listen Now

Access all of TeachingBooks.net’s online resources about Laurie Halse Anderson and her books.

Nikki Grimes’ book Talkin’ About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman (Orchard, 2002) is the biography, written in 20 voices, of the first African American licensed female pilot.

Listen to Nikki Grimes share more about Elizabeth Coleman and read a poem from the book. Enjoy!

A favorite line from this poem:

I haven’t made up my mind about being a pilot,
but Bessie made me believe I could be anything.

The original book reading with Nikki Grimes was created as part of the Coretta Scott King Book Award Curriculum Resource Center.

Poetry Friday is hosted at Check It Out this week.

Posted by Danika Brubaker, MLS, Web 2.0 Content Producer

This post was originally published as an article in Carin Bringelson and Nick Glass’ monthly column for School Library Monthly.

Nic Bishop is an award-winning, well-known photographer of the natural world. Having traveled all over the world to document scientists on expeditions, Bishop has his share of stories. He also goes to great pains to capture action-packed photographic images of mammals, insects, and reptiles in his own studio.

In sharing the following insights, Bishop explores the tenacity required when conducting research and the ethics of producing scientifically accurate representations for his photojournalist books as well as those for which he’s a photo illustrator.

Seek, Seek, Find!

The Thorny Devil lizard lives way out in the Australian desert. So while I was in Australia, I called up the ranger station in this remote part of Western Australia, and I said, “If I come over, do you reckon I’ll be able to photograph a Thorny Devil?” And they said, “Sure, sure. You just come over. There’s a road from here that goes across the Shark Bay. I see them there all the time.” So I flew across Australia, hired a minibus that I could sleep in, and I drove up there. Once I got to the spot, I drove up and down all day, and I didn’t see any Thorny Devils.

So I drove back to the ranger station and asked a question I should have asked before I had come: “Exactly when did you last see a Thorny Devil?” And he looked at me, and he thought, and he realized the last sighting had been four years earlier.

So here I am. I’ve spent a few thousand dollars and ten days of my life getting to this spot to photograph this lizard, and it wasn’t there. So, resigned to it, I just drove at 20 miles an hour, creeping along the road for hour after hour after hour, looking into the sand on the side of the vehicle. And, eventually—amazingly, it’s just like a miracle—I saw the lizard in front of me, just 10 feet away. I can’t explain it, but it’s just amazing to suddenly look and say, “Oh, there it is.”

That’s what happens when you do these things. You’re never really sure when you try and find something in the wild if you’ll ever find it.

Technical vs. Ethical

In the Scholastic Nic Bishop animal books, I am working as a photoillustrator. For technical reasons, I often work in my studio, given that close up photos require flash lighting and the high speed work also requires temperamental technical extras like laser triggers and so on.  Photoshop is sometimes used for design purposes; for example, to move a leaf in the composition so some text can be dropped onto the photograph. The ethics of doing something like that doesn’t worry me, because it’s the scientific integrity of the picture itself that’s important.

It is very important for me, for example, never to produce a photograph that is being manipulated in such a way that it shows incorrect behavior of an animal. That would be a bad thing to do. So I like in the Scholastic Nic Bishop animal books that the pictures have scientific integrity, even if they are not necessarily all taken in the wild. Also, I offer a phototographer notes section at the end of each book where I explain how I take the photographs—how some are taken in the field and some are taken in the studio, etc.—so that people understand how these pictures are taken.

Illustration ©1999 Nic Bishop. Published by Scholastic. All rights reserved.
Hear Nic Bishop speak about creating the photo above
from the book Red-Eyed Tree Frog.

One other ethical consideration is for the animals, too. I need to do these pictures in a way that’s minimally stressful to them. Take my book called Chameleon, Chameleon (Scholastic, 2005), for example, which was a follow-up to Red-Eyed Tree Frog (Scholastic, 1999). Chameleons are such sensitive animals that it was unacceptable ethically for me to stress two animals by sort of inserting them together into the same scene at the same time. It was much easier for the animals’ sake to use Photoshop and photograph one animal in the scene, and then the other animal in the scene by itself, and then put them together using Photoshop. You might say that’s photographically unethical. But in terms of the welfare of the animals, it is ethical. The most important thing is the scientific accuracy of the picture itself. Photography has become much more complicated than it ever used to be before Photoshop.

Questions for exploring research and ethical considerations with students:

• In what ways is scientific photo-taking similar to other kinds of research?
• Share what you felt when experiencing a break-through in research.
• What are some ethical considerations you have faced with photo-taking?

All online resources about Nic Bishop and his books.

 
Posted by Carin Bringelson, MLS, Information Manager and Nick Glass, Founder & Executive Director of TeachingBooks.net

Poetry pays homage to the dead, sheds light on crimes and injustice, and helps us to explore intense emotions.

In Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Front Street, 2004), Marilyn Nelson created a requiem to honor “Fortune,” an 18th-century slave who was owned by a bonesetter. Fortune’s bones were illegally preserved to create a skeleton for medical research.

Fortune’s family members were still enslaved in the same household in which Fortune’s skeleton resided.

Listen to Marilyn Nelson speak about her book and read “Dinah’s Lament,” a powerful poem in which Fortune’s wife must clean the room where her husband’s skeleton hangs.

An excerpt from “Dinah’s Lament”:

Through every season, sun-up to star light,
I heft, scrub, knead: one black woman alone,
except for my children. The world so white,
nobody no my pain, but Fortune bones.

The original book reading with Marilyn Nelson was created as part of the Coretta Scott King Book Award Curriculum Resource Center.

Poetry Friday is hosted at IreneLatham.com this week.

Posted by Danika Brubaker, MLS, Web 2.0 Content Producer

This post was originally published in the February 2010 issue of LibrarySparks.

I met Sharon Draper in a utility closet. Maya Angelou, Angela Johnson, and Jacqueline Woodson were there, too. I talked to Kadir Nelson, Ashley Bryan, and Walter Dean Myers. Yes, and even Christopher Paul Curtis. Can you guess the common thread that led to my encounters with these talented authors and illustrators?

I’m a librarian, but I don’t work in a library. In fact, for the last few months I’ve spent many hours working (quite happily) in a utility closet. There’s even a ladder for roof access and building maintenance affixed to the wall. Using an ancient telephone rescued from a thrift store and some special recording equipment, I call authors and illustrators of young adult and children’s books. Recently, I’ve called nearly all of the authors and illustrators whose books have been recognized with a Coretta Scott King Book Award, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of this award given to African American authors and illustrators who have created books that “promote understanding and appreciation of the culture of all peoples and their contribution to the realization of the American dream of a pluralistic society.”

And, although there aren’t any actual windows in my little closet sound studio, my telephone calls with authors and illustrators have created openings into other worlds. I get little glimpses into authors’ and illustrators’ home lives and thoughts. I hear about the inspiration behind the books they create. I hear their cats meow, their allergies kick in, car horns honking outside, and what the weather is like from coast to coast, and even in South Africa. My utility closet phone calls with authors and illustrators have given me a whole new kind of intimacy and connection with their books.

After hours and hours of speaking to authors and illustrators, I’ve learned something very simple—but important. Meeting authors and illustrators of the books you’re reading enhances your connection to those books, and to reading in general. And for me, meeting the authors and illustrators honored with a Coretta Scott King Book Award supported new connections to history, art, and a whole bunch of incredible books for children and young adults.

The recordings I make with authors and illustrators are part of the new Coretta Scott King Book Awards Online Curriculum Resource Center, a free, online collection with resources about books and authors. The Center may be freely accessed and/or linked at www.TeachingBooks.net/csk.

The recordings available there are typically three-minute clips that begin with an author sharing the backstory behind a book and then reading a brief excerpt. Audio clips with illustrators (a new type of clip we developed for the Coretta Scott King Book Awards project) feature an illustrator discussing a spread from their picture book. When possible, an image of the material being discussed is displayed directly below the audio player. These online audio clips give teachers, librarians, students, and parents the opportunity to meet and learn from authors and illustrators.

I love that the Internet and technology allow teachers and students to peek through the same window that I get to when I call authors to make recordings. I also feel glad that this technology and online collection of audio can help build awareness for the books, authors, and illustrators who have been recognized by the Coretta Scott King Book Awards.

Whether you’re teaching an art lesson, a writing lesson, a history unit, or working on a social studies project, you can bring these authors and illustrators in as experts. Imagine telling your students, “Every day this week, we’ll have an author or illustrator visit us virtually. We’ll get to hear the actual, famous authors and illustrators tell us about what inspired them.”

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards Curriculum Resource Center, which includes audio clips, as well as videos, book readings, and lesson plans, allows you to search for resources by grade level, curricular area, and award type in addition to author/illustrator name and book title. Below, I’ll touch on some particularly noteworthy audio clips as examples for just a few curricular areas.

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards Resource Center for Art

I love discovering cross-curricular implementations of poetry. For example, using poetry to explore history. In celebration of Black History Month, consider exploring the life of historical figure George Washington Carver through poetry.

In the Newbery honor-winning biography, Carver: A Life in Poems (Front Street, 2001), poet Marilyn Nelson explores the amazing life of scientist, botanist, inventor, and teacher George Washington Carver—all via original poems.

Listen to Marilyn Nelson read the poem “1905″ and describe a letter written by Albert Einstein encouraging the United States National Park Service to open a museum in honor of George Washington Carver.

A favorite line from this poem:

“Their welcoming glance meets Carver’s eyes at the velocity of light.”

The original book reading with Marilyn Nelson was created as part of the Coretta Scott King Book Award Curriculum Resource Center.

Poetry Friday is hosted at I’m Here. I’m Queer. this week.

Posted by Danika Brubaker, MLS, Web 2.0 Content Producer

TeachingBooks.net is delighted to welcome award-winning author Avi as our featured guest blogger.

Each month, we ask one distinguished author or illustrator to write an original post that reveals insights about their process and craft. Enjoy!

“The Challenges of Writing Historical Fiction”

by Avi

Photo provided by Nick Glass, 2009

Historical fiction is a complex genre.

It can strive to be as absolutely accurate as the writer can make it [as I attempted in Crispin: The Cross of Lead (Hyperion, 2002)] or create a general sense of time and place [as in my Midnight Magic (Scholastic, 1999)]. The latter is rather like a musical comedy. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, and, in fact, there are some real advantages. The primary benefit is that an author can deal with very modern ideas, simply placing them where they are the most fun.

The more accurate form of historical fiction brings many challenges. Foremost is language: how did people speak during that era? Consider Crispin. At the time that story takes place (England, 1377) the common language was Middle English. For a taste of this, read Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales—as he wrote it.

What to do? Before writing Crispin I read the poetry of the period, and tried to learn its diction, and told my story in that fashion. That made the text feel different without making it unreadable.

The other problem is the use of language. For example, a 14th-century character cannot steel himself to meet a challenge. Why? Steel was not yet invented. By the same token I recently looked up the words “old man” (as in “my father”) and was surprised to discover that the term was in use starting from the mid-19th century. Having the complete Oxford Dictionary of the English Language online is a great help.

Another problem lies in coming to understand and place your story in the physical world of the day. Here are some of the questions I’ve had to answer in the course of my writing: When were pockets invented? When did people first use buttons? What did a loaf of bread cost in the 14th century? What was that bread made of? How much would you be paid if you worked as a cabin boy during the Civil War? How do you shift gears in a Model T Ford? If you purchased a copy of the The New York Times on the street in New York City in the year 1889, how much would you pay for it? From whom would you buy it?

All these questions have answers, of course, and the accurate writer needs to get to them. It can be an enormously time-consuming effort, not always a very fruitful one, and sometimes you get it wrong. The upside is that it’s very gratifying to know that you got it right. These details shape a story and give it body.

Then comes the hard part: truly accurate historical fiction requires characters who think the same way the people of that period did. How does a character think about life and death? What is the role of religion in their lives? Ways of thinking and of understanding the way the world works have changed enormously over the ages.

But of course, the most difficult part of historical fiction writing is creating a compelling story with engaging characters. Research is necessary if you’re writing true historical fiction, but in the end, it’s the fiction, not excessive fact that you want to retain. It’s a delicate balance and a particular challenge when writing for young people because you can never assume your readers know anything about the period.

If it’s so hard, why do I do it?

History fascinates me, and if I do it well, it seems to fascinate my readers too.

- An original article by author Avi.

This material may not be used without the express written consent of Avi.

More online resources about Avi:

Hear Avi tell the story of his name, including how his twin sister helped name him.

Listen Now

Watch Avi and and others share insights and strategies for incorporating Reader’s Theater into the classroom.

Watch Now

Access all of TeachingBooks.net’s online resources about Avi and his books.

This post was originally published as an article in Carin Bringelson and Nick Glass’ monthly column for School Library Monthly.

Powerful photographs helped change the tide of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Some of these very photos moved author Elizabeth Partridge (goddaughter of the influential photographer Dorothea Lange) when she saw them 40 years later. Consider the role that photographs, books, and interviews play in historical research as Partridge discusses her process of selecting viable sources for Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary (Penguin, 2009).

A Passion for Pictures

This book started when I came across a group of photographs online by a man named Matt Herron. These were photos of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March for the Vote led by Martin Luther King, Jr. I just instantly fell in love with his photographs. I wanted to touch them. I wanted to pour over them. I wanted to see more of them. Mostly, I wanted to make a book with them so I could share them with other people.

Primary and Secondary Sources

I plunged into reading everything I could get my hands on about The March. Pretty soon I had a pretty good overview. Matt let me come to his house and look at all his photographs he had in his archive. I was very happy. I started tracking down more photographs by other photographers.

Then I went back to my secondary sources I’d already read and I checked the source notes and the references in those books to find the primary sources that they had used. That’s where I started to feel like the rubber met the road. When I get a hold of primary sources, I’m very excited.

Making Connections

As I did all this research and looked in all these photographs, I realized kids and teenagers had been critical to the success of this March. Right there, hidden in plain site, was the story of how kids had endured being jailed, being beaten—and they’d gotten up every morning and gone out again. Day after day these kids were marching and being thrown in jail.

So I flew to Selma and I interviewed people who had been kids and teenagers on The March. Their memories were so vivid. This had been a huge, huge turning point in their lives, and they were able to recount so vividly for me what their experiences were. I took the narratives by these kids, and I wrapped my story around their interviews because they were just so precious, and then I managed to squeeze over 50 photographs by all different photographers into this book.

Activities for encouraging inquiry using archival photography:

• Find a historical photograph of your school, family, or community that intrigues you.  Write a list of questions that the photo inspired.

• Gather photographs that inspire or have personal meaning to you, and write a story based on sentiments you see in them.

• Read the footnotes and bibliography of a book with archival photographs, and follow some of the citations back to the primary source. Were they accurate?

• Consider the role that young people play in changing society. Write an essay about a social movement in which young people were integral to its success, and integrate photographs. How does adding photos add to or detract from your essay and writing process?

Posted by Carin Bringelson, MLS, Information Manager and Nick Glass, Founder & Principal of TeachingBooks.net