Interview with Maria Padian, author of Jersey Tomatoes are the Best

Please welcome Maria Padian to the blog!  I recently finished reading her novel, Jersey Tomatoes are the Best. A fantastic realistic fiction story for many of today’s over-scheduled and high-achieving teens, I highly recommend it.  It’s much deeper than it appears to be at the surface and would pair well with Laurie Halse Anderson’s work! [...]

Integrated Summer Reading

I realize I haven’t posted much about school and my new job this year, but I promise to remedy that as the school year winds down.  Just as soon as I dig out from under this pile of essays and short stories that need to be graded…. I am very excited about everything this year. [...]

Strings Attached by Judy Blundell

National Book Award winner Judy Blundell is one of my favorite authors.  What I Saw and How I Lied is one of my all-time favorite books and I love recommending it to my teens.  When I received an ARC of Blundell’s newest venture, Strings Attached, I was ecstatic. Within 24 hours I sat down with [...]

The Gift That Keeps on Giving #sas2011

Welcome to Friday’s edition of Share a Story, Shape a Future!  Today’s topic is The Gift That Keeps on Giving.   Literacy is a gift.  It can’t be wrapped, it doesn’t fit in a box, and it doesn’t look fancy.  But it’s the gift that fits every person, regardless of race, creed, sex, background.  Literacy [...]

The Gift of Reading: Guest Post from Pamela Voelkel

A special guest post from Pamela Voelkel For me as a child in England, reading was a solitary pleasure. It took me where I wanted to be, which was away from my family. We didn’t have many books in the house, just a guide to window-dressing, an anthology of animal stories, a children’s atlas and [...]

Writer’s Notebooks: Literacy Outside of School #sas2011

Many children love to doodle, write stories, and decorate empty notebooks found laying around the house.  How can we capture this energy and help kids develop their literacy skills outside the classroom?  We know how important it is to read, and we’ve talked a lot about reading this week. But what about writing? There is nothing [...]

Please Watch The Daily Show Tonight!!!

Tonight, my friend Brian will be Jon Stewart’s guest on The Daily Show!  He will be talking about his new book The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive.  (My review coming soon )

The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy

A few weeks ago, I received an email asking me if I would be interested in reviewing an ARC of  Smart Pop’s newest anthology, The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy. I had used another Smart Pop anthology, Demigods and Monsters: Your Favorite Authors on Rick Riordan’s [...]

The Power of a Book

When I was in middle school, my mother used to yell at me for reading.  It sounds crazy, right?  But sometimes she was right. (I won’t agree that she was right all the time!)  In the days before cell phones and e-readers, I carried a book with me everywhere.  Ok, sometimes more than one book. [...]

Share a Story, Shape a Future 2011

It’s here, it’s here!! This week is the annual Share a Story, Shape a Future Literacy Blog tour.  We have been hard at work behind the scenes and are so happy that it’s time to unveil the amazing week ahead.  Be sure to check back tomorrow for links to the posts for day 1. What [...]