Let's see... what have I been surfing this week?
Interested in outreach to your Latino communities? (And what library isn't targeting this population?) Check out the ALSC blog's podcast Outreach to Latino Populations and a post from Adriana Dominguez, expert on Latino authors and books. Adriana talks about her blog Voces, which she describes as "A place for and about Latino authors and their books, Spanish language translations, and news from the Latino book industry."
Sarah's got our YA movie news over at GreenBeanTeenQueen. You'll want to check out the pic of the wolf pack from the upcoming New Moon.
Speaking of Sarahs, Sarah from The Reading Zone pointed me to this article from the Seattle Book Examiner: Reader-in-Chief: Read-aloud Tips from President Obama. The article gives great tips on reading aloud and explains how our President demonstrated them. From the article:
Encourage the audience to act like the characters. After reading about Max’s magic trick to calm the Wild Things, the President asks, “Can everybody do that? Try to stare without blinking.” When kids do something the character in the book does, they feel empowered and connected to the book.
A Twitter novel? Hmmmm. I haven't read much of it yet, but check out Kathleen Duey's experiment: Russet: One-Wing and follow along to stay up to date. Definitely interesting. And what fun to write! I wonder if NaNoWriMo would be easier if done on Twitter... HMMM.
I'm always a sucker for videos about how illustrators and authors do their work and Travis has a great one over at 100 Scope Notes: In the Studio with Mark Teague. And I have to link to his recent post on banned books because this sentence made me laugh:
Reporting (and I use that term very loosely) on the most challenged books is like reporting the contents of my lunch bag - ain’t much changing.
It's funny because it's TRUE! Read the rest about the ALA Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2008.
And lastly (for today), I want to point you to The Almost Librarian where Valerie has a cool early literacy activity idea: Adventure Notebooks. They'll involve your preschoolers while you're out running errands, giveyou plenty to talk about, and give your kids a chance to practice those pre-writing (and even pre-math!) skills. Early literacy for the win!