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Field Notes: I'm Dreaming of...Winter Reading!

Winter is only a few months away. At my library in a seaside community sixty miles south of Boston, one welcome distraction from the plummeting temperatures is our very own award program: the ­Quahog Book Award, named for the local mollusk. It encourages third-through sixth-grade children to read popular literature...

Field Notes: Teaching News Literacy

During the 2020–21 pandemic school year, I was one of two fully remote fourth-grade teachers in my school. We each taught the required disciplines: English language arts, math, social studies, and science. Given the reduced allotment for time on camera with students, the flexibility of focusing on additional topics was...

Field Notes: Beyond the "Hero's Journey": We Need Diverse Curricula

What were you required to read in tenth grade? Maybe you graduated many years ago, and you assume that since so much has changed in the larger cultural conversation, certainly high-school English would also have changed. So many good books have been published since then, you might think. But I...

Field Notes: I Gave My Life to Books: A Journey Through the World of Children's Literature

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Maurice Sendak once said, “As a child, I felt that books were holy objects, to be caressed, rapturously sniffed, and devotedly provided for. I gave my life to them.” That’s how I have always felt as a teacher and parent too. I began my teaching career in Newark, New Jersey,...

Field Notes: The Day the Book Banners Came for Us

When our head of youth services came up to me one Thursday afternoon this spring and said, “I want to show you something,” I thought it was going to be something normal for the mid-sized suburban public library I run in Henrietta, New York — like a clogged toilet or...

Field Notes: Teaching Flying Lessons & Other Stories

In a foreword to the paperback edition of the groundbreaking anthology Flying Lessons & Other Stories — edited by Ellen Oh, first published in 2017 in partnership with We Need Diverse Books, and dedicated to the late Walter Dean Myers — Christopher Myers writes, “Imagine…this book you are holding, Flying...

Field Notes: A Temporary Expert: Fact-Checking for the Horn Book

I worked for The Horn Book, Inc., in the early 2000s, back when the office was at 56 Roland Street in Charlestown, Massachusetts, near Sullivan Square. As I advanced from summer intern to editorial assistant and eventually associate editor, I had a variety of tasks to do, but one of...

Field Notes: Pandemic Diary: Bilingual Virtual Programming

Children’s literature has the unique ability to inspire a lifelong love of reading for children and their families. One of the books that shaped my own understanding of growing up biracial, as a Honduran American, was Arroz con leche: canciones y ritmos populares de América Latina / Rice with Milk:...

Field Notes: "But Are They Level O?": Leveled Reading and Antiracism

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Knoth reading to a kindergarten class in her school library. My search began with the most ordinary of questions. All school librarians will recognize the request: a teacher sent a weekend email needing book suggestions for her fourth graders — books that were well written, accessible, and of course, engaging....
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