Who will win the Printz this year?
My vision of an excellent school library starts with great books. My current job focuses on selecting materials for children and teens, and while ebooks, audiobooks, DVDs, tablets and apps play an increasingly crucial role, the books still take the lead. I’m anxiously waiting to hear the winners of the ALA Youth Media Awards announced on January 23. I would immediately purchase the winners of the Newbery and Sibert awards for middle school libraries and the winners of the Printz, Morris and YALSA Nonfiction awards for high school libraries.
Mock award discussions allow students to vote for their choices each year. This Publishers Weekly article highlights a few excellent examples of Mock Newbery discussions taking place at school libraries around the country. Discussions like these can foster a love of literature in students in a fast-paced world where people increasingly communicate through texts and tweets.
An ideal school librarian will help students wade through the technology and online sources available to them while supporting the curriculum. Information literacy skills will remain of the utmost importance as it becomes increasingly difficult even for adults to distinguish legitimate news sources from fake ones. This School Library Journal article provides up-to-date resources for teaching information literacy.
While a school librarian’s most important role is helping students conduct research, the library should also serve as a fun place to hang out. It should function as a flexible space where teens can comfortably socialize and search for books, but it should also offer opportunities to tinker with hands-on maker materials and digital learning resources. Chicago Public Library’s YOUmedia spaces provide perfect examples of this innovative approach. Brookfield Public Library also presents teens with exceptional maker programs.
Ideally, school libraries will engage teens with award-winning literature and the latest technology while providing them with 21st century research skills. For more inspirational school library ideas, take a look at my Pinterest page.
A Modern Librarian Reads the Classics 