This article presents an interview with Jon Scieszka, author of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" who is tapped by the "Children's Book Council" and the Library of Congress's "Center for the Book" as the first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. A former grade-school teacher, Scieszka is also the creator of Guys…

This article introduces various writers, including Laurie Halse Anderson, Linda Sue Park, Richard Peck, James Patterson, and Charles R. Smith, Jr., who will give their presentations at the 2009 American Association of School Librarians (AASL) National Conference & Exhibition in Charlotte. This November the AASL National Conference and…

Publication of "Choosing a Vocation" in 1909 has earned Frank Parsons (1854-1908) the distinction of being the founder of the vocational guidance movement in 20th century America. Such designations, often deserving, risk taking events, people, and the movements they endorse out of context, thus reducing their meaning and impact. In this article,…

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was the beneficiary of a unique blend of educational influences. The daughter, sister, and wife of Congregational ministers, she inherited the faith of New England Puritanism and its subsequent redirection by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Studying and then teaching at her sister Catharine's female seminary, she…

The religious thought of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy is a well documented but often overlooked example of unorthodox Christianity. This paper uses the example of Tolstoy's religious thinking to question the integrity of the current representation of Christianity in UK schools. It also uses Tolstoy's criticism of orthodox Christianity to suggest a…

Web 2.0 tools enable today's writers to connect with their audience in unprecedented ways. The advent of social networking and other Web 2.0 tools have changed the rules for how authors and book publishers market and communicate with their audience. Through tools like blogs, Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook, Young Adult (YA) lit authors can choose…

Articles published between 2000 and 2008 in four major school psychology journals--"School Psychology Review," "Journal of School Psychology," "Psychology in the Schools," and "School Psychology Quarterly"--were classified based on type (empirical or narrative) and on the primary and secondary authors' affiliations. Results showed that more than…

Sight-reading while playing a mallet instrument can present serious obstacles for the developing percussionist. Many young players who have solid snare drum technique usually cite fear of playing the wrong note as the number-one hurdle to overcome in order to begin making real progress. Greg Byrne, associate director of bands at the University of…

In teaching a research-writing unit, the author has asked her students to research and write a persuasive speech, a multigenre paper, an I-Search, a historical and comparative connection to literature, a country brochure, and a social criticism essay. While she found benefits and disadvantages in all of these assignments, the author was…

Have you ever considered writing or reviewing for the library community? Are you interested in publishing a book on your favorite author or hobby? Do you need to write and publish for tenure? If so, "Writing and Publishing" is for you. Practical how-to guidance covering fiction, poetry, children's books/magazines, self-publishing, literary agents,…

Among the responsibilities of international educators is to help students begin the process of identifying the foreign in their new environments in order to learn from it. The major obstacle for Americans studying abroad in developed economies, especially in English-speaking countries, is to become sensitive to the subtleties of foreignness. The…

The Office of Special Education and Student Services asked the Office of Shared Accountability to evaluate the "Facilitated Communication Pilot." In facilitated communication (FC), people with communication impairments express themselves by typing with the aid of a communication partner, called a facilitator, who provides physical (and…

Play often rewards us with a thrill or a sense of wonder. But, just over the edge of play, uncanny objects like dolls, automata, robots, and realistic animations may become monstrous rather than marvelous. Drawing from diverse sources, literary evidence, psychological and psychoanalytic theory, new insights in neuroscience, marketing literature,…

Introduction: In the last few decades, writing has been considered as a situated process inserted in a specific communicative situation. This implies that texts are characterized by them incorporating the different voice of the texts they dialogue with, so they cannot possibly considered as isolated products. Method: In this paper we present an…

The historical portrait of Frank Parsons in terms of his early years and family life has endured considerable speculation based on limited information. At the 100th anniversary of his death, new information has emerged to refute some of the widely held claims about Parsons and his family life. It is time to move beyond the confines of secondary…