Tag Archives: Donalyn Miller

December 31

THE 2022 NERDIES: LONG FORM NONFICTION ANNOUNCED BY DONALYN MILLER

This year’s winners of the 2022 Nerdy Book Club Awards for Long Form Nonfiction take young people from botany to basketball–increasing their awareness and appreciation of our interconnected world and our shared and diverse experiences. Congratulations to the authors, illustrators, and publishers of these outstanding nonfiction books! Thank you to everyone who took the time […]

December 27

THE 2022 NERDIES: NONFICTION PICTURE BOOKS ANNOUNCED BY DONALYN MILLER

Congratulations to the authors, illustrators, and publishers of these outstanding nonfiction picture books. Selected by teachers, librarians, and families, this list opens up the world for kids, expands their understanding of the past and present, and helps them create a more inclusive and interconnected future for all living things. Thank you to everyone who took […]

December 15

It’s Time for the Nerdies! Nominate Your 2022 Favorites! by Donalyn Miller

If you’ve been reading the Nerdy blog for a long time, or you have read some of our Nerdversary posts, you may recall that this blog began in a bar at the 2011 NCTE Conference in Chicago. Colby Sharp and I met in person at that conference after co-hosting #titletalk for months on Twitter. At […]

December 02

Our Eleventh Nerdversary: Where Have All the Nerdy Readers Gone? by Donalyn Miller

I don’t ask people, “How’s it going?” anymore. The pre-pandemic response, a reflexive, “It’s fine,” doesn’t really cut it these days. People have something to say about how it’s really going. No one is fine.  The challenges of the past three years have carved us down. Parts are sharper. Parts are missing. Some parts are […]

February 13

Cover Reveal: The Joy of Reading by Donalyn Miller and Teri S. Lesesne

In my December Nerdversary post, I wrote about my dear friend, Teri Lesesne, and mentioned the two of us had been working on a book for seven years. I am heartbroken that Teri passed away last August and will not see the published book, but I am thrilled that The Joy of Reading is now […]

January 03

THE 2021 NERDIES: YOUNG ADULT FICTION (PART TWO) ANNOUNCED BY A CHAPTER OF NERDS

Today marks the end of the 2021 Nerdy Book Club Awards. Our final Nerdies’ post shares the second half of the Young Adult Fiction winners. Thank you to everyone who nominated books for this year’s awards and wrote announcement posts and reviews. We hope everyone found a few new books to read and share with […]

January 02

THE 2021 NERDIES: YOUNG ADULT FICTION (PART ONE) ANNOUNCED BY A CONVENTION OF NERDS

At this time of year, when “Best Books of 2021” lists pop up daily, we educators and community members cannot forget that it doesn’t matter which books win awards for best children’s and young adult literature if young people never see the books in their schools, libraries or homes. National efforts to censor books in […]

December 31

THE 2021 NERDIES: LONG FORM NONFICTION ANNOUNCED BY DONALYN MILLER

I’ll just admit it–I have probably learned more about history from the children’s and young adult literature I have read since leaving college than anything I learned as a student. Most of the history classes I took relied on filmstrips, textbooks, and lectures to deliver content–told predominately through the points of view of white people […]

December 30

THE 2021 NERDIES: POETRY AND NOVELS IN VERSE ANNOUNCED BY DONALYN MILLER

While many teachers and librarians enjoy sharing poetry with students, many of my middle school students claimed to detest poetry or actively avoided reading it over the years. For some, poetry was silly–like the Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky poems they remembered reading in elementary school. For others, poetry was hard to understand–like the “classic” […]

December 13

Nominations Open for the 11th Annual Nerdy Book Club Awards!

In the beginning, Nerdy Book Club was a community-driven book award blog, and we still hold the Nerdy Book Club Awards, the Nerdies, every winter. Each year’s list provides a snapshot of Nerdy Book Club readers and their reading communities’ highest recommendations. The Nerdies look like a handpicked children’s bookshelf—a current mix of genres, formats, voices, […]