Visiting Authors: Books Sales, Workshops and Parent Talk

Book Sales and Signing

The Elementary Library will have a limited selection of books by our visiting authors available for sale from March 4-8. We have several titles available by both Naomi Shihab Nye and Todd Parr, some hardback and some paperback, ranging in price from AED 30 to AED 70. Students and parents are welcome to visit throughout the school day to purchase books.

Would you like to have your books signed by our visiting authors? When you purchase a book, we will label it with the name that you would like to include in the dedication. The books will then be delivered to your child's classroom before March 22. If you have books at home or would like to purchase them elsewhere, you may also bring these books into the ES Library to be signed.

After School Student Workshops and Parent Talk

We have some special opportunities for our community during the author visit. Please join us for the following times to celebrate literacy with our children:

Tuesday, March 13: 

Talk Tuesday for Parents K1-Grade 12 - Meet the Authors
Building Empathy Through Reading

Elementary Library: 8:30 - 9:15 am Naomi Shihab Nye and 9:30-10:15am Todd Parr

Wednesday, March 14:

Drawing and Writing Workshop with Todd Parr, Students K1-Grade 5 & Parents Welcome

Elementary Library 3:30 - 4:15pm

Wednesday, March 21:

Writing Workshop with Naomi Shihab Nye, Students K1-Grade 5 & Parents Welcome

Elementary Library 3:30 - 4:15pm

Visiting Authors March 11-22, 2018: Naomi Shihab Nye and Todd Parr

ASD Libraries are excited to welcome authors Naomi Shihab Nye and Todd Parr from March 11-22, 2018. During their two week visit, our authors-in-residence will engage our students, teachers and parents in a series of workshops and presentations. Please look out for news about the schedule of events and book sales in early March.

Naomi Shihab Nye, author and editor of more than 30 award winning volumes, uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, and Words Under the Words. She is also the author of Habibi, Baby Radar, Sitti's Secrets, and Famous. Her poetry anthologies for young readers include Time You Let Me In, This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, and Honeybee. Her novel for children, The Turtle of Oman, was chosen both a Best Book of 2014 by The Horn Book and a 2015 Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association and the 2015 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature. Her new book is Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners. Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio.

Todd Parr is the author and illustrator of more than 40 books for children, including the New York Times bestselling The I Love You Book, The Earth Book, and The Thankful Book. Some ASD favorites include It's Okay to Be Different, It's Okay to Make Mistakes and Love the World. His books are available in over fifteen languages throughout the world. He is the co-creator of the popular children's television show ToddWorld as well as short films for Sesame Street. Todd has partnered with Target, SF-MARIN Food Bank, Stouffer's, People Magazine and several companies and organizations to help people, animals, and promote literacy. Todd's books have won several awards and his TV show, ToddWorld, was nominated for three Daytime Emmy Awards. Todd lives in Berkeley, California with his three adopted Pit bulls.

World Read Aloud Day (Week!)

Each year, World Read Aloud Day motivates children, teens, and adults worldwide to celebrate the power of words. World Read Aloud Day, sponsored by the organization LitWorld, is celebrated by millions of people in more than 100 countries. LitWorld's mission is to encourage communities of readers to take action to show the world that literacy is essential to all people. World Read Aloud Day is an opportunity for people around the world to advocate for literacy as a human right.

We are excited to celebrate World Read Aloud Day at ASD! This week, students will be engaged in read aloud activities during their library classes and other times during the school day. We have special guest readers from all around the school visiting classes. We also have buddy reading activities planned. Some Middle and High School students will visit the library to read aloud to small groups in our Elementary Library.

Take some time this week to celebrate reading aloud to each other at home with your family! We have hundreds of wonderful picture books, information books, comics and chapter books -- all of which would be make great read aloud material. Make funny voices, take turns reading, act out the story, retell the story. However you approach read aloud, you are never too old to enjoy the magic of a story together.

Students Empowered Through Self Checkout

We want our students to be independent, empowered library users. In an effort to increase student agency and ownership, we shifted to student self-checkout over the last year. We now have six stations in the library that allow students to checkout through either their homeroom or individual name. Students can easily view the titles that they currently have checked out.

In addition to using their personal library accounts through Destiny Discover, through which they can search, renew and place holds on books, self-checkout allows students to take charge of their own library needs. 

What do students notice? They love the actual scanning or "beeping" of the books and appreciate that they don't have to wait in line to check out! Many students also feel that they are more aware of what they have checked out and can more easily mange how many books they are taking home.

What does this mean for the library staff? We can now have more important one-to-one conversations with students, we can help students find the books they are looking for, and we can make recommendations to students. We are no longer working behind a desk, but working side by side with our students. By removing a physical barrier, we are building stronger relationships with our students and building their capacity for learning.

GoodReads Choice Awards 2017: Have you read these books?