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A few days later, the three of us have a present for you. A lovely little family that we call the "Go Away" Dust Jacket series. We wrote a bunch of snarky "leave me alone" messages, I designed a few fancy covers, and now we want to share the entire batch with you.

Welcome to Poetry 180. Poetry can and should be an important part of our daily lives. Poems can inspire and make us think about what it means to be a member of the human race. By just spending a few minutes reading a poem each day, new worlds can be revealed.

RIF - fabulous ideas! Writing poems has never been so much fun!  Are you ready to get messy and SPLAT your own poem?

Listen to the brilliant Sharon Creech read aloud from her book, Love That Dog

Terrific promotional ads for libraries- school and public!

Online books read by authors and celebrities. FREE BOOKS.

I think there is also a perception that if we don't have the paper books then we don't need the library or the librarians in schools. I think it's flawed logic. Information is changing its format; yes, it's online, it's an ebook, it's a book you can download onto an iPad, but it's still information. Kids need to know how to evaluate it even more so now than before because there is much more of it. Kids need to be able to determine whether it is useful or valid information. Librarians take the lead in helping educate students through the information jungle, and with even more sources and formats, the role of the librarian becomes even more critical. So even though paper books are becoming less prominent, the skills needed are even more advanced than what was needed before. School librarians are critical to helping students navigate through this information explosion.

This is from the June 2011 ODE Social Sciences Newsletter: "Understanding how to manage money is a skill that is more important today than ever. You can look all around for examples of poor financial decisions. Let us turn that around for our next generation. Financial Beginnings and Operation HOPE offer free financial education programs for students in grades 4-12 as well as young adults. All programs are free and provide age-specific curriculum and activities and are designed to promote self-sufficiency, fiscal responsibility, and encourage active and educated participation in the banking system. The fun, engaging and relevant programs are taught by professionals from the community. Together, Financial Beginnings and Operation HOPE have served nearly 25,000 youth at more than 100 schools throughout the Pacific Northwest." Every year the Office of the State Treasurer sponsors the Reading is an Investment (RII) program between October and March. Anyone who wanted to schedule the elementary financial program, Banking on our Future, could try to time it so it happens when RII is active. http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/page/?id=1707 http://www.ost.state.or.us/read

This was taken as excerpts from Melissa Dalton's post on Libs-Or: Oregon Poetic Voices (OPV) is a comprehensive digital archive of poetry readings that complements existing print collections of poetry across the state and is funded by the Library Services and Technology Act FFY2010. The state of Oregon possesses an unusually high number of nationally recognized writers, a very high proportion of whom are award-winning and otherwise notable poets. Additionally, there are active communities of emerging poets around the state, and poetry is regularly taught in the English curriculum of most Oregon schools. Until Oregon Poetic Voices began in 2010, there was no publicly accessible archive of recorded poetry by Oregon poets that could be used to maintain a record of poetry in performance, which is a vitally important aspect of interpretation and a valuable teaching tool. The Oregon Poetic Voices archive currently publishes over 200 prominent and emerging Oregon poets, including their biographies and poem texts alongside their recordings, and will soon feature historic performances recorded by KBOO, Fishtrap, and the Mountain Writers Series. There are also resources for educators, including curriculum guides and links to information about teaching poetry. http://listsmart.osl.state.or.us/pipermail/libs-or/2011-July/010664.html

Recognizing the need for poetry in our lives, the Oregon Poetic Voices Project (OPV) has begun to create a comprehensive digital archive of poetry readings that will complement existing print collections of poetry across the state.

Great collection of activities for Read Across America

8 Tips for Creating a Grant Proposal Budget In an eSchool News article, author Deborah Ward presents eight tips for creating an accurate budget for grant proposals. To read the article, go to

Welcome to Smashwords! Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers, agents and readers. We offer multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device. For readers, Smashwords provides an opportunity to discover new voices in all categories and genres of the written word. Once you register, the site offers useful tools for search, discovery and personal library-building. Each week we add new features based on feedback from members.

Let me tell you about our Floor-etry. First, floor-etry is a poem on the floor. That's it. It's simple and vastly influential in the process of creating an early literacy environment.  We here at the Allen County Public Library  got the idea from Saroj Ghoting's website for early literacy. In a presentation put together by Dana Bjerke, Joanna Redman and  Kelly Wussow from the Hennepin County Library, you can flip through different slides and see inspiring ideas that make words accessible to even the littlest of patrons. We thought, "We can do that!"

And we did! We wrote a poem that is actually just a string of similes so the reader can start anywhere in the circle and the poem makes sense. We typed it up in HUGE, easy to read font, printed it out on bright paper and cut out the words. After cutting out the words, we laminated each one and added Velcro to the back for a temporary hold. We placed the poem in the front of our department in the shape of a (yellow) sun!

Great way to create reading promotion posters- including dewey numbers posters. Are you ready to join the revolution? Despair.com puts the power of motivational parody in your far less capable hands!
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Share a Story 2012: A Quick Look Back

We had several notes over the weekend from folks who were "just now" catching up on Share a Story - Shape a Future 2012 and reading the posts. We hope you're still basking in all that great, positive energy!!

We also had a couple of other items and additions that I wanted to highlight. I'll be adding them to our Comprehensive Index of Posts and List of Contributors, but I also want to share them here.

David Lubar's topical and literary index is quite thorough and useful. Perfect for teachers to use with reluctant readers. Additionally, since the books are packed with short stories, they're perfect for identifying a terrific read aloud! Yes, there are anthropomorphic hot dogs on the covers, but they conceal a broad and deep variety of short fiction. Scroll down to find the perfect story for any classroom need.

Poems read aloud- wow, what a fabulous resource!

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

To me, one of more difficult things about being a reader is explaining why I didn't like a novel without sounding like a) a jerk, b) a passive-aggressive dweeb, or c) a small-minded fool. The rub is thus: You want to be discerning, without sounding douchey. But that's so much easier said than done. What follows is a tip sheet I've developed based on my own reading, and as a connoisseur of book reviews. I hope it'll help.

Text-dependent questions do not require information or evidence from outside the text or texts; they establish what follows and what does not follow from the text itself. Eighty to ninety percent of the Reading Standards in each grade require text-dependent analysis; accordingly, aligned curriculum materials should have a similar percentage of text dependent questions. When examining a complex text in depth, tasks should require careful scrutiny of the text and specific references to evidence from the text itself to support responses.