Forty years ago, two librarians and a publisher at the American Library Association conference lamented that no African-American author or illustrator had yet been honored with a Newbery or Caldecott medal. In response to that conversation, they decided to establish an award that would acknowledge the achievements of African-American writers and artists in the field of children’s literature.Teaching with the CSK Book Award Curriculum Resource Center
Forty years ago, two librarians and a publisher at the American Library Association conference lamented that no African-American author or illustrator had yet been honored with a Newbery or Caldecott medal. In response to that conversation, they decided to establish an award that would acknowledge the achievements of African-American writers and artists in the field of children’s literature.
Walter Wick set up a complex device to snap a picture of a single drop of it. Barbara Kerley’s crystal-clear color photographs reveal how people worldwide are dependent on it, and connected by it. Langston Hughes, Karen Hesse, Jon Muth, and Herbert Shoveller celebrate its arrival in different forms. Water: ubiquitous, yet often scarce, and endlessly fascinating.
Fall is in the air, which, after a hot Santa Fe summer, feels welcome. I've planted a few pansies and am slowly moving some potted plants inside into what I call my winter garden. When the cold northern New Mexico winter arrives, the clerestory windows above our entry atrium will bring welcome sun to my plants—and me. Along with mulling over which green companions to nurture during the coming months, I'm thinking about what writing projects to begin.
As goals of information literacy have been expanded to include skills and attitudes that ultimately allow students to construct their own knowledge based on deep learning of interest to them, all of us can gain insight from professional authors who naturally incorporate those inquiry skills and attitudes into their own writing process.
This post offers a sampling of TeachingBooks.net's recordings of favorite children's and young adult authors sharing insights about their work. In these brief audio excerpts students will hear authors express their enthusiasm for their subjects as they reveal how their passions have guided their research and writing.
We're starting school. First day. My sister and me: we are eight and five; second grade and kindergarten.
Welcome to this new monthly post that reveals approaches to professional writing and research in the words of extraordinary authors and illustrators of books for children and teens.
I was elected to the 2009 John Newbery Award selection committee by the membership of the American Library Association (ALA) division that administers this award, ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children). This was quite an honor, and a real shock to me. You see, I’m not a librarian. I’m a book lover. I’m a professional in the world of children’s books. But I’m not a librarian – and I always thought that librarians and academics in the field were those who got to serve on these committees.
In this post, I encourage you to bring authors into your classroom to add a personal dimension to social studies lessons. Autobiographical accounts, for example, can offer first-person perspectives on events under discussion. And authors who research and write about historical and cultural topics often present their interpretations and sources while revealing their methods and processes.
In this post I've highlighted summer's bounty with a smorgasbord of multimedia materials about books and authors that celebrate food. In her 2004 Charlotte Zolotow Lecture, Newbery Medalist Linda Sue Park commented that she didn't trust a character until she knew what they ate. I wondered, "Would she trust a character that was made of food?"