Category: fantasy

• No, really, let kids choose what they read

  

  In case you need something to tide you over while you wait for your copy of Reading Unbound to arrive, here are some more quotes about why we need to let kids choose what they read. We want to help our students fall in love with books in ways that foster a life-long devotion to…

  Miss Julie

  July 16, 2016

  authors, awesomeness, be the best you can be, bibliotherapy, books, early literacy, easy readers, fantasy, folk & fairy tales, graphic, J fiction, kidlit, kids, librarians…for TEENS!, librarians…for the CHILDREN!, middle grade, OPINIONS!, personal experience, publishing, reader's advisory, reading, reading programs, summer reading, teens

  books, education, librarian, librarians, libraries, youth services

• Why Kids Need to Read What They Want

  

  In the most recent edition of Cover to Cover by K.T. Horning, there are no early childhood, middle grade, or ya distinctions in books for children. Encompassing fiction and nonfiction, the breakdown is: Picture books (including board books) Readers/Beginning Readers/Easy Readers Transitional books Chapter books That’s it. We have those formats, and within those formats, every genre is…

  Miss Julie

  July 14, 2016

  awesomeness, be the best you can be, books, early literacy, easy readers, families, fantasy, folk & fairy tales, graphic, historical fiction, kidlit, kids, librarians…for TEENS!, librarians…for the CHILDREN!, libraries now!, literacy, marketing, middle grade, nonfiction, OPINIONS!, personal experience, picture books, professional development, random, reader's advisory, reading, reading programs, school libraries, schools, scifi, summer reading, ya lit

  advocacy, books, community, education, gaming, librarian, librarians, libraries, library, literature, outreach, youth librarians, youth services

• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

  In 2012, A Wrinkle in Time will be fifty years old, and I’ll be one of many people celebrating this marvelous, mind-bending, heart opening piece of children’s literature. It’s been a dark and stormy week here in a Chicago, which makes it a perfect time to reminisce about this, one of my favorite books of…

  Miss Julie

  September 29, 2011

  backlistbeauties, be the best you can be, bibliotherapy, books, fantasy, fathers, J fiction, kidlit, librarians…for the CHILDREN!, personal experience, publishing, reading, reviews, scifi, weirdnesss for the sake of weirdness

• hark! an arc!

  I’ve come into possession of several ARCs recently, and normally I don’t give a frak about that kind of thing, and book-bragging fills me with an inexplicable rage, but I really have liked these books so Imma gonna tell you about ’em. However, I don’t do synopses because they bore me, that’s what we have…

  Miss Julie

  July 12, 2011

  awesomeness, covers, fantasy, largely unsubstantiated, Librarians, middle grade, OPINIONS!, publishing, reviews, weirdnesss for the sake of weirdness, ya lit

• boundtracks: any which wall & “summer evening”

  Boundtracks, a music and book pairing for multi-media enjoyment: “Summer Evening” written by Greg Brown, performed by Gillian Welch* “On a summer evenin’ when the corn’s head-high,/ And there’s more lightnin’ bugs than stars in the sky. Ah, you get the feelin’ things may be alright,/ On a summer evenin’ before the dark of night.”…

  Miss Julie

  April 20, 2011

  authors, books, fantasy, J fiction, kidlit, music, reading

• an open letter to Stephen King

  aka Uncle Stevie. Dear Mr. King, One cold, dark night in my twelfth year, I had nothing left to read. I’d read through all of my own books, all of my assigned reading for school, and all of my father’s back issues of Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Desperate for a…

  Miss Julie

  March 10, 2011

  authors, bibliotherapy, fantasy, OPINIONS!, personal experience, reading

• Tales of the Madman Underground: a love letter

  I fall in love with books the same way I fall in love with people– deeply, unabashedly and without any pretense of dignity. This post is a love letter, and like the gushing of any girl newly in love, it may ramble here and there, but I hope you’ll indulge me. One book that I…

  Miss Julie

  February 7, 2011

  authors, bibliotherapy, books, censorship, ethics, fantasy, historical fiction, OPINIONS!, personal experience, reading, reviews, stories, ya lit

• backlist beauties: One for the Morning Glory

  One for the Morning Glory by John Barnes. It was 1996 or 1997  and I was in the Hallmark Waldenbooks in Clinton, Ia, with my mother and most likely my sister. Even though our small family farm never brought in a sizeable or steady income, one thing my mother always allowed us to buy was…

  Miss Julie

  May 11, 2010

  authors, awesomeness, backlistbeauties, books, fantasy, folk & fairy tales, personal experience, reading, reviews

• (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

  That line, from Whitman’s “Song of Myself“, popped into my head as soon as I finished reading James Kennedy’s The Order of Odd-Fish, which I shall be reviewing forthwith. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I have met James Kennedy. We were both standing beside the treacle well. I was drawing treacle; he was drawing…

  Miss Julie

  March 24, 2010

  authors, books, fantasy, OPINIONS!, reviews, weirdnesss for the sake of weirdness, ya lit

• 30 Years of IMAGINATION

  *cue the theramin, followed by the pounding of hoofbeats* Good golly, sci-fi and fantasy are my favorite genres as a reader, which is the main reason I wanted to attend the Children’s Literature Conference at NIU this year, seeing as their theme was all about science fiction and fantasy. Thursday evening the speaker was Tamora…

  Miss Julie

  March 18, 2010

  conferences, fantasy, Librarians, librarians…for the CHILDREN!, picture books, professional development, scifi