Children's Book Week

If you are interested in celebrating Children’s Book Week, you have just over a week to go. What is Children’s Book Week? Children’s Book Week is sponsored by The Children’s Book Council, an organization dedicated to promoting children’s literature. It used to be that you paid a onetime fee and then would receive a booklet four times a year with author information, plus a wonderful section where you could write for promotional materials such as bookmarks, postcards, posters, teaching guides, and other free items. All you paid was the postage for them. I am not sure if they do this any longer, but if I find out they do, I will let you know.

This year Children’s Book Week is May 12 - 18. You can go to the website and see loads of ideas for celebrating. Don’t be overwhelmed, but just pick one or two that you like and ignore the rest. Here is what my school will be doing this year.

I have an author coming for a small group presentation to the 3rd and 4th graders. (I got really lucky here. Sandy Zaugg lives in the Portland area now and called to see if she could do an author visit. She came to our school a few years ago and gave a talk to our school, so it will be nice to have her visit again for a small group.)

We will have a Read-In for an assembly period. The students will bring a pillow from home if they like and settle down with books to read for about 10 – 15 minutes. All books will be checked by the classroom teachers before they come to assembly to make sure the books are suitable for our school. I would like to go longer, but we have a limited time period, so I am not sure if we will have time to last longer than 15 minutes.

Each classroom will decorate their classroom door to promote children’s literature. Some classrooms may assign a small group to do the decorating, or they may choose to do it as a class. That will be at the discretion of the teachers themselves. The students will go in groups to visit each door as part of another school assembly and will evaluate the doors according to attractiveness and neatness. Since we have fifteen classroom doors, it will take a little while.

Take a look at the website and see if you are interested in celebrating Children’s Book Week this year, too.

www.bookweekonline.com

Also, check my blog (sdalibrarian.blogspot.com) for previous questions and information.
Have a good week and weekend!
Audrey