Vote for the Iowa Library Associations Book Awards!

Click here to vote for your favorite book from the Iowa Teen Award and Iowa High School Book Award nominees!

The Overprotected Kid

The Atlantic's recent cover story is called "The Overprotected Kid," and it questions whether parents are harming their kids by protecting them from failure and not allowing them to take risks.  How does this article relate to your own experience of being a kid?  Have you been over-protected?

What's with all these SAD books???

At some point in the year, my students always whined, "Ms. L, why is everything we read so SAD?"  Well, aside from the fact that I'm just one of those strange people who enjoys sad stories (they're so POWERFUL and they make me think about what it means to be human), here's an article from the New York Times Sunday Book Review that looks at happy books and sad books...

Spread the Word to End the Word

Today is an great chance to pledge to stop using the word "retarded" as an insult.  It's a day of awareness, a time to think about how the words we use affect others.  So please, be intentional when you speak, and visit www.r-word.org to add your name to the pledge!

Globalization: It's a small world after all!

Check out these articles about globalization in Asia, and join the conversation in the comments below!