Posted in Reading and Literacy on Jul 13th, 2010 No Comments »
Morse Pond School in Falmouth, MA has an annual “Battle of the Books” among its fifth and sixth grade students each year. Super school librarian, Liz Abbott, chooses a list of 25 books that the students can start reading over the summer. The kids form into teams in September (four or five students per team) and [...]
Posted in Book Promotion, Reading and Literacy on Apr 30th, 2010 No Comments »
What do a children’s author, Hartford school librarians, and a brewing company have in common?
We all share a desire to motivate kids to read!
I promote my books with free visits to schools throughout New England. I create a win-win for the schools and myself by offering an educational and inspirational program to students at no [...]
Posted in General Thoughts, Reading and Literacy on Apr 16th, 2010 No Comments »
In 2007 the National Endowment of the Arts wrote that only one out of five 17-year-olds (only 22%) read books for pleasure. This, in my mind, is a teen reading crisis. While high school reading lists endeavor to stretch students with thoughtful, challenging books, this isn’t pleasurable reading for a lot of teens. And these [...]
Posted in Book Promotion, Reading and Literacy on Mar 4th, 2010 No Comments »
On January 26 this year I visited two elementary schools in Hartford, CT. These are inner-city schools without the funding for outside programs, and I would venture that none of the students had ever seen a live author before. Visits to poor urban and rural schools rarely cover my gas expense, because the students can’t [...]
Posted in Book Promotion, Reading and Literacy on Nov 6th, 2009 No Comments »
Here’s another Web post that I missed at the time it was made. The American Booksellers’ Association, or ABA, featured me in their weekly newsletter, Bookselling This Week, back in July.
Author Wins IndieBound Points Contest
July 22, 2009
To mark its first anniversary, IndieBound has drawn a winner for the IndieBound.org points contest — Julie Hahnke [...]
Posted in General Thoughts, Reading and Literacy on Nov 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
With dozens of upcoming school visits competing for my time while I finish the sequel to The Grey Ghost, I’ve once again neglected my blog. I’m traveling to schools on Cape Cod tomorrow and was sorting out my agenda this afternoon when I stumbled across this blog post from Children’s Librarian, Karen Arnold, at the Falmouth Public [...]
Posted in Reading and Literacy on Sep 18th, 2009 No Comments »
I’d like to introduce a new buzzword for educators: let’s strive for “sustainable learning” in our schools. For too long, our schools have driven curriculum around student test performance and rigid testing requirements have frustrated our teachers. Yes, we need to measure the success of student learning so that we don’t leave any kids behind. But [...]
Posted in General Thoughts, Reading and Literacy on Sep 10th, 2009 No Comments »
I’ve been very fortunate these last several months to get to know author and illustrator Peter Reynolds, his family, his bookstore The Blue Bunny, and his magicilicious company Fablevision.
I’m writing this on the eve of September 11th. I have a remembrance I want to share about 9/11 from several years ago. But that’s tomorrow’s post. I [...]
Posted in Book Promotion, Getting Published, Reading and Literacy on Aug 25th, 2009 No Comments »
Once again the summer has rushed by at high speed! And as I’ve said before, when things get busy blogs get neglected. Those silly luna moths certainly required a lot of care, but it was because I had so darned many. What was I thinking when I ordered 120 eggs? About three weeks after they [...]
Posted in Getting Published, Reading and Literacy on Mar 13th, 2009 No Comments »
A lot of thought went into how The Grey Ghost would make use of illustration. I wanted to bend the rules of traditional illustration and not simply repeat with a picture something the text had already stated. I wanted the pictures to actually tell the story at times. I also wanted them to be more representational and [...]