AASL has just announced the call for applications for the School Library Program of the Year (formerly the School Library MEDIA Program of the Year, affectionately known as SLMPY or SLiMPY).

If you’re proud of your program’s successes and its quality based on Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs, I hope you’ll consider applying. The past winners create an outstanding cadre that you’d be proud to be a part of!

Apply to be the National School Library Program of the Year via kwout

I’m back from ALA Midwinter and taking a quick break before hustling off to lead some teacher professioanl development.  More on Midwinter soon, but in honor of MLK Day, here are some announcements to help you think about future collection development purchases.

WHO WON THE CALDECOTT? NEWBERY? CORETTA SCOTT KING? AND MORE?
All of LibraryLand is abuzz today with the announcement of ALSC’s leading literary awards for children’s and young adult literature, including the Newbery, Caldecott, and Coretta Scott King Awards.  But you didn’t have to travel to slushy, sleety Boston to hear the news.  See the list of winners here.

DEVELOPING RESPONSIVE, THOUGHTFUL MULTICULTURAL COLLECTIONS
Author Mitali Perkins gives some great tips for evaluating multicultural literature here in her outstanding April 2010 article for School Library Journal, “Straight Talk on Race: Challenging the Stereotypes in Kids’ Books.” Her ideas have helped me think with more respect and depth about the role of non-white, non-middle characters in books for kids and what it truly means to have a responsive, multicultural collection.  Consider forwarding the link to your teachers, too — so many classroom collections are built on garage sale or public library Friends sales, which makes those collections particularly vulnerable to outdated views of gender, race, and culture.

The Washington Post posits that theory in an article today.   Reporter Valerie Strauss writes:

 The Newbery Medal has been the gold standard in children’s literature for more than eight decades. On the January day when the annual winner is announced, bookstores nationwide sell out, libraries clamor for copies and teachers add the work to lesson plans. 

Now the literary world is debating the Newbery’s value, asking whether the books that have won recently are so complicated and inaccessible to most children that they are effectively turning off kids to reading. Of the 25 winners and runners-up chosen from 2000 to 2005, four of the books deal with death, six with the absence of one or both parents and four with such mental challenges as autism. Most of the rest deal with tough social issues.

An article in October’s School Library Journal — “Has the Newbery Lost Its Way?” by children’s literary expert Anita Silvey — touched off the debate, now in full bloom on blogs and in e-mails. It is the new flashpoint in the struggle to draw children into the delicious world of books at a time when theNational Endowment for the Arts says fewer Americans are choosing to read than they did 20 years ago, risking social and economic consequences.

The organization that awards the Newbery — and several other book prizes, including the Caldecott Medal for best American picture book for children — defends its methods and its record.

“The criterion has never been popularity,” said Pat Scales, president of the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association. “It is about literary quality. We don’t expect every child to like every book. How many adults have read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning books and the National Book Award winners and liked every one?”

I have to admit that the recent Newbery books haven’t been very elementary-friendly, whereas the Caldecott books are beloved.  What’s your experience?�