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.

The study of state test scores to assess student achievement by girls and boys shows that girls are reading better than boys by as much as ten percentage points in some states. As reading professionals we need to be aware of this trend.

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.

This is a great resource for interactive prompts, lessons and materials for writing classrooms.

James Patterson's site of recommended reading for kids. All ages from birth through middle school.

Famous authors discuss how they became readers and writers.