A Whole New Kind of Librarian

Welcome to the new (if temporary) normal. As many of you know, I'm a middle school librarian and most of the time that means I'm helping teachers with lessons, helping students with research and doing my best to connect everyone with the right books and resources. Usually I'm doing all that live and in person. These times though, they are anything but usual. Like many other schools around the world, we are now digital, and this has presented some new challenges to being a librarian. How will I reach all my kids? How will they ask me questions? How do I get them the right books? 

I don't have all the answers- but one thing came back to me from my days as a blogger. It was all digital. I still haven't met some of the wonderful ladies I worked with in person because we live thousands of miles from each other. Still, we managed to not only work together to run a successful book club and website, we were able to connect readers to books and authors every day. So that was my inspiration. It's time to get back to basics, and get everything online. 

So what will that look like? Well, this is my personal blog, but I will be adding a section under books where I will put up a lot of resources that I've been sharing with my students that other people might be interested in. Mostly this will be weekly book chats highlighting books that my students can borrow through our school library system (Sora) or through the local Public library (Overdrive). I am also reading my students a few chapters from some amazing books- and while I can't post those videos here (in compliance with the publishers guidelines), I will share what books we are teasing and where you can get them.  I will also be looking to feature authors who have books coming out during this shut down and who might have had to cancel upcoming events. I want to share as much love for the book community as possible! 

To kick off I'm going to share my first 2 Book Chats that feature some amazing authors and books. Going forward each week will have it's own post and all the Book Chats will be housed on the book page of this blog. 

​Week one featured books by Jason Reynolds, Angie Thomas, Jenny Han, Nathan Hale and Emily Carroll. 

Week two featured books by Marissa Meyer, Jason Reynolds, Kwame Alexande, John Green and Jakob Crane