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Held annually during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of intellectual freedom and draws attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States, including books commonly taught in secondary schools. Here are ideas for celebrating Banned Books Week -- with your students, your children and anyone who believes in having "the freedom to read."

The most dreaded word in school reading for students: book reports. Teachers assign them, viewing them as a necessary component of assessing reading comprehension. So, how can we as teachers continue to monitor our students understanding of reading material without killing the love of reading? Enter technology.

"Studio 360 explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and finds out how this compact novel became the great American story of our age. Novelist Jonathan Franzen tells Kurt Andersen why he still reads it every year or two, and writer Patricia Hampl explains why its lightness is deceptive. We'll drive around the tony Long Island suburbs where Gatsby was set, and we'll hear from Andrew Lauren about his film G, which sets Gatsby among the hip-hop moguls. And Azar Nafisi describes the power of teaching the book to university students in Tehran. Readings come courtesy of Scott Shepherd, an actor who sometimes performs the entire book from memory."

Book Drum is the perfect companion to the books we love, bringing them to life with immersive pictures, videos, maps and music.

Blog post about a challenge to read books from around the world to learn more about our world

"One important form of digital reading is reading ebooks. There are actually several resources online which provide both premium and free ebooks to readers. I have dome some laborious search into these resources and come up with the list below. This list features only platforms that provide free ebooks or a mixture of free and premium (freemium) eBooks. The purpose behind this compilation is to provide teachers and eventually students with trusted resources where they can search for and read free ebooks."

Jim Burke hears America reading. Wonderful post about the beauty of books and the impact they have on readers.

Way cool way to keep up with free reading books via mobile devices.

I'm always looking for great self-help books and there tons of new ones getting released all the time. Sometimes we forget about all the great old self help books out there which a lot of the newer ones are philosophically based on. The cool thing is, many of them are old enough that they actually are in the public domain, so you can usually find them for free. This page compiles a list of some of the best and where to find them online in the public domain. Woo!

Lots of free audio books (via Tech Chicks podcast).

A Lexile measure is a valuable piece of information about either an individual's reading ability or the difficulty of a text, like a book or magazine article. The Lexile measure is shown as a number with an "L" after it - 880L is 880 Lexile.

Emailed link to English teachers 6/07

Reading Shakespeare makes you smarter!

The Big Read/NEA's Reader's and Teacher's Guide for Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Excellent radio show.

We are trying to put this together in our school community. Would love any feedback.

Proof that authors are "real people," that student voice matters, that communication is a vital skill, and that reading and words have a true influence.

Tool to give a recap of great literature in 60 seconds. Videos of overview, setting, plot, etc.