Native Realities

Native Realities
A lit­er­ary super­hero him­self and an indige­nous leg­endary com­ic cre­ator, a pro­po­nent of Native Pop Cul­ture, and cre­ator of a new Native pub­lish­ing ven­ture, I am excit­ed to intro­duce to you Dr. Lee Fran­cis IV and his pub­lish­ing house, Native Real­i­ties. What kind of press is this? Think Comics, books, inter­ac­tive. Native Amer­i­can authors and artists. Think Indige­nous Com­ic Con.… more

Dogman© Unleashed

Encour­age kids to be cre­ative with­out wor­ry­ing about being perfect. —Dav Pilkey  At the start of the fall pro­gram sea­son, I asked our youngest patrons what pro­grams they would like the library to offer. I heard a child yell out, “DOGMAN”! I smiled and I told him that was a great idea. Dog­man© is a graph­ic nov­el series writ­ten and illus­trat­ed by Dav Pilkey that tells the sto­ry of George and Harold’s new­ly cre­at­ed hero of jus­tice.… more

Capers and Cons

Capers and Cons The Player King
When you (or your stu­dents) want a book that keeps you turn­ing the pages for your week­night and week­end read­ing, here are some sug­ges­tions for books with that nim­ble pac­ing and what-are-they-up-to plots. Many of them are just right for mid­dle grade or avid younger-than-that read­ers, with a cou­ple of teen titles added. (And, of course, all are suit­able for read­ing by adults.)
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Graphic Storytelling

Fish Girl
  A good graph­ic nov­el should pose a mystery. As it opens (last pos­si­ble minute), the read­er often has no clue what’s going on. It’s often an unknown world, even if it looks like our world. This isn’t that dif­fer­ent than the open­ing of a con­ven­tion­al print book but, for some rea­son, peo­ple often react to graph­ic nov­els by telling me, “I can’t read them!… more

Middle Kingdom: Denver, Colorado

Jolene Gutiérrez
The books that most delight mid­dle school and junior high read­ers often strad­dle a “Mid­dle King­dom” rang­ing from upper mid­dle grade to YA. Each month, Bookol­o­gy colum­nist Lisa Bullard will vis­it the Mid­dle King­dom by view­ing it through the eyes of a teacher or librar­i­an. Bookol­o­gy is delight­ed to cel­e­brate the work of these edu­ca­tors who have built vital book encamp­ments in the tran­si­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry of ear­ly adolescence.… more

Bookstorm: The Shadow Hero

Shadow Hero
In this Bookstorm™: Shadow Hero writ­ten by Gene Luen Yang
illus­trat­ed by Son­ny Liew
First Sec­ond, 2014
As we become a cul­ture adapt­ed to screens, visu­als, and mov­ing pic­tures, we grow more accus­tomed to the sto­ry­telling form of the graph­ic nov­el. For some, their com­fort with this com­bi­na­tion of visu­als and text telling a sto­ry sat­is­fies a crav­ing to “see” the sto­ry while they’re read­ing.… more

Graphic Novels: A source of inspiration and mentor texts

by Mau­r­na Rome Flash­back to the first week of school … we were pass­ing the micro­phone around our large cir­cle of 29 third-graders. It was easy to see that many stu­dents were shy and ner­vous, but one young man was appar­ent­ly look­ing for some shock val­ue. He began with “My name is Michael” then non­cha­lant­ly added, ”I’m a slack­er.”… more

Bookstorm: Lowriders in Space 

Lowriders in Space
In this Bookstorm™: Lowriders in Space
writ­ten by Cathy Camper
illus­trat­ed by Raul the Third
pub­lished by Chron­i­cle Books, 2014
Lupe Impala, El Cha­vo Flap­jack, and Elirio Malar­ia love work­ing with cars. You name it, they can fix it. But the team’s favorite cars of all are lowrid­ers — cars that hip and hop, dip and drop, go low and slow, baji­to y suavecito.… more