judyo54blog

Thoughts on working and studying as a TL

expanding the repertoire of children’s literature

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My personal strategies

I have worked for a few years as a teacher librarian so I have been able to keep up with what is current to some degree just through the brochures that arrive daily from different publishers and booksellers. I often pop in to bookshops and look at what they have in their YA/teenage section and I always look at my local library, which has always been excellent, to see what they are promoting or to read staff reviews – which I love! Handwritten reviews are really appealing I think and I love reading them – unfortunately if the review is good the book is often not there!

I also find it useful to set goals for reading. This module has prompted me to think about how I can read more YA so I will make a plan to read different genres and use lists from the world cat fiction finder website. I’ll search for the top 5 recommendations in the genre I haven’t read and work through the genres systematically.

I skim read a lot of books just to get a sense of what they are about. I read Percy Jackson very quickly in order to get an idea of what it was that attracted boys to read it as it is a very popular book and boys are sometimes the hardest group to encourage to read.

I use Goodreads to post books I have read and reviewed. I find it useful to find new books to read but also as a reminder of authors I liked and the chance to read other books by them. Goodreads is very useful for finding new directions for reading and for reading reviews. I know there are publishing websites that you can follow to see what is new – this module has many links to sites and I am going to make a list of all the places that will help me keep up to date and stretching my boundaries.

Teresa Cremin suggests (Scottish Book Trust, 2019) teachers could use the Open University website that promotes reading for pleasure and other resources such as Author Spotlights and links to other resources to support teachers expanding their knowledge. The website has triggered reading groups across the UK.

 

References

Scottish Book Trust. (2019). Teachers’ knowledge of children’s literature: the cornerstone of reading for pleasure. Retrieved from readingchallenge.scot/blog/2019-03/teachers-knowledge-childrens-literature-cornerstone-reading-pleasure

 

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