Mélina Mangal

Melina Mangal
Méli­na Man­gal’s Self on the Shelf I looked on my shelves, won­der­ing which books to high­light. I have sev­er­al shelves, scat­tered around the house. Though I am a school librar­i­an, my home shelves are quite flu­id, as in, they’re not strict­ly orga­nized. Books are loose­ly grouped by for­mat and size, some­times by genre. I real­ly don’t have that  many books (I love to vis­it the library!),
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Two for the Show: What Scares You?

Note to read­ers: we are try­ing a new for­mat this month. We want to make our blog more con­ver­sa­tion­al. Let us know what you think. Phyl­lis Root:
What scares you? How do you deal with that fear? And why do so many of us like to scare our­selves sil­ly, as long as we know that every­thing will be all right in the end?… more

Authors Emeritus: Tom Feelings and Virginia Hamilton

Authors Emer­i­tus, a com­pi­la­tion of short biogra­phies of deceased children’s lit­er­a­ture cre­ators, is a Bookol­o­gy Children’s Lit­er­a­ture resource.  When a Book­storm™ includes books by authors and illus­tra­tors in the index we like to high­light those biogra­phies. This month: Tom Feel­ings (The Mid­dle Pas­sage) and Vir­ginia Hamil­ton (Many Thou­sand Gone).   Tom Feel­ings, born on May 19, 1933, was a native of Brook­lyn, NY.… more

Chasing Freedom Companion Booktalks

To get you start­ed on the Book­storm™ Books …
  Alec’s Primer Mil­dred Pitts Wal­ter
illus­trat­ed by Lar­ry John­son
Ver­mont Folk­life Cen­ter, 2005 Based on the true sto­ry of Alec Turn­er (1845−1923), who learned to read as a boy with the help of his own­er’s daughter Sup­ple­ment the sto­ry with sto­ries and songs from tape-record­ed inter­views with Daisy Turn­er, Alec’s daughter A Carter G.
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Bookstorm™: Chasing Freedom

Chasing Freedom
In this Bookstorm™: Chasing Freedom
The Life Jour­neys of Har­ri­et Tub­man and Susan B. Antho­ny, Inspired by His­tor­i­cal Facts
writ­ten by Nik­ki Grimes
illus­trat­ed by Michele Wood
Orchard Books, 2015
As Nik­ki Grimes writes in her author’s note for this book, “His­to­ry is often taught in bits and pieces, and stu­dents rarely get the notion that these bits and pieces are con­nect­ed.”… more

Turtles in Children’s Literature

Our Book­stormbook, The Shad­ow Hero, is the ori­gin sto­ry of a super­hero, The Green Tur­tle. While this char­ac­ter is not an actu­al che­lon­ian — though that would be an awe­some super hero — there are many tur­tles and tor­tois­es in chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. Some might even be, tech­ni­cal­ly, ter­rap­ins. Here are some notables. more

I Would Like to Thank…

The annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion begins this week. The win­ners of the var­i­ous book awards are no doubt eye­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties with some trep­i­da­tion because they will be pre­sent­ing speech­es. This has been going on since the first New­bery Award was pre­sent­ed in 1922. Tra­di­tion­al­ly called “Accep­tance Papers,” the speech­es are the bul­l’s-eye of events that have over the years mor­phed from nice lit­tle white-glove lun­cheons into galas.… more

I Would Like to Thank…

The annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion begins this week. The win­ners of the var­i­ous book awards are no doubt eye­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties with some trep­i­da­tion because they will be pre­sent­ing speech­es. This has been going on since the first New­bery Award was pre­sent­ed in 1922. Tra­di­tion­al­ly called “Accep­tance Papers,” the speech­es are the bul­l’s-eye of events that have over the years mor­phed from nice lit­tle white-glove lun­cheons into galas.… more