I walked out of the library and passed One Boy to the resident first grader sitting in the backseat who, in his mind, has become quite a bo...

Piggie and Gerald are ready for an outside adventure. Will they run? Will they skip? Will they jump? Yes, yes, and yes! “NOTHING CAN STOP US...

No doubt you've already learned who the 2009 winners are, but here some of my initial thoughts on this morning's Newbery announcemen...

What kid hasn’t wondered how life would change if a certain teacher would just disappear? Especially if that teacher is like Bunny Starch? M...

I love reading books about familiar places. I once lived in St. Paul, and Julia Gillian lives in south Minneapolis. That’s like the same th...

"Once there was a pencil, a lonely little pencil, and nothing else." The Pencil is the story of what that lonely little pencil de...

One year ago today Help Readers Love Reading! found its home on the web. Okay, not really, not one year to the day exactly. Last January we ...

Who knew? Who knew that a life of sleeping all day, staying up all night, feasting on bugs, and fluttering and swooping and soaring in the n...

Birthdays don't sneak up on anybody. Whether they are either eagerly anticipated or grudgingly accepted, we know they are coming. But th...

New column in the local paper today, all about my favorite part of Christmas break. Closets' purpose differs for children OR Printa...

When Jane realizes, finally, at age twelve, that she can pray, she decides to get busy. She prays for a hundred adventures, and wonders if u...

After disasters, droughts and storms, fires, rising seas, and the resulting war for what little remained, this futuristic North America beca...

Back on August 4, as part of a Newbery preview post , I made an offhanded comment about the cover of The Underneath . Something about jowly ...

It's been a few months since I wrote my initial posts concerning the upcoming 2009 Newbery, and, well, there's been a little (a lit...

Everyone wants a second chance at something. Students like second chances at assignments, teachers like second chances with lessons, and I...

After returning home for the school year, Percy Jackson finds himself at Meriwether College Prep, another new school, with a hulking new cla...

I always thought squirrels were smarter than your average mammal. They are resourceful, sneaky, and creative. (Never mind that they occasion...

The Great Cow Race (Book #2) The Spring Fair brings people from far and wide to Barrelhaven, especially for the highly anticipated, and hig...

The Bone books are a nine book series following the life of Fone Bone and his two cousins, Smiley Bone and Phoncible P. (Phoney) Bone, afte...

When Claudia runs away from home, she does so with careful preparation, even to the point of making sure she's not "running away...

“A president has many duties,” begins Madam President . What follows is a day in the life of the president, illustrated through the life of ...

Being from Wisconsin, and having shoveled four times already, with another shoveling forecast for the near future, it's hard for me to u...

After writing this column I had two thoughts. First, this boy (and others like him) are on their way into our classrooms in the not to dista...

Picking up immediately where The Maze of Bones left off, Amy and Dan Cahill, their au pair, Nellie, and Grace’s fastidious feline, Saladan,...