Thursday, February 28, 2013

Why I love authors

The celebrity obsession culture is something that I don't understand. It seems we (as a culture) worship people for things like beauty or acting or athletic ability. Not me. My celebrity obsession includes authors. I'm a reader. I've always been a reader, from the earliest age I can remember books have always been important to me. Packing for a weekend at grammy's? My sister brought stuffed animals and dolls. I brought books.

Naturally, I became an English teacher. I get paid to read and write and encourage and guide my students to read and write. Wow!

Recently, I've been exploring the world of social media...more and more: Twitter and goodreads, pinterest and blogging and of course facebook. The focus of this exploration has been professional development. An amazing world has opened up to me. I have interacted with more authors than I can list. Today provides me with yet another example of how connected I feel to these authors! One of my students asked about Adriana Trigiani's young adult books about a character named Viola. She read the two that are out and she wanted to know if more were coming out. I couldn't find the information, so I posted the question on facebook and twitter to the author. Within a few hours, we got an answer...

Wow! I can't wait to go to school and share this with my student! Authors, we LOVE you! This will be so exciting for us. I hope someday when I'm an author, I can be this generous with my time and attention. We so appreciate it!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

A school that needs help...


Crestline Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington was destroyed by fire a couple of weeks ago. The entire school and everything in it is gone. I think about our classroom and what it would be like if everything was burned in a fire. There is a call to help the teachers and students of Crestline Elementary School. As the school rebuilds, they need books. A wishlist for books from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/23BVI8NFU6ZV8/ref=cm_sw_em_r_ws_hOCgrb1K2J1R2_wb

Please consider donating a book to their school to help out. If you do, I'd love to know what you've donated. Let us know in the comments. Happy Reading!

Musings and thoughts...