Beth McIntyre

2 weeks ago | slj.com | Kathy Ishizuka |Beth McIntyre

Author Dusti Bowling speaks with the Student Library Advisory Board during her visit. Photos courtesy of Todd Burleson Virginia found me at the back of our 126-year-old auditorium, where I was adjusting microphones for the upcoming presentation, surrounded by stately wooden chairs, fluted plaster columns, and a slanted floor that gave the space a quiet grandeur. Her eyes were wide with nervous energy.

2 weeks ago | slj.com | Todd Burleson |Kathy Ishizuka |Beth McIntyre

Award-winning author illustrators Julie Flett and Sophie Blackall sat down for a chat on the occasion of Children’s Book Week 2025. Flett created this year’s poster on the theme: “An Ocean of Stories,” and Blackall did the honors in 2024, illustrating “No Rules. Just Read.”Julie Flett is a Cree-Métis artist and an award-winning author and illustrator of books for children including Birdsong, We All Play, Let’s Go!, and others.

2 weeks ago | slj.com | Kathy Ishizuka |Beth McIntyre

Most organizations maintain social media accounts, and the U.S. government no exception. For its part, the federal Department of Education has a robust Facebook presence, with regular posts to the page’s 324,000 followers. But the real action of late has been in the comments. We ❤️ our librarians! #NationalLibrarianDay — read the DOE’s April 16 Facebook post, accompanied by a cheerful graphic (pictured).

3 weeks ago | slj.com | Amanda MacGregor |Beth McIntyre |Betsy Bird |Edith Campbell

It’s the perennial question of teachers, librarians, and parents alike: How do you get kids to read more over their summer break? Research has shown that kids’ favorite books—and the ones they’re most likely to finish—are the books that they choose themselves. Understanding this, publishers focus on fun books for summer reading. David Glover, marketing director at Flowerpot Press, believes it’s all about sparking curiosity. “Unless you get the curiosity going, the children won’t read it,” he says.

3 weeks ago | slj.com | Brigid Alverson |Beth McIntyre

This seems like ancient history now, but one of the things that cemented the popularity of manga was format. Publishers who first brought Japanese comics to the American market did a lot of experimenting. Some colorized them and segmented them into monthly comics, while others kept them black-and-white but flipped the comics so they read left-to-right and published them as expensive graphic novels, often with a larger trim size than what we are accustomed to now.