It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 3-31-2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is weekly challenge begun by Sheila at Book Journey to blog about the books readers enjoy each week.  For some wonderful reading suggestions, please visit Teacher Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers, who took Sheila's It's Monday! What are You Reading? challenge and gave it a kid lit twist.

Edgy Presentation Slides & Other Nifty Stuff with ScrapPad for iPads

I've been getting tired of the same old look of presentation slides even though I try to use a variety of presentation programs and apps - HaikuDeck, PowerPoint, and Google Presentation. Since I'm not a graphic design artist by any means, I really needed to look for some creative "cheats" to solve my dilemma. My solution: the ScrapPad app  by Album tArt, LLC. Yes, this app's intended use is digital scrapbooking but I won't let that stop me!

Q & A with The Ninja Librarians author Jen Swann Downey

That's the official book cover for Jen Swann Downey's debut novel, The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand which is set for release on April 15th. I've been waiting for this release since December when I read the galley. The wait has been driving. me. nuts. 

Thankfully, I was invited to become a part of the Ninja Librarians Recon Team, and that's helped me deal with the very long wait for the book's release. As part of my recon assignment, I approached Jen about answering a few questions about the book. Be sure to read through to the end of the Q&A for a sneak peek at the first chapter of The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand.

Tweetroot -- Word Cloud App for Twitter

Tweetroot App Icon

As I was looking around for word cloud apps to add to my iPad a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across this little cutie. Tweetroot (@TweetrootApp on Twitter) is a free iPad app that allows you to search Twitter by username, hashtag or mentions and create word clouds based on the result of your search. 

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 3-17-2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is weekly challenge begun by Sheila at Book Journey to blog about the books readers enjoy each week.  For some wonderful reading suggestions, please visit Teacher Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers, who took Sheila's It's Monday! What are You Reading? challenge and gave it a kid lit twist.

Three E-book Publishing Apps for Parents and Teachers

I've been working on a project with 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders in the library over the past couple of weeks. We are trying to make and publish our own e-books based on Doreen Cronin's Diary series. We've read Diary of a Fly, Diary of a Worm, and Diary of a Spider. We've talked about point-of-view and compared how life must be to a fly, a worm, and a spider compared to our lives. Then classes voted on which animal they wanted to write a book, and whichever animal had the most votes won. That was the easy part....

Book Trailer for The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand by Jen Swann Downey

Back in December, I wrote a review for The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand by debut author Jen Swann Downey. When I shared my review on Twitter, I mentioned the author in my tweet. The tweet grabbed her attention, and Jen and I started communicating. At one point I asked whether she had considered making a book trailer. Meanwhile, I was secretly dying to make one myself because I loved the book that much. I tried not making one but I wasn't very successful. I made the first version of the book trailer, then shared it with Jen.

What started out as my own little pet project to share with my students to encourage them to read The Ninja Librarians unexpectedly turned into a collaborative project with the author herself. I know without a doubt that if anyone asked whether she deserves any credit for this book trailer, Jen would say, "No, it was all Monica." Because she's just that humble. In all honesty, Jen provided insight and a fresh set of eyes that made the book trailer even more appealing to young readers.

This has to be the coolest experience I've ever had as a librarian.

I'd also like to mention the music used in this book trailer. The song is "Restless Sea" by Indie rock band Windsor Drive. If you enjoy the music, you might want to check out the entire song on SoundCloud, then buy a copy of the song. I purchased it for $.99 on iTunes.

Without further ado, here's the book trailer for The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand.

The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand is set to be released April 15, 2014. You can follow Windor Drive on Twitter at @WindsorDrive . Jen Swann Downey is also on Twitter at @jenswanndowney. 

Why Flipping Instruction in Elementary Libraries Makes Sense

Librarians at the elementary level often have several classes a day that require a lesson, help with finding books, checking out, taking Accelerated Reader quizzes, etc. On top of that, librarians fulfill their roles as technologists, program administrators, student advocates, collection development experts, and so on. Librarians at the elementary level often feel overwhelmed with all these responsibilities. If anyone needs to be able to clone oneself, it would be an elementary school librarian.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 3-3-2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is weekly challenge begun by Sheila at Book Journey to blog about the books readers enjoy each week.  For some wonderful reading suggestions, please visit Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers, who took Sheila's It's Monday! What are You Reading? challenge and gave it a kid lit twist.

As someone who grew up painfully shy, I love reading books that have strong, independent female characters. I happily found several books featuring such main characters in my selected readings over the past week. 

Book Review: Thirty Sunsets by Christine Hurley Deriso

Flux
Expected publication: July 2014

Genre: Realistic Fiction, Young Adult

Forrest Shepherd is a sixteen-year-old girl wrapping up the last few weeks of her sophomore year. She is smart and witty. She seems confident in her own skin. And she's majorly crushing on a senior guy who barely notices she's alive. But the biggest challenge in Forrest's life is her nemesis - her brother's high maintenance, cheerleader girlfriend, Olivia.

Before Olivia, Brian had big plans. He wanted to go to Vanderbilt and study medicine. After Olivia, Brian throws away his acceptance letter to Vanderbilt and settles for the local community college so he can stay close to Olivia. Being very protective of her brother and his future, Forrest absolutely rues the hold Olivia has over her brother, who has made it clear that if he is forced to choose, he would choose Olivia over his own family. Forrest and her mother struggle to hide their disgust for Olivia in order to maintain a relationship with Brian.