Wednesday, February 5, 2014

It's Christmas in the Library in February!

It's Christmas in the library in February!

While I would LOVE to have new books arrive in the library as soon as books are published and available for sale, due to budget reasons, I am not always able to purchase books for the school library as soon as possible.  So, of course, my wish list grows rather large.

Thanks to the awe-inspiring K-5 teacher-librarian John Schu (Twitter @mrschureads), 3rd grade teacher Colby Sharp (Twitter @colbysharp), and many more, they keep me posted on the latest and greatest must-have books.  The amazing teacher-librarian Shannon McClintock Miller (who I keep mentioning in previous blog posts) introduced me to these two names at an Iowa Association School Library Conference.  Between John, Colby, Shannon, and many more, this explains why my wish list grows rather large.  I stay connected to John Schu and Colby Sharp via Twitter and their blogs.  Someday I hope to meet them in person!

I highly recommend following their blogs for the latest, greatest hot reads.





I am beyond excited to share a picture of "Christmas in the library in February" at Harding Elementary!  The books on the shelves are a mixture of 2013-2014 Iowa Goldfinch nominees, 2013-2014 Iowa Children's Choice nominees, everybody picture books, fiction chapter books, and nonfiction books.

It is no easy task to order books for a school library.  It requires input from classroom teachers, reading book reviews, following blogs (like those mentioned above), making sure to order the award-winning books, supporting classroom curriculum, supporting Common Core, and so much more when factoring in a tight budget.  To make it even more challenging, to find the time (all educators have the challenge of time) between planning lessons, teaching lessons, shelving books, processing books, teacher collaboration, ipad carts management, and much more "behind the scenes work" that most are now aware of what it comes to managing a library collection. ;)

So, what exactly arrived in our "Christmas in the library in February" collection?!  Check these out...

MY FAVORITE AUTHOR...LOREN LONG!  Now we have the entire Otis collection!

The books are well-loved and already checked out, so I couldn't get an actual picture of the copies, but we do have them.



FINALLY, the library has the entire collection from the dot-inspiring (and another author favorite of mine) Peter H. Reynolds!


The super fun author Ame Dyckman (another FAVORITE of mine), who wrote the awesome Boy + Bot, now has a book called Tea Party Rules!





Ever since I heard about author Drew Dewalt's book The Day the Crayons Quit, I have wanted a copy, or two, of it in the library, really bad!  FINALLY, I have 2 copies in the library!


Students were excited about Mac Barnett's Count the Monkeys and Extra Yarn at our Fall Scholastic Book Fair!  Now we have copies of these books in our library!




A blog post by Colby Sharp (you can read the blog post by clicking here) sparked me to eagerly add The Story of Fish and Snail by Deb Freedman to our library collection.



This is now at Harding Elementary Library!




Teacher-librarian and educational technology integrationist Shannon McClintock Miller, who is simply amazing and awe-inspiring to me, now has books written and published on digital citizenship and internet safety!  I am proud to showcase her books in our library now! :)





Here are a few other pictures of some of the books we now have in the Harding Elementary Library.  Do you spot a favorite of yours?!






Harding Elementary staff and students are incredibly lucky to have these books and more in our school library!  I can't wait to keep adding to the collection for our eager readers!

1 comment:

  1. Wow! Those are some great books. Your students are lucky to have you.

    ReplyDelete