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3 weeks ago | 
slj.com | Betsy Bird |Kathy Ishizuka |Brooke Newberry |Rachel Payne
As board books continue to evolve, they’re cleverly expanding to meet the needs of readers even as they approach early school age. Board books are continuing to blossom in their nonfiction era. This roundup features a collection of fact-filled titles, offering a lot of nature exploration for our youngest readers. With developmentally appropriate text and interactive elements, these volumes provide early exposure to a rich vocabulary and a deeper understanding of the world.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
slj.com | Maegen Rose |Alexandra Cornejo |Rachel Payne |Andrea Lipinski
Throughlines is a free digital resource designed to foreground earlier concepts of race and racial development for high school and university students. URL www.throughlines.orgGrade Level Gr 10 UpCost FreeOverview Much of our contemporary understanding of race stems from 19th-century anthropological studies of racism.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
slj.com | Rachel Payne |Rachel S Mulligan |John Scott |Jessica Schriver
When librarian Cheryl Wolf meets new elementary students each fall, she teaches library etiquette with the help of visual aids that show what not to do. “What do you think happened?” she asks students, holding up a water-damaged book with wrinkly, warped pages. “What would you do to prevent this?”For the past 20 years, Wolf (pictured above) has served the Neighborhood School and STAR Academy, which share a building and library on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
slj.com | Kara Yorio |Rachel Payne |Laura Silver
Background illustration by Booblgum/Getty Images There is a new feeling of possibility in Philadelphia. Jean Darnell, the district’s new director of library science has arrived, along with an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant with a goal to bring school librarians back to Philly schools. The district denied SLJ’s request to interview Darnell, but in a Philadelphia Inquirer story, the former Texas school librarian spoke of the need to return robust libraries to her new city.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
slj.com | Rachel Payne |Kara Yorio |Laura Silver |Kathy Ishizuka
Teens dance on the library rooftop during Teen Takeover. Photos by Jonathan Blanc and Chae Kihn, NYPL It started in Fall 2021 as COVID-19 restrictions in New York City waned and the renovated Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL) in midtown Manhattan had been open a few months after a lengthy pandemic delay. Friday Fright Night was an all-ages Halloween event. Just the typical stuff during regular library hours—little kids in costume, teens handing out candy, fake spiderwebs everywhere.
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Oct 10, 2024 | 
slj.com | Maegen Rose |Rachel Payne |Andrea Lipinski |Darby Wallace
URL nyccivilrightshistory.orgGrade Level 9 UpCost FreeOverview Comprised of more than 120 primary sources, the New York City Civil Rights History Project (NYCCRHP) sheds a light on the history of educational activism in New York City. Conceived in 2019 by Teens Take Charge, a New York–based youth activist group, and in partnership with Teachers College-Columbia University, the NYCCRHP is a testament to the power of young learners organizing for justice in their education.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
slj.com | Kara Yorio |Rachel Payne |Laura Silver
The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath) and School Library Journal (SLJ) have announced a sixth cycle of a funding program aimed at getting literary fiction and nonfiction inspiring a love of math into the hands of K–12 students in Title I schools.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
slj.com | Betsy Diamant-Cohen |Rachel Payne |Kimberly Olson Fakih |John Scott
Celebrate the Jewish New Year by sharing these board and picture books. A Turkish Rosh Hashanah by Etan Basseri. illus. by Zeynep Özatalay. Kalaniot. ISBN 9781962011976. PreS-Gr 2–Three cousins in traditional Turkish garb meet their grandmother at a market in Istanbul to shop for food for Rosh Hashanah. Later that day, the family gathers at Nona’s house for the holiday, and Nona reinforces the meaning of each of the foods on their plates.
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Sep 28, 2024 | 
slj.com | Kathy Ishizuka |Kara Yorio |Rachel Payne |Laura Silver
A confession: there are way too many tabs open currently on my browser. I won’t cop to the number, but it’s a lot. There’s content that informs my perspective in addition to the work (OK, sometimes Wordle, too). Some of those tabs stay open and gnaw at me to share. One of them is a project created around a remarkable event. On August 21, 1939, five Black men entered the Alexandria (VA) Public Library and asked for a library card.
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Sep 17, 2024 | 
slj.com | SLJ Reviewers |Andrew Bauld |Rachel Payne
Banned Books Week is Sunday, September 22 through Saturday, September 28. As in recent years, there’s a sense of urgency to the annual event that was once about looking at censorship in the past and celebrating a freedom to read that was often taken for granted. With intellectual freedom under attack in so many communities across the country, Banned Books Week is now about raising awareness and inspiring action to push back against the continuing concerted censorship attempts.
