Tales from a Loud Librarian

Can't wait until tomorrow. I will be heading to the AASL conference to enjoy the wisdom of all the other school librarians whom I will meet. I am also going to receive the Gale TEAMS Award for Middle School. Hope to have lots of pics and video to show you afterwards. This conference is one of the best because it is the only national conference that is geared towards school librarians. The only sessions that really don't interest me are the ones for the elementary level. Years ago those were the only sessions that I attended. Can't wait, and I will be ready for the cold weather.

The students flooded the library every day at lunch during Teen Read Week to enjoy all the activities Bookmarked, the high school library book group, and I had planned for them. This year more books than ever were returned during fine forgiveness week. Student adding to the Wall of the Future Highlights of the week included the Tweet chat with Tiffany Trent on Monday; the game called The Picture is the Clue, do you Know the Answer with a small candy as a prize; guess the number of Sour Patch Kids with five winners getting a signed book by Heather Brewer; and the Wall of the Future, where students pictured themselves 20 years in the future. The bookmark contest will end on Wednesday the 26th. I am waiting for the students to submit their entries. Check out the library website to see all the pictures. Pictures of the winning bookmarks will be posted next week.

I came back in the room the other day, and found this hanging on the wall in the library. One student said to me, " I want to sign up, but I don't where the room of requirement is located."  Love it! Harry Potter just keeps giving and giving and giving.  Keep Reading!

Books from the Hallowmere series by Tiffany Trent To kick off Teen Read Week, we invited author Tiffany Trent to chat with us. We logged onto Twitter and spent 30 minutes conversing back and forth. One student manned the computer. Other students asked questions. There were students in and out of the library who followed along for a few minutes here and there. All in all it was a lot of fun. We found out that she has a new book coming out and one that she is working on. We shared some of our fav books. Sometimes it was a bit disjointed, but it worked. If you want to see our conversation search for the hashtag #TRW11chat .

Open here to watch the video to find out which 10 books were selected as the teen's favorites for 2011.

On Thursday, October 13th the 7th graders, Ms. Bordelon and I  joined 1100 other schools to watch a live presentation by James Patterson from Palm Beach, FL. He was in the auditorium of his son's middle school with several hundred students in attendance. He was there to talk about his new book, Middle School, the Worst Years of My Life . The event took place during our lunch period, so all the students were munching during the presentation. Since Mr. Patterson could not see us or hear us, it was not an issue. His message about reading was right on target. He believes that all kids need to read and read well. Good readers will have more choices in life and end up with better careers. He said to read like your life depended on it. If you want to be a good writer, then you must READ! He said that kids need to find good books that will engage them. Besides his titles, he also recommended the Percy Jackson series, Warrior series, Book Thief , and The Invention of Hugo

The students in the digital graphics class are required to create a logo for one of their first assignments of the year. The teacher likes every member of the class to get an actual client so that the assignment is as real world as possible. I have a logo for the PFTSTA Library that I have been using for years. However, if a student brings me something outstanding, then I would gladly adopt it. This year two students created logos that I might want to use.  What do you think of these two? I would love to hear your opinion.  This first one is from Dylan who used books to spell out the school initials: Brandon manipulated the school logo and used the tiger interacting with a book to represent the library. He had text in his logo.After going back and forth with me and the teacher many times, he decided to take the text out of the equation: Leave a comment and tell me what you think.

It's that time of year again. Mid-October means Bookmarked and I have been planning Teen Read Week activities for the PFTSTA students for weeks. As always we have games to play at lunch, online activities, and the annual bookmark contest. You can see it all here:  http://bit.ly/naP1Zk . Last year we were lucky to have author, Scott Westerfeld, visit and kick off TRW. There was no way to top that, but I have planned an author event to kick off this year, too. Most of the students are not familiar with the workings of Twitter. So I have planned a twitter chat with author, Tiffany Tren t. She visited PFTSTA several years ago, and she made a wonderful presentation to the whole student body as well as conducting a writing workshop with an English class. The students loved her energy. I have been planning to book a virtual visit for at least a year. I finally did it.  If you want to join our chat, it will be held at 12:30PM CDT on Monday, October 17th. The hashtag is #TRW11cha

On Friday, October 7th, the 6th and 7th graders were invited to bring their lunch to room 204 and meet Nat and Alex Wolff  via Skype. The boys  were on an anti-bullying campaign and Skyped with classrooms around the country to talk about it. Even though they are famous and had a show on Nick, they had trouble from kids at their old school. They believe kids need to ignore the bullies and be themselves.  Music is a big of their lives. They write songs and perform. They have a new album coming out next week called, Black Sheep. They shared a song from that album and had the kids dancing and singing along. They also talked about some of their other passions like soccer and writing. Watch the video and enjoy the Naked Brothers visit to PFTSTA:

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This episode highlights the work of author, Heather Brewer. She is the author of the Vladimir Tod Chronicles and the Slayer Chronicles. Within this episode is an interview of the author during a visit that she made to PFTSTA on September 28, 2011.