Every year, a Monday in late January is awards’ day for librarians, publishers, authors, illustrators, and readers. For us, it’s as big as the Grammy’s, the Emmy’s, and the Oscar’s because it’s the announcement by the American Library Association of their awards for children’s and young adult’s books. There were a number of outstanding books […]

Liberty Arrives!: How America’s Grandest Statue Found Her Home by Robert Byrd (Dial) When I discover a subject good enough, I will honor that subject by building the tallest statue in the world. Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi In his Author’s Note, Robert Byrd states that he had never seen the Statue of Liberty before he began to […]

Our school celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy with a day of service. It is always a challenge to explain the events that surrounded his life and death to students of different ages. The middle school students examine the injustices in our society. Our younger children grasp that he was a great man who fought […]

The Crayon Man by Natascha Biebo, illustrated by Steven Salerno (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Edwin Binney (1866-1934) was an inventor and businessman who also happened to be intrigued by color. He and his cousin, C. Harold Smith started the company, Binney and Smith. They created dustless white chalk and a carbon black that was used in […]