Celebrating 75 Years of Caldecott Medal Books

Each year the Caldecott Medal is awarded by American Library Association to "the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children." The award was named in honor o nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph J. Caldecott.

The past year marked the 75th Anniversary of the Caldecott Award and a celebration of distinguished picture books. The anniversary logo was designed by one of ASD's favorite author/illustrators, Brian Selznick. Our students love his books The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck. Many of you just may recognise that moon featured on the logo! What about the other characters in the logo?

The 2014 Caldecott Medal was awarded to Locomotive, illustrated by Brian Floca. Honor books included Journey, written and illustrated by Aaron Becker, Flora and the Flamingo, written and illustrated by Molly Idle and Mr. Wuffles! written and illustrated by David Wiesner. Click here to find out more about this year's winners.

We have most of the Caldecott winners in our Elementary Library. The winning pictures books are often enjoyed by both children and adults alike. Why not try to read as many as you can as a family? Perhaps you can discuss why each book deserves to be a winner? What do many of these books have in common? Come check out our collection currently on special display on the ground floor. We even have some fun bookmarks available for students who check out a Caldecott book!

Student Volunteers at the Library

We are very proud of our student volunteers in the Elementary Library. Every day of the week, we have several students who help out during our busy time after school from 3-4pm. The volunteers receive training in the library catalog, check out procedures and greeting visitors. These super students also work on ongoing library projects such as weeding books and organizing supplies. They assist students and parents in finding materials and even help close up the library at the end of the day.

Our team of student volunteers includes Sejal Mehta (3H), Mashal Shaikhani (4P), Shaden Shalab (4P), Jenna Badawi (4P), Rasha Haddad (4P), Noah Perry 4J, Grace Hofman (4B), Carson Crays (3M) and Lara Arekat  (4J). Thank you, volunteers, for all your hard work and for giving your time to help make our library a great place for our community!

Featured eBooks: StarWalk Kids Media

Have you tried StarWalk Kids Media? It's one of our newest ES Library ebook subscriptions. StarWalk allows students to read books on any browser or download the free app for your iPad. ASD students can login using our school username and password which can be found on the eResources page.

StarWalk Kids Media is a collection of hundreds of outstanding ebooks including the work of award winning authors such as Seymour Simon, Laura Vaccaro Seeger, Kathryn Lasky and many more. The collection is about 60 percent nonfiction and is appropriate for students from K1-Grade 8.

Here's a video tutorial that explain's how to use StarWalk Kids Media:

Using the StarWalk Kids Media eBook Collection from StarWalk Kids Media on Vimeo.

New titles are added to StarWalk every month. Here are some new titles added in March in celebration of Women's History Month:

Visit StarWalk Kids Media monthly newsletter for more information.

Book Review Gamis

We know that one of the best ways to discover a new book is through recommendations from our friends. ASD Elementary students have been posting book reviews in our library catalog through Destiny Quest. That way, when students search for a book in the catalog, they can see what other kids thought about it and decide if it may be a good reading choice.

Students in Grade 4 have been also reviewing books using an app called Tellagami. The free app allows students to create an animated avatar and record a 30-second video.

Check out some of these awesome reviews and stay tuned for more to come in the next few weeks! You can always download the app on your iPad at home, create a book review and share it with Ms. Pollock. We'll post the reviews on the ES Library website and on our blog!

Looking for Images? Check Out Image Quest, A New Database for Students

Our students are always looking for images on the the internet to use for school projects. Our Grade 1 students are creating Pic Collages about animals, our Grade 4 students published ebooks about an important event in history and our Grade 5 students are developing presentations on Native Americans.

We know that is it very important to ethically and responsibly use images, and all content for that matter, found on websites. Our students know that they can't just take an image without citing where it cam from. Using a Creative Commons search is one way students can ensure that the images they find are free for public use for creative work.

Britannica's Image Quest is a new alternative for students, offering access to around 3 million rights-cleared images from a variety of collections form around the world. Image Quest also provides clear citation information for all the images.

The link has been added to our Elementary eResources page and here is the link for your reference:

http://quest.eb.com/?login_view=true&id=asdubai

New Books

Come check out our new shipment of books! We have over 400 new titles appeal to every kind of reader. Here are a few books to look out for.

For our mystery lovers, we have a brand new set of the entire Nancy Drew and Hard Boys series. We also have the long awaited fourth book in Heroes in Training series, Hyperion and the Great Balls of Fire, as well as more copies of the first three books. Readers of the Emily Windsnap series will be happy to know that book five, The Land of the Midnight Sun, is here!

Some other sequels that are sure to please are The Return of the Homework Machine by Dan Gutman and the second book in the new Lemony Snicket series All the Wrong Questions, When Did You Last See Her?

Thanks to several student requests, we also have the Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life series and The Books of Elsewhere. Gary Paulsen fans will also want to check out Liar, Liar and several other new humorous, realistic fiction titles in this series. Also, due to it's popular demand, we have several new copies of A Long Walk to Water. Put your copy on hold today and you should get it within the week!