Tag: Reading Charity

Emmy And Oliver: Smooth Sailing Over A Rough Sea

Emmy and Oliver, written by Robin Benway, dives headfirst into choppy waters. Emmy and Oliver are best friends until they are seven years old, when Oliver disappears, kidnapped by his father. Cut to ten years later. Emmy’s life is restricted by her parents’ fear and she has never stopped...

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...

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...

What’s Going On With The Word Gap?

Written by: Molly McManus, PhD Candidate in Educational Psychology, University of Texas at Austin. Note: We Read Together presents this article in order to facilitate dialogue.  WRT doesn’t officially endorse or support the opinions below.  Why do rich kids end up doing better than poor kids in school? Of late, one common explanation...

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...

Elephants Make Fine Friends

Colter Jackson’s debut picture book is a heartfelt delight. Ella and her elephant were the best of friends. But when Ella begins to notice the differences between herself and an elephant, she wonders: is this really my best friend? Are we too different?   It takes a lot of...

Learning Through War: The Refugee Children of Syria, Croatia and Beyond

Zagreb, Croatia, 9/29/2015 All month long, the Syrian refugees have been flooding my news feed and TV screen. I have a strong need to leave the political aside, to see them for who they are: humans. A World At School website says: Children trapped in conflict zones are the...

Why Should You Invest in Early Childhood Education?

Election season is just getting started and the likes of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders are starting to make noise with their idea about how to “fix” America. In the coming months we are going to hear a lot from them about jobs, taxes, and education. Some...

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...