Highlights from the Random House Children's Book Summer Preview

By: Dacel Casey
Trevor Day School

Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang
Publish Date: May 15

A hilarious picture book about dealing with unexplained feelings…and the danger in suppressing them! Jim the chimpanzee is in a terrible mood for no good reason. His friends can’t understand it—how can he be in a bad mood when it’s SUCH a beautiful day? They encourage him not to hunch, to smile, and to do things that make THEM happy. But Jim can’t take all the advice…and has a BIT of a meltdown. Could it be that he just needs a day to feel grumpy? Suzanne and Max Lang bring hilarity and levity to this very important lesson. This picture book is an excellent case study in the dangers of putting on a happy face and demonstrates to kids that they are allowed to feel their feelings (though they should be careful of hurting others in the process!).

HVLA Spring Meeting 2018

By: Celia Dillon
The Brearley School 



HVLA’s Spring Meeting was a hands-on workshop about ‘zines hosted at the Drawing Center in SoHo. Attendees were led by five experts who guided us through the process of making a zine and shared with us tips for how to teach with zines. Our experts were zine-maker and CUNY librarian Elvis Bakaitis, #blkgrlswurld ZINE creator Christina Long, book artist and professor Esther K. Smith,  Kat Fajardo, and Aya Kakeda. Librarians of all experience levels were in attendance, ranging from complete newbies to librarians who were already teaching graphic storytelling units or leading zine making groups with students. 

HVLA is All About Zines This Spring!

By Leigh Hurwitz Brooklyn Public Library

In April, I will have the privilege of leading the inaugural session of Zine Mania!, a zine-making workshop series, created by Maria Falgoust, HVLA Vice President and Librarian at the 
International School of Brooklyn (ISB), where the series is being held.  ISB students will be able to participate in any or all of five sessions focusing on various aspects of zine creation: Sara Varon (printmaker, illustrator, author) will demonstrate how to make accordion zines; Eliseo Rivera (educator, artist) will show students the art of photo collage zines; Esther K. Smith (artist, designer, author) will take a deeper dive into zine construction and bookmaking; Elvis Bakaitis (librarian, cartoonist, zine author) will focus on autobiographical and biographical zines; and Ayde Rayas (artist, educator, Licensed Creative Art Therapist), along with her students from Cooke Academy, will collaborate with ISB students to make zines. 

An Interview with Angela Carstensen, Printz Committee Chair

By Maria Falgoust

International School of Brooklyn

Angela, I was so happy to see your name as a Printz committee member! Inquiring minds want to know, how did you find yourself on the committee? Was it something you dreamed of doing?

I have wanted to be on the Printz Award committee ever since I attended the very first Printz Award Program, which took place at the 2000 ALA Annual conference. The winning authors that year--Walter Dean Myers, Laurie Halse Anderson, David Almond, and Ellen Wittlinger--were all incredibly passionate and well-spoken. Many of Michael Printz’s friends and colleagues seemed to be in attendance. It was an emotional and thrilling event.

Years passed. I served on the Alex Awards and several YALSA process committees and task forces, and chaired the first YALSA Nonfiction Award before starting the SLJ Adult Books 4 Teens blog which necessitated taking a break from book committees. Then I was asked to chair the YALSA Awards Oversight Committee in 2016. Volunteering my time on that process committee was a great way to get back into serving YALSA. When Sarah Hill became president of YALSA, she asked me to chair Printz. We had served on the Alex Awards together, she wrote reviews for AB4T and then took over as co-editor after I left. I suppose she knew she could trust me to lead the committee well.

Demystifying the Internet

By: Briar Sauro and Camille Harrison

Berkeley Carroll

A few years ago, we realized that our Lower Schoolers (and colleagues) took the internet for granted and had no idea that it was an actual physical thing - not magic. We know how important it is to raise people who question the world around them for deep understanding and clarity. Plus we were tired of their constant misuse of all tech vocabulary (“I was hacked!” “It’s glitching!”)! We set out to work on technology knowledge and vocabulary as part of our regular social studies and research lessons. What is the internet? What is the Cloud? How does Google actually work? Our goal is to create responsible citizens who use information efficiently and ethically; understanding how the internet works is an integral part of that.

NEIT Conference Recap

By: Celia Dillon
The Brearley School

*If anyone is interested in hearing more about the sessions mentioned below feel free to reach out to me at cdillon@brearley.org and I'd be happy to share my notes!

On January 24, 25, and 26th I went to the New York Association of Independent Schools Education and Technology (NEIT) Conference as a first time attendee. The conference uses an unconference model to bring together librarians and technologists. With the unconference model, there was a planning meeting where anyone could pitch a suggestion for an open space session and other attendees could choose which open space session they wanted to attend, feeling free to move between different sessions in the time time slot. Having colleagues lead sessions gave the conference a welcome conversational feeling of collaboration and brainstorming, that differed from a traditional conference where information is shared in a one way manner. It also meant the conference a was a collection practitioners addressing practical questions in real time. There was more than one pitch that started with “I’ve noticed something at my school and wanted to see what other schools are doing to address this.”

Interview with Lisa Greenwald

HVLA librarians wear many hats, including the hat of published author. Check out Rhonda Rigrodsky's interview with Lisa Greenwald, an HVLA librarian and author of new book TBH This Is So Awkward. 

Lisa Greenwald has been my colleague at The Birch Wathen Lenox School for twelve years. She’s a HVLA member and tween author of 10 books. Lisa’s most recent, TBH This is so Awkward was released in January.

RR: Where did you get the idea for TBH?

LG: I actually got the idea from an HVLA listserv post. A colleague posted that she was looking for books that were similar in format to TTYL (Myracle) but were more appropriate for younger students. I knew I HAD to write TBH. While I was working on it, my 6th grade Library students helped me with the texting lingo.