Schools around the country are preparing to adopt the Common Core State Standards, a national set of educational expectations for all students. These standards will impact both school curricula as well as school library collections, but they will also have implications for public library collections as youth services librarians often provide materials for school children. The Common Core calls for students to read a “diverse array of classic and contemporary literature as well as challenging informational texts in a range of subjects.” The Common Core Standards name many of these works, and librarians should be aware of them. Unfortunately, while the list includes excellent titles, many of them have old copyrights, and may be difficult to find. Here’s the list of supplemental titles for the English Language Arts standard (See Appendix B). You can also download the entire set of standards on the homepage, which includes the core titles recommended by the standards committee.
What blogs do you follow?
I’ve been trying to identify some of the helpful blogs that review children’s and teen books (in addition to the wonderful YA review site Reading Nook that I previously mentioned). I know there are many such blogs out there, but here are a few that may be useful to check out. I welcome your suggestions of blogs that you follow regularly.
Nonfiction Monday identifies good, recently-published nonfiction titles for young readers. Hosted by Anastasia Suen, whose Booktalking blog is another good resource, Nonfiction Monday links to a nonfiction review on a different blog each week. This gives librarians a chance to not only read nonfiction reviews, but also discover new blogs.
Abby the Librarian, written by a youth services public librarian, offers regular reviews of children’s and teen books. In addition, this blog site covers many other topics of interest to children’s librarians: storytime, summer reading, crafts, and programming. Her book reviews are well-developed, and she helpfully includes read-alikes or links to other reviews of the title.
Originally begun when the blogger was 16, the Book Cellar reviews newly-published young adult literature as well as some adult books. This blog offers reviews nearly everyday and gives titles a rating. The reviewer prefers fantasy, and thus this genre dominates among the reviewed titles.
I looked at dozens of other blogs, but I will stop here and save some for another entry. So, which blogs do you follow?