Post #txla16

It's been a few weeks since #txla16, and I have my pictures and memories to remind me of how amazing it was.  Many of those lovely memories came from the "Notably Newbery" panel I moderated. Joining me were authors Katherine Applegate (The One and Only Ivan), Kathi Appelt (The Underneath), Joan Bauer, (Hope Was Here),  Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard), and Kirby Larson (Hattie Big Sky).

Seated, left to right: Kathi Appelt, Katherine Applegate, Joan Bauer
Back, left to right: Me, Kirby Larson, and Linda Sue Park

In this post, I wanted to share the latest works by these authors: 

Linda Sue Park begins a middle grade series entitled Wing & Claw.  The first installment is Forest of Wonders (HarperCollins). 

Kathi Appelt (along with Allison McGhee) has give us Maybe a Fox (Simon & Schuster):

Katherine Applegate's Crenshaw (Macmillan Kids), is now a nominee for the Texas Bluebonnet Award: 

And Joan Bauer's Soar (Penguin) was released in January: 

Kirby Larson's Audacity Jones to the Rescue was also published in January: 

And I also wanted to reflect a bit: 

It was an incredible honor to introduce these authors at TLA --- I cannot thank them enough for coming to Houston, TX and sharing their process with us. They were a delight individually and even more so together. Afterwards, I'm sure just about everyone in the audience  (including me) wanted to go home and reread their award-winning books. In fact, I've already reread Hope Was Here. 

I truly wish I could remember every wonderful part of that panel. What I do remember is that several times I stood there and said to myself: "Look where books have brought you." 

Books and reading have afforded me amazing opportunities. And this is what I hope it continues to do for the readers in my library. 

Read on, friends! See where books will take YOU! 

                     

                                                                           

My Podcast with Matthew Winner

Awhile back, my friend Matthew Winner, a school librarian in Maryland (better known as THE BUSY LIBRARIAN) asked me to be on his Let's Get Busy podcast. Matthew and I met on Twitter, and most recently in real life at the Texas Library Association Annual Conference in 2015. Matthew was the keynote speaker at TLA's awesome Tech Camp 2015. 

We like to talk about books! And libraries!

And we've connected our students via Skype for events such as Dot Day 2014. 

So when it came time to record the podcast, I said yes!

And then I realized that I don't really like the sound of my own voice.

But I did the podcast anyway.  And, I had a lovely time! We talked about some of the kidlit standouts of 2015 because there wasn't enough time to talk about all of them. As we talked, my appreciation for these books grew even more.

In this 40-minute podcast, I proved something to myself about what I can do! And hopefully, I will do something like this again. I know I did a lot of critical thinking as I spoke, and I even made myself go back and reread some parts of the books AFTER the recording. Why? I think it was because I was processing the book in a different way, and asking and answering my own questions.

If you'd like to listen to the podcast, click here to go to Matthew's Let's Get Busy Blog. Go to Best Books Ever to listen to our book discussion.

And - of course - be sure to get copies of all of these books at your local library!