• Lifestyle

    Weekend Plans – Princeton Children's Book Festival

    I’m hanging out at the Princeton Children’s Book Festival this weekend with a TON of authors, illustrators and book lovers! I’ve got Christmas and birthday gifts checked off my list for the next year or two for all the awesome kiddos in my life and I couldn’t leave without adding…

  • Lifestyle

    Books as Gifts

    It’s no surprise that for every gift-giving event, I purchase books. Now, I don’t always buy everyone on my list a book, but there’s usually at least one book per holiday that is bought. For my nephew and a few other little ones in my life, I started before they…

  • Lifestyle

    #OwnVoices

    In 2015, Corinne Duyvis suggested on Twitter, “Glad important discussions are being had. Would love to be able to walk away with book recommendations. How about a hashtag? #ownvoices, to recommend kidlit about diverse characters written by authors from that same diverse group.”This was the beginning of a new hashtag that…

  • Lifestyle

    Director's Thoughts #10 – Shifting Collections

    After you weed the entire collection… what do you do next? That was my question, after spending 5 months and countless hours running reports, scanning, stamping and sorting books. The next step for us…. shifting the collection. Although tight, our children’s department had a lot more wiggle room at the…

  • Lifestyle

    Must Listen: Book Lover's Podcasts

    I love the Get Booked podcast – it’s a book recommendation podcast where people submit questions for reading suggestions for themselves, as gifts, for their book club, etc. and receive suggestions from the hosts and Book Riot contributors. 9 times out of 10, I know very well that I’ll never…

  • Lists

    It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 1/2/17

    Well, that’s weird… the first time I wrote the New Year down.  Anyway, it’s a new year with new books to read and what better way to start than on my first day off of the New Year with dreary weather outside and no plans to get off this couch.…

  • Lifestyle

    A Renaissance of Children's Literature

    I saw this terminology (or something very similar) on Twitter over the past week and it seems to continually be popping up after hearing many librarians, teachers, parents and kids enjoying soooooo many of this year’s books published for children. Don’t get me wrong, according to statistics, the publishing world…

  • Lists

    It's That Time of Year…

    The “best of the best” lists are coming out in droves (as usual).  These lists usually have many of the same suspects on them with a little variation and that is what I like.  Making sure I get my hands on all the heavy hitters of the year.  Especially this…

  • Lifestyle

    Jbrary – A Resource You Don't Want To Miss

    If you’re a storytime librarian, a preK teacher, mom, dad, aunt, uncle, grandparent, sibling, etc., you have to take some time to explore Jbrary’s website.  Jbrary is the brain child of two children’s librarians in Vancouver, British Columbia and it’s an absolutely amazing resource filled with books, songs, fingerplays, rhymes…

  • Reviews

    Picture Book Theme: Reading/Books

    You’ll be seeing a lot of picture books on my blog throughout the month of November as we celebrate Picture Book Month.  You’ll definitely want to check out the website as picture book authors and illustrators will be posting an essay each day about the importance of picture books!  Check…