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It begins with a story start. A story start is the first chapter of the book. The rest of the story is up to you. The story start could be written by a professional writer, a teacher, you or your classmates, or maybe even a celebrity! You write your version of Chapter 2. Take the story where you like. The only limits are your imagination and a word count. At the same time, other BoomWriters will be writing their own version of what happens next. Submit your entry. When you're done (and before the deadline), you submit your entry for review. If it's accepted, you'll get points and BoomDollars. You'll use BoomDollars to purchase accessories for your Boomer avatar. Vote, Vote, Vote! You and the other BoomWriters vote on the entry you think is the best. Of course you can't vote for you own entry, and you won't know whose entry it is you're voting for. You may be able to vote more than once, which is good, as voting also earns you points and BoomDollars. Did you win? If so, then your entry becomes the official Chapter 2 of the book. If not, don't worry because there will be many more chances for you to win. It's a book! The competitions continue until the book is finished. Then, *Boom!* you're a published author! The end result? A real book that you, your friends, family, and the whole world can buy. Imagine that, a book with your name in it that you helped write.

Katie, who runs the site is one of the most helpful people I know. Titkatok is constantly offering free services to help teachers use their site and make it managable in the classroom. It is one of my favorite sites to recommend to elementary teachers for writing.

This is a great site for online writing/publishing of stories. The books created here cannot be printed out, but can be shared online.

Tikatok is a site where students can create their own books complete with illustrations. They can collaborate with other students while writing and editing and published their finished books on the web as well as sharing them with others. Parents who are interested can purchased printed books.

"With this interactive tool, teens can create printed social networking or magazine/newspaper profiles for themselves, peers or family members whom they have interviewed, or fictional characters from books they have read. Featuring components of popular online social networking applications, this tool engages teens and provides a means for adults to talk about safe, responsible online behavior, such as having an awareness of who could be seeing online profiles and limiting highly personal information."

"Whilst looking at the some publishers websites I saw a few different book trailers. They were interesting but there was nothing there that I believed our students weren't capable of creating some just as good." This wiki gives suggestions, rationale, and resources for having students create their own book trailers.

"Our mission is to transform boys into lifelong readers. We are an organization of parents, educators, librarians, mentors, authors, and booksellers. Periodically, we will feature an Extraordinary Author on our home page. Below is information about an incredible writer who has published several compelling and gripping novels that boys love. "

As we seek to get kids doing more authentic persuasive writing, this is a great site to share book reviews for kids, by kids, and use them as a springboard to beginning our own!

"This is a world full of stories where YOU are the Storymaker and can choose all sorts of ways to tell your tale. Here you can create your own story, share it with friends and visit the gallery to see what other Storymakers have made"

School Library Journal's Battle of the (Kids') Books is a competition between 16 of the very best books for young people published in 2009, judged by some of the biggest names in children's books. There are some fantastic reviews of books that would be fun for our kids to read. It looks like the books are probably geared to our 3rd to 8th graders.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Bird, NYC public librarian, Newbery Award committee member, and book reviewer extraordinaire, writes prolific posts about new books, literacy programs, and the publishing world at her blog for the School Library Journal, A Fuse #8 Production. She is widely considered the most powerful blogger in kids' books.

"Figment is a community where you can share your writing, connect with other readers, and discover new stories and authors. Whatever you're into, from sonnets to mysteries, from sci-fi stories to cell phone novels, you can find it all here."

"Transform your doc, pdf, word, movie in an interactive flipbook. It's very easy: upload your file and you will receive an email with the url to your creation. You can share this with your friend, family... by email, on your blog, on facebook or twitter"