The Friday Links Library has been enjoying its summer vacation. We’re back this week with a short edition… Yesterday was Harry Potter’s (and J. K. Rowling’s) birthday, marking 16 years since readers first met the boy wizard. A recent study suggests that reading Harry Potter makes children more empathetic or tolerant toward minority groups or people … Continued
General / CLiF Spotlight / How You Can Help
Remember the book you read one summer? You never forgot how it made you feel. Maybe you shared it with your own children. Since May we’ve been keeping a list collecting your favorite summer reads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yu9ulw3YYs&w=400&h=300&rel=0 Now, for just $5 per book, you can share your favorite with a child served through CLiF’s Summer Readers programs. CLiF will serve 3,700 … Continued
On June 25 I donned shorts and flip-flops and traveled to Bethlehem, NH to visit Copper Cannon Camp (CCC) located on 128 acres adjacent to the White Mountain National Forest.
Ahh, summer sun! We’re soaking up the vitamin D, smelling the peonies, mixing the lemonade, and planning weekend beach reads. Here are a few links that caught our eyes this week: CLiF advisor Michele Tine has published new research showing that after a few minutes of aerobic exercise low-income kids score better on reading comprehension tests. … Continued
General / CLiF Spotlight / Book Recommendations
Harry Potter. The Hunger Games. The current nationwide phenomenon The Fault In Our Stars. Classics coming soon to the big screen: The Great Gilly Hopkins and The Giver. And way back when, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and in the beginning, The Wizard of Oz. Great children’s books have always been made into beloved movies. Still, the TFIOS … Continued
General / CLiF Spotlight / Book Recommendations
All about YA today. Because our focus is on kids from birth through age 12, we give away more board, picture, early chapter, and middle grade books than we do YA. But we do keep some on our shelves, we read it, and we keep our antennae up for what’s happening. And friends, YA is happening. So … Continued
June is here! We’re celebrating lots of grant program finales and are gearing up for summer… Summer Readers in particular. Let’s take a breather to catch up on some literacy news. Just in time for Father’s Day next weekend, here’s the #DadsRead campaign. The campaign, “designed to encourage fathers to read with their kids and celebrate dads who … Continued
On May 14, Gretchen, Julia, and I attended the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR)
On May 10, Meredith and I went to Kids Day in Burlington, Vermont’s Battery Park. Hundreds of kids (and quite a few parents) stopped by our booth to write poems using magnetic poetry and their imaginations. Everyone who wrote a poem got to choose a book to take home. Here are a few young poets with their masterpieces. … Continued
General / CLiF Spotlight / Book Recommendations
Lots of news over the past two weeks! Here’s the roundup: First, happy Children’s Book Week! In the brilliant ideas department: Florida kids (and Salt Lake City, and a few others) with overdue books are allowed to read down their library fines–instead of having their borrowing cut off until they scrape together fees. Way to keep the library accessible to the … Continued
General / CLiF Spotlight / Book Recommendations
We’re starting to think about summer. Specifically: favorite summer books. Recently, this conversation sparked a debate among CLiF’s voracious readers: What makes a book a great summer book? Is it a picture book, like Blueberries for Sal, that captures the long, hot days of the season? Is it a classic book you associate with read-alouds and campfires, like Treasure Island? Is … Continued
General / CLiF Spotlight / Book Recommendations
You may have noticed I’ve been following the growing outcry over the lack of diversity in children’s books in these Friday posts. Over the last several days, authors and readers all over the world began demanding wider representation from publishing companies and pledging to buy and read books that represent our world’s diverse cast of real-life characters. To … Continued
It’s National Library Week! This week celebrates our public and school libraries as trusted, relevant, and committed community resources and raises awareness of challenges libraries face. CLiF is honored to partner with many rural libraries that bring incredible value to their communities–often on shoestring budgets. This week the American Libraries Association (ALA) released the State … Continued
March. In like a lion, out like a… cold wet lion. Couple of goodies for your Friday Links Library this week: From WBUR’s On Point: host Tom Ashbrook on Goodnight Moon and the University of Wisconsin study we noted last week. The discussion asks “what we seek and share in young children’s books.” With guests … Continued
Probably most adults could not coherently discuss the differences between the 1840 and 1860 census how a daguerreotype differs from a tintype or the repercussions of the 1890 census being destroyed in a Department of Commerce fire. But the children of Island Pond and Lowell, Vermont can. Funded in part by CLiF Year of the … Continued
Happy Spring! Kind of. Nobody’s putting their skis away around here. Lots of interesting tidbits in the news this week. Here’s the roundup: Last week, the New York Times printed op-eds by father and son authors Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers on why we all critically need to see children of color better represented in … Continued
I started hearing Christmas music in October. No exaggeration – I was still shopping for the final touches of my son’s Halloween costume when the bells were jingling and the sleighs were dashing right there in my radio speakers. I love family traditions and glowing lights and – oh, wow – nothing compares to the … Continued
Happy Friday! Here are some stories we liked this week: A review of Bookmooch, a book swap club, and impressive statistics on how members can donate their points to “school libraries, classroom libraries, public libraries, and prison libraries” so they can choose gently used books for their collections. Closing the literacy achievement gap by ‘re-gifting’ the love of … Continued
CLiF has served over 350,000 children since 1998.