It’s not just about the awards

Perusing my twitter feed today, I saw this from @TheDaringLibrarian: My response was that J.K. Rowling isn't American, thus her work is excluded as per the Newbery rules, and that it was too bad that some parents see award-winning books as automatically being better reads than those that haven't won awards. @Sophiebiblio then added: And…

Thoughts on Recent Reading

I've been reading for the YALSA Non-fiction Award and for pleasure, and the following thoughts have cropped up. Non-fiction for Young Adults I've read about 15 books for this committee thus far, on a variety of topics. A few books are what we think of as "normal" size for a paperback or hardback. But most…

Vote! It’s #ALA Election Time

One of the frequent rants here is how the youth services divisions don't vote in ALA Elections. One of our own, Barb Stripling, is running and she's not there just to fill the ballot. There are many wonderful ALA Council candidates from AASL, ALSC and YALSA. This year so many of us are getting involved…

The Gift of Cite

This is one of those "just publish already" posts, one that's been sitting in Draft status for a while. Let's start with two posts that my friend Chuck pointed me to, one by Kevin Marshall and one by Kristi Gustafson Barlette.  Kevin's came first, Kristi's a few days later.   Coincidence?  Possibly... except they know each…

The Death of Imagination?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640 Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy In the second and tenth of Time's 10 Ideas That Are Changing Your Life, Joe, Mika and the crew talk about cloud computing and stress. Joe's comments about the value of serendipity when doing research in law school vs. Google's giving you…