In an effort to boost sales and attract more teen readers, Penguin is offering readers the opportunity to read some of their hottest books for free online.  The featured book for July 14th –July 20th is Savvy by Ingrid Law.  For more details, get the full scoop at School Library Journal or better yet, click on the link below to check it out!

Official Book Website of Savvy by Ingrid Law

Twilight  tempted the imagination. New Moon made readers thirsty for more. Eclipse turned the saga into a worldwide phenomenon. And now, the book that everyone has been waiting for… Breaking Dawn, the final book in the #1 bestselling Twilight saga, will take your breath away.

Stephenie Meyer’s sophisticated teen vampire novels have created the kind of response from teens and adults that we haven’t seen since the debut of Harry Potter. Barnes & Noble will be celebrating the August 2 release of Breaking Dawn by hosting special events in the stores. Select stores are staying open late August 1 and hosting midnight release parties.  And be sure to call or visit your local store to reserve your copy for the night of the party; you can also visit the website to pre-order your copy if you like.  The stores at Town Center,  Alpharetta, and Cumming will all be hosting a book release event for youth and teens on August 1 at 10:00 PM—please visit each site or call for more details.

Calling all Grizzly patrons!  Are you looking for a cool multimedia tool to show your teachers what you have learned this fall?  Check out Mixwit, a fun “media playground” that allows you to artwork, photos, and music in a format that can be easily shared!  Read about how this teacher,  Konrad Glogowski  , used this tool as part of a novel study (hit the play button above to play his mix); you can also visit and see student examples by going to the link beneath this screenshot.

blog of proximal development

You can register your own account for free!  Click on the link below to visit Mixwit and start mixing up your own creative projects today!

Mixwit - Create and Share Digital Mixtapes

The 2008 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical | Home

 Many thanks to Dr. JoBeth Allen from the University of Georgia Department of Language and Literacy for the heads up on this WONDERFUL event!  I plan to be there…Billy Collins will be giving the keynote address!  Here is the latest info straight from the festival organizers via email:

It’s hard to believe, but here we are preparing to launch the THIRD annual Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical. The festival has not merely survived its first few years. We’ve built on partnerships with artistic, educational, business, and governmental organizations not only from all over metropolitan Atlanta but from all over the nation. Hosted in the literary haven of Decatur, this festival has quickly joined the ranks of the largest and most talked about book festivals nationwide.
 
 Perhaps we could just keep doing what we’ve been doing and call that good enough, but where’s the fun in that? We’ve added plenty of new and unique programs to this year’s festival:
 
 We’ve had a Children’s Parade since the first year, but this is the first time we’ll be launching a new book at the parade. Not just any book: It’s the first new “Madeline” story in 50 years–”Madeline and the Cats of Rome”–written by John Bemelmans Marciano, the grandson of Ludwig Bemelmans. We encourage everyone to join Marciano in the parade, maybe wear a big yellow hat, sing your favorite French (or, for that matter, Italian) song, or just make some noise.
 
 Though we’ve had programs directed at teenagers from the beginning, 2008 marks the first year we will set aside a space exclusively for teenagers, called Escape. Escape will host best-selling authors for interactive discussions, an open mic and a literary salon. For those under 18, there will also be a quiz show called How Well Do You Know Harry? judged by Cheryl Klein, continuity editor for the last four Harry Potter books.
 
 In a historic partnership, Poets & Writers and Agnes Scott College are working with us to present the best DBF Writers Conferenceyet, with top national editors, agents, critics, publicists, authors, and screenwriters sharing their collective wisdom in a conference tightly integrated with the rest of the book festival. In addition, beginning this year, DBF will host the prestigious Southern Independent Booksellers Association (SIBA) awards ceremony. Many of the nominees will give readings at the festival.
 
 In 2006, we hosted the launch event for the first Atlanta Reads. This year, we’ll launch Atlanta Reads as well as the Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts. Atlanta’s Big Read will encourage the entire community to read and talk about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
 
 Still not enough to fill your Labor Day weekend? Check out even more of the new programs that make this year’s festival truly unique:

 Brooks & Co. Dancewill perform a dance inspired by Shirley Jackson’s classic short story, “The Lottery,” set to the music of Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring” and drawing on Ninjinsky’s seminal choreography to Stravinsky’s work.
 
 In a program called “Words from Iraq,” adult and young actors from PushPush Theater will present multiple perspectives on Iraq through readings of letters children have written to their parents in the military, blogs written by soldiers in Iraq, and a blog by a young Iraqi woman.
 
 In the spirit of the Java Monkey Local Authors Stage, we’re adding a stage for emerging authors just beginning to get their work out into the world, called the Emerging and Exhibiting Authors Stage.
 
 Author and former Olympian runner Jeff Galloway will lead a fun run Saturday morning of the festival, followed by a running clinic.
 
 Lee Smith, Marshall Chapman, Jill McCorkle, and Matraca Berg will all be onstage together to give a taste of their traveling musical–The Good ol’ Girls–about their friendship and the mutual influences of their books and music on one another.
  
 And that’s just the new stuff!
 

You know you can also count on us to bring you the nation’s top authors in our strongest, most diverse line-up yet. You know we’ve got you covered for good food and some of the best singer-songwriters in America. You know we’ll show the whole family a good time. So, come join us this Labor Day weekend for the best AJC Decatur Book Festival yet!    
   
   

 Be sure to check out our 2008 DBF web site,www.decaturbookfestival.com <http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=0010o9b8-G1lEKeg0HJ9PdUjGRNyOgyeblVgbcTsEt5PKylDahxzgliuFLJWKLt-zYIoc45cFGTjIsQlOObVGPCdF6Q_S1hyNoiVHSyZMw4GDtx6o-NqZyAj84pBZOFARsm> .

We at The Unquiet Library want to wish you a safe, happy, and fun 4th of July!  As we pause from our hot dogs, hamburgers, fireworks, and Peachtree Road Race to ponder the significance of this date, we encourage you check out some of the great resources below to learn more about this historic date in history.  You can browse our favorite resources at http://del.icio.us/creekview_hs_library/4th_of_July !

A New York gentleman purchased a framed picture of a flower for $10 at a Manhattan flea market three weeks ago.  When he got home, he discovered some mysterious sheets of yellow paper behind the picture.  Experts have now confirmed those sheets of paper are a rare original copy of the lyrics to “America (My Country Tis of Thee)”!

Read more about this historic flea market find at:

• http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/jul/04/let-freedom-ka-ching/
• http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/03/flea.market/index.html
• http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/07/news-roundup-fa.html

I am happy to report that our first book order for 2008-09 is being processed and packed as I type!  It looks like our first order should arrive the last week in July, and we will have them ready for you to check out and enjoy on Day 1!  Nearly 800 titles will be coming in on this order—yes!

We will be doing a second round of ordering at the end of August, so we need your input!  If you have suggestions for books you’d like in our media center, send your specific titles and/or topics to Mrs. Hamilton at buffy.hamilton@cherokee.k12.ga.us .  In the meantime, Mrs. Fleet, Mrs. Beasley, and I will be eating our Wheaties to get ready to unpack all the books! 

Book Recommendations: The Books That Changed Your Lives

OK…I know I just blogged one book list, but here is another one you will enjoy from Lifehacker:  “The Books That Changed Your Lives.”   Take a look at this list that is based on input from 250+ comments from Lifehacker readers and see what you think….a short summary and link to Amazon reviews are provided to help you explore these texts. 

What books have changed your life and why/how?

The New Classics: Books | EW 1000: Books | Books | The EW 1000 | Entertainment Weekly

Bibliophiles always seem to love chewing on yet another book list, and Entertainment Weekly provides us more fodder in their newly released “Top 100 Books of the Last 25 Years”.  Or as Phil Kloer, AJC book reviewer, points out, “Everyone loves lists prepared by magazine editors or bloggers or the like. Not the actual lists, but the act of reading them and reacting to them.”

Take a look at the Entertainment Weekly list available at http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20207076_20207387_20207349,00.html.  What do you think?  Do you agree with these lists?  Disagree?  What would you put on the list?  Are you inspired to read or find out more about any of these titles?

I’ll open the discussion by saying I disagree with nearly every bit of EW’s top 10!  I definitely would have placed A Prayer for Owen Meany much higher.  My big question:  Where is The English Patient in this list?!?!?

Multigenre Research Projects Summer 2008, Buffy Hamilton via kwout

Summer school has just ended, and I wanted to share with our Grizzly researchers a research project my summer school students undertook:  the multigenre research project.  Students were allowed to choose their topics, and indeed, our topics were diverse:  we had everything from John Elway to cardiac disorders to The Crusade to current events!  Take a look at my current resource page on teaching the multigenre paper:

http://webtech.cherokee.k12.ga.us/creekview-hs/buffyhamilton/multigenre_research_projects_summer2008.htm

Here you will find:

• My handouts in PDF format
• Blog reflections from the students
• Sample papers written by real high school students
• My favorite resources on teaching and learning with multigenre papers

What do you think?   My students responded quite positively to the entire project…do you think that you as a student researcher would be interested in doing a research project like this in 2008-09?  The multigenre research approach is great for general research papers as well as literary based research papers…participate in the poll below and let me know what you think!

Mrs. Hamilton