The Library of the History of Human Imagination
What we wouldn’t give for a few lifetimes in this place! There is a place in this world that has a complete Velociraptor skelleton, a page from the Guetenburg bible, and Sputnik all in one room. That place The Library of the History Human Imagination. This 3,000+ square foot...
Saint Anything: Good, But Lacking Miracles
In Sarah Dessen’s new novel, we find the same thing we always find: a teenaged girl going through a big change. Sydney is used to living in her brother Peyton’s shadow. When Peyton goes to jail for paralyzing a boy while driving drunk, Sydney is left to pick up...
The Last Leaves Falling
The Last Leaves Falling is the story of Abe Sora, a Japanese seventeen-year-old diagnosed with ALS. Over time, the disease causes Sora to lose basic motor functions, such as the use of his legs and arms. Eventually, it will kill him. Sora turns to both the past and the...
What I Learned From Learning Differently
Everyone learns differently. This is a universally accepted truism. But that one student may have a markedly dissimilar learning process from those around him or her and shouldn’t necessarily mean a decreased chance in success for that student. The idea of alternative learning processes has been a recurring...
How Much Tech Is Too Much Tech?
If you walk into a preschool class, you will still most likely see children being children; jumping around, twirling, finger-painting (hopefully not the wall!), interacting with one another in various ways, learning how to fairly trade a teddy bear for a block tower. This is what they are supposed...
Do Kids Need to Like What They’re Reading to Progress?
Written by: Ryan Spencer, Clinical Teaching Specialist; Lecturer in Literacy Education, University of Canberra. When we think of reading for our children, we are often misled into thinking that we need to focus on one type of book, such as picture books or novels in order to practice specific, reading-related...
Librarian Bans Blameless Book for Social Experiment
Last weekend marked the end of Banned Books Week, the annual book readers’ celebration of drawing attention to the dangerous history of literary censorship. In 2014, the American Library Association (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom received 311 challenges. When an individual finds a book unacceptable for any reason, they...
6 Tips for Stubborn Summer Readers
It’s that time of year. The birds are chirping. The teachers are packing up their classrooms. Trees and bushes are filling out, readying themselves for roles as home base or hiding place in epic hide-and-seek battles. The structure of your child’s day is beginning to look like a late-game...
What Batman, Swearing, and Cigarettes Can Teach Us About Reading
The Batman movie came out in 1989 when I was eight-and-a-half-years old. I didn’t know who Batman was, but I saw the commercial and knew it was very important I see it. My parents were unsympathetic. It’s rated PG-13 for a reason, they said, and I cried in the...