What happened to June?

First off, I would again like to apologize for the lack of posts.  If you are anything like me, reports become due and then my world falls into the spiral that is the "End of the Year Time".  On top of that, my contract for the year ended which also kicked me into panic mode where the Library needed to be fixed up in case I don't return.  *sigh*

I held an end of the year Library Return Contest where the class with the least amount of outstanding books won prizes as follows: First place: Pizza Party, Second Place: Cupcake Party and Third Place: Freezie Party.  The students really responded well and the amount of books that came quickly pouring in made me really behind with my shelving!! The contest was a success since the winning class had zero outstanding books.  You read that right, ZERO.  I even did a happy dance.  Then pile on writing bills for books and reshelveing an insane amount of literature and then packing up my office and you have one tired Librarian.  I only put in two extra days during the summer to fixing up the hot mess that was the Non-Fiction section with the amazing help of my Mommy.

Now, onto the fun part.  Since I am new at the Teacher Librarian biz, I am quite behind with the popular 'literature' (and I use the term loosely) that fly off the shelves.  So for my summer project I took out what I figured to be enough books to see me through the next two months (keep in mind I have an insanely busy 18 month old).  These titles are: The Lightning Theif by Rick Riodan, Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney, Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn, The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan, Rainbow Magic: Shannon the Ocean Fairy by Daisy Meadows, The Secrets of Droon: The Hidden Stairs and The Magic Carpet by Tony Abbott, The Adventures of Captain Underpants: The First Ever Epic Novel by Dav Pilkey, Girl in a Cage by Jane Volen and Robert Harris.

Now onto the professional books......

To use of the last of my glorious Professional Development money, I purchased the following books which I will be doing some reviews on in later posts.

The Art and Science of Teaching by Robert J. Marzano (this book is a re-buy since I had this book before and lent it out never to return), Literacy, Libraries and Learning by Ray Doiron and Marlene Asselin, Reading With Meaning by Debbie Millar and Fun-Brarian: Games, Activities and Ideas to Liven Up Your Library! by Kathleen Fox.  I also have Strategies that Work by Anne Harvey on order with Amazon.

I also gave the 'ol blog a bit of an update.  I found the old graphics to be really dark and boring.  How do you like the new look?

Happy Summer Reading!