Finding Our Way Back to Reading Joy: The 13th Annual #Bookaday Challenge by Donalyn Miller

May 16

How’s it going? A vast question often impossible to answer these days, I know. The pandemic lingers. The school year limps to an end. Teachers, caregivers, and kids are exhausted. In many families, the fear of COVID-19 remains because of their unvaccinated children or health-fragile family members. In Asian American communities, fear of racist harassment […]

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Reading or Not, Here We Go: A Social Distancing #Bookaday Challenge by Donalyn Miller

March 22

“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps greater.” —J.R.R. Tolkien   If you asked me three months ago what I would do if the world […]

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The 11th Annual #Bookaday Challenge

June 02

Like all readers, my reading life ebbs and flows. For every week I stay up until 2 am to finish Tomi Adeyemi’s 544-page epic fantasy tome, Children of Blood and Bone, I can point to weeks where I read almost nothing, but emails and Facebook posts. We don’t commit to reading once, we recommit every […]

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The Sixth Annual Book-a-Day Challenge

New guests to our house always say the same thing when walking into our living room for the first time, “Wow, you’ve got a lot of books.” With thirteen bookcases—most double-stacked—and a custom built-in wall unit crammed with books, the principal decorations at the Miller Ranch are book spines. Anna Quindlen said, “I would be […]

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The Fifth Annual #Bookaday Challenge

Every year, I prepare for summer with the same comforting rituals. I buy a pack of Goody black hair elastics and new flip flops. I write end-of-year notes to my students. I recheck my summer travel plans. And I publicly announce my intention to read a book for every day of summer break. This ambitious […]

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Summer #Bookaday Challenge

We all know that teachers who read are more effective at engaging their students with reading, but our school year demands often limit our reading time. Summer vacations give us an opportunity to recommit to reading, explore new books for our students, and dive into the books that we can’t find time to read during the […]

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The Little Challenge Sleeping Inside Me by Maria Mazas

April 01

FROM CHILDREN’S BOOK EDITOR TO AUTHOR I’d been working as a freelance editor for children’s book publishing houses … and dreaming about writing my own stories. At least, trying to write my own stories! I’d written different beginnings, but few endings. It’s easy to begin a story, much more difficult to finish! So, there was this little challenge sleeping […]

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A Recipe for Book Joy: Collaborative School & Public Library Author Visits by Eti Berland, Emily Day, Kelli Pilmer, Muffy Pinney & Alicia Wiechert

March 01

In Grace Lin’s best-selling nonfiction book, Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods, she shares that “every mouthful you eat from a Chinese take-out box was born of centuries of ingenuity, myths, and legend” (257). This groundbreaking book urges readers to recognize that our favorite dishes have fascinating and powerful origin […]

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Books That Make A Difference by Lorraine Radice, PhD

January 20

When the two big “new year” markers come around – a new school year in September and a new calendar year in January – I like to pause and reflect on the books that have made a difference in my heart and mind over the course of the year.  Much like special people or meaningful […]

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The 2023 Nerdies: Early Readers and Chapter Books Announced by Alyson Beecher

December 29

Have you ever tried to guess what books would make it to the Nerdies in a particular category? It can be hard. For the Early Readers and Chapter Book category, there was a time that would be very easy to guess possible titles. It seemed like the same authors and the same series were being […]

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