2014 Washington Library Media Association (WLMA) Conference

I had a won­der­ful time pre­sent­ing with Mary Cronk Far­rell at the 2014 WLMA Con­fer­ence last Sat­ur­day! The title of our talk was “Fos­ter­ing 21st Cen­tu­ry Learn­ing with Today’s Non­fic­tion,” and we deliv­ered it to a room over­flow­ing with teacher/librarians (aren’t t/l’s the best!?) who were look­ing for new ideas and book recommendations.

Mary sharing BRAVE GIRL
Mary shar­ing BRAVE GIRL

Our pre­sen­ta­tion dis­cussed how much of the non­fic­tion being pub­lished now is so much more than “just” its sub­ject. There are inno­v­a­tive for­mats, emo­tion­al­ly-charged sto­ries, cross-dis­ci­pline explo­rations, etc. A just-the-facts approach sim­ply won’t be pub­lished these days, as kids have easy access to infor­ma­tion in a vari­ety of for­mats AND are faced with so many options com­pet­ing for their atten­tion. This makes non­fic­tion a par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pelling choice for stu­dents in and out of the class­room or library setting.
Mary presentingMary and I took turns shar­ing some of our favorite recent non­fic­tion titles–including Mary’s PURE GRIT and my BE A CHANGEMAKER and EMMANUEL’S DREAM– and how we felt they could be used in the library or class­room to achieve mul­ti­ple learn­ing goals simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, includ­ing cov­er­ing core cur­ricu­lum sub­jects, social-emo­tion­al learn­ing, prob­lem solv­ing and crit­i­cal think­ing, cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion, infor­ma­tion and media lit­er­a­cy, and tech­nol­o­gy skills. We got the librar­i­ans talk­ing to us and to each oth­er, and we even had them try out some exer­cis­es they might use with their stu­dents. (Let me tell you, those librar­i­ans can write, too!)
Since sev­er­al atten­dees asked for our slides, here is the deck we used in our talk, and, since we ran out of hand­outs due to the over­whelm­ing atten­dance, here is the hand­out that we passed out with the list of books referenced.
Speaker goodie cup
Speak­er good­ie cup!
Thanks so much for hav­ing us, WLMA! Thanks so much for the book love and ded­i­ca­tion you put into your work each and every day, teacher/librarians! And, thanks, Mary, for being such a great co-pre­sen­ter and mak­ing every­thing easy!
My dog, Prim
My dog, Prim, catch­ing up on some lap time
Of course, no mat­ter how much fun I have speak­ing at con­fer­ences like this, it’s always good to be home again.

Interview with Mary Cronk Farrell, author of PURE GRIT

PURE GRIT book cover

I have a con­fes­sion to make. Nor­mal­ly I read every book before I post about it here, but–just this once–I was going to cheat. As much as I’ve been dying to read PURE GRIT by Mary Cronk Far­rell, my to-do list is huge right now: writ­ing new books (I’m cur­rent­ly work­ing on EIGHT sep­a­rate man­u­scripts and/or pro­pos­als!), pro­mot­ing BE A CHANGEMAKER, vol­un­teer projects (SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton con­fer­ence any­one? There are still a few spaces!), cri­tiques (three full-length nov­els await!), fam­i­ly, pets, home… and let’s not for­get, TAXES! To top it off, I was still recov­er­ing from the flu when I came down with this most recent cold. I’m months behind on a few things, with many oth­er dead­lines loom­ing dead ahead. So, I sat down plan­ning to just skim it for the time being, write the post, and come back lat­er when I had time to set­tle in, read it in more detail, and take it all in.

PURE GRIT book cover
PURE GRIT book cover

Read more

NEWSLETTER
SIGN-UP