Spotlight

I am very excited to see a feature in American Libraries Direct this week by one of my favorite professors from TWU.  Jeanette Larson provides some background on El día de los ninos / El día de los libros, highlighting several fun, useful titles for celebrating this special celebration of books and children.



Building a culture of literacy through Día
Jeanette Larson writes: “A group of children gather in the children’s area to listen to a story. At first glance, this could be a program occurring any day of the week in any library across the country. However, it is a special day, April 30, and the children are enjoying books like Book Fiesta! by Pat Mora and Sip, Slurp, Soup, Soup Caldo, Caldo, Caldo by Diane Gonzales Bertrand. On April 30, 1997, the first annual El día de los ninos / El día de los libros was celebrated in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona.”...


From Booklist Online, here are a few features / graphic novels that are high up on the check-out list.  I am really looking forward to giving Bad Island the twice over.  



Featured review: Bad Island
TenNapel, Doug. Bad Island. Aug. 2011. 224p. Grades 6–10. Scholastic / Graphix, hardcover (978-0-545-31479-4).

If you thought Lost had cornered the market on fun stories that balance relationship dynamics with the adventure of being stranded on a mysterious island, please direct your attention to TenNapel’s latest. Fresh offGhostopolis (2010), the quirky cartoonist tells a story of a family that winds up stuck on a mysterious and deadly-creature-filled island that hides, quite literally, a huge secret. Families have been getting stuck in danger-infested environments since Journey to the Center of the Earth, but TenNapel grafts on a sci-fi element right out of Transformersto give it some zing, and his creatures, which harken back to his early work on Creature Tech (2002), have a cool biological ickiness to them. Though father, mother, teenage son, and tween daughter face the various dangers like a gang of Indiana Joneses, their family stresses are believable, particularly those of the son, who must renew his commitment to a family he had been about to abandon before they all landed hip-deep in weird. A clever, old-fashioned adventure with some modern twists and a lighthearted tone, this, like TenNapel’s previous work, is not to be missed.  — Jesse Karp

Top 10 graphic novels for youth, 2011

Ian Chipman writes: “As the list of the best graphic novels for children and teens reviewed in the past 12 months in Booklist suggests, it was a good year for sweeping, seafaring adventures, but all of the books point to the remarkable versatility of the comics format to deliver thrills, laughs, and ideas to all kinds of readers.”...