Visit to the Eric Carle Museum!

I just returned from a trip to Amherst, MA, to visit the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.  (http://www.picturebookart.org/) This is a great place to take kids - artwork on the walls, the books in a bin on the floor, very kid friendly.  They have a Tomie dePaola exhibit now through Nov. 1 to celebrate Tomie's 75th birthday.

I was thrilled to meet Tomie tonight!  He was a great speaker and made us laugh.  He is probably most famous for his Strega Nona stories.  I was happy to get my picture taken with him.   I can't wait to show it to my students and tell them all about him!

Annual Conference!

I just returned from 2 days in Sturbridge, MA, where I attended the MSLA (Mass. School Library Association) annual conference. It was a great opportunity to meet with other school library teachers from across the state and learn what they are doing in their programs.

I also had an opportunity to meet several authors and illustrators, including Gregory Maguire (author of the Wicked books, the first of which has been made into a Tony Award winning Broadway play!), Stephen Krensky, Ralph Masiello and Kathleen Duble. I am happy to announce that I was able to purchase some of their books for our library, and had them personally autographed for the students of the Fitzgerald School!

The focus of the conference was 21st century skills, which are directly related to what I teach in our library each day. I learned alot about Web 2.0 skills and am anxious to begin using them with my students. This conference was a great way to network and get some good ideas about preparing our students for our increasingly changing world!