On the 12th day of Christmas, my TLT brought to me . . .

The Red Reading Chair

The Red Reading Chair is a blog by school librarian Amianne Bailey.  Amianne has actually written one of my favorite blog posts ever here at TLT: Atticus Was Right, a story about a bully, an Autistic boy and Sharon Draper’s Out of My Mind.  I’ll never forget the day she told me this story and how we both teared up at how literature can really touch a person and make them somehow different.

Amianne is the school librarian at a K-6 school here in Texas and we sometimes get together and talk about books, of course.  School librarians have to be “on” a lot more than public librarians.  Last Friday Amianne did a Polar Express program where she had classes come into the library ALL DAY LONG in shifts.  When I do a program, it is often only once a day.  But not those school librarians.  And teachers.  They have to be “on” and “performing”.  But Amianne is awesome at it, and now she has started a blog to share her lesson plans.

So, I know this is the Teen Librarian Toolbox, but the truth is – a lot of our teens are often Tweens if you define teens in your library as kids in grades 6-12, which a lot of libraries do.  That is how they are usually divided in schools: middle school is grades 6-8 and high school is graded 9-12.  So I am often working with Tweens – and there are some ideas that you can use with them at The Red Reading Chair.

We also talk a lot about using Picture Books with teens, which can be a great idea.  You can do fun things with teens and picture books like do reader’s theater, crafts, poetry, and more.  I am going to be doing something in February with this picture book with my teens:

Filed under: 12 Blogs of Christmas, Amianne Bailey, Blogs, Red Reading Chair