Developmentally Appropriate Technology

An article written earlier this year in the New York Times by technology expert Warren Buckleitner, editor of the Children's Technology Review.

He uses the developmental stages of psychologist Jean Piaget to help make decisions about what technologies are appropriate for children at different ages.

Read it and let us know what you think. Does this match up with what you experienced as a child, or what your children experienced? Do you have different ideas? What about technologies that the author didn't discuss? Where would you place them developmentally? Does this have implications for children's collections and programming?

Jail Program

Hi all. Just an FYI... We're really happy to be sprinkling youth literacy information and books for kids through the jail library. Jennifer Miller and I plan to give away 1000 books for 1000 kids at a series of 14+ sessions for inmates between now and Dec. 18. We help them select age-appropriate children's books to send home with a personal note for each child. It is extremely rewarding! Also, Melissa is regularly providing awesome literacy workshops with great tips for all of the inmates.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Here's the list of giant balloons (and other attractions) that will be in this year's parade! Click on Parade Information, then Parade Line-Up to view--I can't get a direct link, sorry!

Horton the Elephant will be making an appearance this year. What other children's book characters would you love to see? I think Maisy would make an excellent balloon!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Places to Go, Things to Do

This time of year, families often start looking for special things to do with their kids, either to celebrate the holidays or to enjoy time together while school's out. In addition to pointing them to our online calendar and the Dewey, and reminding them that storytimes are on hiatus Thanksgiving week and at the end of December, here's a couple other resources we can use to help them find out what's going on.

Kids Pages has a nice list of holiday events. It says "for November" at the top, but many of the listings include December dates.

Colorado Parent has a December calendar, as well.

Families (and you, too) can also use YourHub.com to find out about local happenings. Go to YourHub.com, and select your state, community (Denver Metro), and Neighborhood (Aurora, Centennial, Littleton, Glendale, Sheridan, etc.); click "Go to Your Hub." From there, you can click on Events on the left menu.

You'll get a weekly calendar with all events, but you can limit in a number of ways, including by "Children." Also, once they get this far, families can sign up to get an RSS feed of local events.

What other resources do you use to help families find things to do?

Twilight

It's here! Twilight, the movie, was released today.

For those of you who have been living on Mars this year, Stephanie Meyer's vampire series has been THE hot read. What are we going to recommend to tweens and teens who have A) read all the books and B) seen the movie 20 times already and C) want something just like it?

Leave us a comment with some movies or books that you are going to recommend!

National Book Awards

The National Book Awards were announced yesterday!

The National Book Awards were first given in 1950, with a Children's Literature category added in 1969. In the 80s, the number of categories proliferated (Children's Fiction, Hardcover; Children's Non-Fiction; Children's Picture Books, Paperback; etc.) until 1983 when, in order to preserve the impact of the awards, the categories were reduced to only 3, with no category for youth literature.

In 1996, however, a Young People's Literature category was reinstated! This is cool because the NBAs are very highly regarded. It's great to have youth literature recognized at this level again. The NBA in this category is mostly, but not always, awarded to books for older readers...kind of in the upper-Newbery-to-Printz range. There's a fair amount of overlap between all three awards.

A short list is selected each year, from which the finalist is chosen. This year's short list was:

Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now

And the winner is...Judy Blundell for What I Saw and How I Lied!

The Young People’s Literature judges this year were:
Daniel Handler (Mr. Lemony Snicket to you),
Holly Black (1/2 of the Spiderwick team),
Angela Johnson (tons of awards),
Carolyn Mackler (of the esteemed The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things), and Cynthia Voigt (a Grand Dame of children's and YA literature).

Who's read any of these yet? Let us know what you think!

Matilda Needs Help

We have a cool opportunity!

donna geesaman has asked a few of the former Youth ASTs to help her gather resources for a few new Book Club Kits. I volunteered for Matilda, by Roald Dahl, and I would love for you to pitch in. Why?

Because I think this is a great chance for those of us who are unfamiliar with the kits (I'm one of them!) to...

• learn what resources come with a kit when you order one


• practice doing research to support a book club without having to prep an entire program yourself


• have some fun brainstorming activities and crafts you might like to see in the book club kits

Resources to include in the kits should include, but are not limited to:

• author information [Allison is working on this!]


• reviews of the book


• list of read-alike books [Jill Corrente is working on this!]


• list of other books by the same author


• discussion questions [Karen H is working on this!]


• background information on the setting or characters


• any historical information that will help the presenter place the book in time


• activities (classroom, games, crafts, snacks) [Elisabeth and Lori Noreen are working on this--but several other people can, too!]

Please volunteer to research and provide one or more of these resources for the book Matilda, by Roald Dahl. Our deadline for sending the materials to donna is December 31.

I would also welcome discussion about book clubs in general, so if you have any questions or comments, please let us know!