Top 20 Books for our Library

Here's our latest top 20 checked out books!

	Diary of a wimpy kid : the last straw	Kinney, Jeff.
	The Grimm Legacy	Shulman, Polly.
	Just add water-- and scream!	Greenburg, Dan.
	Captain Underpants and the preposterous plight of the purple potty people : the eighth epic novel	Pilkey, Dav, 1966-
	Cupcake : a journey to special	Harper, Charise Mericle.
	The Hunger Games	Collins, Suzanne.
	Squirrel's world	Moser, Lisa.
	Ghosts! : ghostly tales from folklore	Schwartz, Alvin, 1927-
	How to draw incredible cars	Sautter, Aaron.
	How to speak dolphin in three easy lessons	Greenburg, Dan.
	My teacher ate my homework	Greenburg, Dan.
	The twister trap	Dahl, Michael.
	The class election from the Black Lagoon	Thaler, Mike, 1936-
	The creeping bookends	Dahl, Michael.
	Day of the Dragon King	Osborne, Mary Pope.
	A house is a house for me	Hoberman, Mary Ann.
	How to draw ferocious dinosaurs	Sautter, Aaron.
	How to draw manga warriors	Sautter, Aaron.
	It's Justin Time, Amber Brown	Danziger, Paula, 1944-
	Junie B. Jones smells something fishy	Park, Barbara.

ALA Awards! 2013

The American Library Association had their awards yesterday and here are the winners!

Newbery Winner - "The One and Only Ivan"







Caldecott Winner - "This Is Not My Hat"

Click here to read an article from the LA Times about who won the other awards!

60 Second Recap - Book Reviews on YouTube

I found this fun channel on YouTube today while looking for book trailers to show one set of classes.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ThePickoftheWeek/videos?view=0

While I do not agree with all of her reviews (not that I even watched them all), I love her perspective.

Here's one that I picked to feature reviewing "The One and Only Ivan" since it just won the Newbery Award  this morning!  

#FWTC2013 - Building Your PLN with Twitter and RSS Feeds

So, tomorrow is the big day - FWISD's Tech Conference.

For you very lucky people in the class, here's the link to the PowerPoint with all the resources on it!

Building Your PLN with Twitter and RSS Feed PPT

Paper Crafts - Maker Spaces

Here's a little shot of our Maker Space.  Yes, our maker space is a very small spot on the wall, again, because we are in such a small space.  I had a few papercrafts earlier this year and I had some students see them and ask if they could make some too.  The demand grew and that's where my little hanging paper craft maker space came in.  Zombies are very popular as you can see by the photo.

Hey Girl! A Valentines Day Door for the Library!

I made a "Hey Girl!" door for the library for Valentine's Day. Thanks and a shout out to http://queenofthestacks.blogspot.com/ also Queen of the FW Libraries, imho.  She shared her pics and idea with me and I ran with it.

Top 20 Books Checked Out from the last 30 days!

Nothing too surprising, on this list.  Here's our top 20 check outs over the last 30 days.

Diary of a wimpy kid : the last straw

The Hunger Games

A house is a house for me

How to speak dolphin in three easy lessons

It's Justin Time, Amber Brown

The twister trap

Beastly tales : Yeti, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster

Captain Underpants and the preposterous plight of the purple potty people : the eighth epic novel

The class election from the Black Lagoon

The Grimm Legacy

How to draw grotesque monsters

How to draw incredible cars

How to draw manga warriors

Just add water-- and scream!

The librarian from the Black Lagoon

Poison pages

The pout-pout fish

Strega Nona takes a vacation

Tap dancing on the roof : sijo (poems)

Traction Man meets Turbodog

January's Spot Light Book - Redwall Series

I have a spotlight book of the month that I share with my students.  I put a poster in the hallway showing the book (or series) and a little synopsis about it.  This month is the Redwall series.  In the past it's been hit and miss with this series, but right now it seems to be picking up, especially with my boys.

Here are some hopefully, helpful links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwall
http://www.redwall.org/
http://redwall.wikia.com/wiki/Redwall_Wiki

First Post

Welcome to my blog about what's going down at my middle school library.  We have a small library, but my students love to read and love taking part of Accelerated Reader.  We have twelve computers in our small (classroom size) library and about 6500 books.  We circulate usually 2-3K per month.  Some of our most popular books right now are Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Franny K. Stein, the Rangers Apprentice series, the Clique series, and anything Rick Riordan.  Our most popular game right now is Trouble Tank (or some version of that game).  Papercrafts are also a thing that seems to be a hit this year in our library.