National Book Award

And the Winners are.....
Fiction: Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
Nonfiction: Just Kids by Patti Smith
Poetry: Lighthead by Terrance Hayes
Young people’s literature: Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
Lifetime achievement award: Tom Wolfe

See brief review of each in this Washington Post summary.

School Library Journal Best Books for 2010

Enjoy this year's lists:

Best of 2010: Picture Books

Best of 2010: Fiction

Best of 2010: Nonfiction

The New York Times Will Begin Publishing E-Book Bestseller Lists Early In 2011

The New York Times reported  that it would publish e-book best-seller lists in fiction and nonfiction beginning early next year. This new best-seller list is prompted by the huge and dramatic growth in sales of ebooks.

See Julie Bosman's recent article in The New York Times.

Bosman writes that  e-book sales in the first nine months of 2010 were $304.6 million, up from $105.6 million from the same period in 2009, a nearly 190 percent increase.

The lists, like their print book lists, will be compiled from weekly data from publishers, chain bookstores, independent booksellers and online retailers, among other sources.

Listening right now to Rebecca Skloot discuss her book

Science teacher Amy Ludoph and I are attending the lecture and book signing for this amazingly well researched book: 
The Immortal Life of HEnrietta LAcks

Lecture, Book signing and Dinner with
Best-Selling Author Rebecca Skloot
5 pm Tuesday November 16, 2010
Northwestern University Chicago Campus, Thorne Auditorium, 375 East Chicago Ave.
sponsored by The Chicago Council on Science and Technology and Children’s Memorial Research Center

Skloot’s wonderfully accessible work is now being made into an HBO movie produced by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball. 
Skloot takes readers on an amazing journey that explores the complicated legacy of one woman’s unwitting contribution to modern science. I learned that HeLa cells continue  to  grow ....if we could gather all cells grown to date we'd  have the weight in cells of 150 Empire State Buildings.
Skloot learned about HeLa cells in high school and was curious about their origins.  Skloot spent 10 years researching the life of Henrietta Lacks who was a poor uneducated black woman in the Jim Crow South. In the 1950s who worked the same tobacco fields as her slave ancestors.  When she died of cervical cancer  at age 31, her cells—taken without her family's knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine.  HeLa cells became essential for creating the polio vaccine. They were also used to find out more about cancer, viruses, and the effects of the atom bomb. HeLa cells became useful for developing in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. Henrietta's cells, still alive today, have been bought and sold by the billions.

The Lacks family did not learn about her cells “immortality” until more than twenty years after Henrietta's death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent and without any monetary compensation. The most amazing piece of this story is how Rebecca Skloot gained the access to this family which had been used and abused by others. Black Americans in East Baltimore had fear of John Hopkins using their bodies and tissues for research. The HeLa cells are connected to the unethical history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control our own tissues. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. and became highly interested in answers to her questions:

• Had scientists cloned her mother?
• Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space?
• What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen?
• If her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

The book is an amazing accomplishment not only in terms of the writing and research, but also in human terms. Skoot's dogged determination to honor the family legacy comes shining through this absorbing narrative.This energetic science writer has just moved to Chicago!

Civil Rights viewed in a new "light"

Historical fiction really does combine a good dose of history with fiction. Such a genre seems like it could be difficult to write - how much of and which facets of fact and fiction swirled together makes for the read that is "just right"?

Whenever I read historical fiction, I learn something new and think "why didn't I just read this book in my social studies class? It would have made all the difference." I think historical fiction is overlooked too often as boring, stuffy, something a reader may not be able to relate. However, especially when the history is interwined with fiction, - history comes to life in an engaging, educational, and accessible format.

A "just right" read comes in Sources of Light by Margaret McMullan. She lived in Jackson, MS from 1963 to 1969, a pivotal time in U.S. History, and provided the setting for this book.

In 1962, Sam and her mother move from Pittsburgh, PA to Jackson, MS, an entirely new environment for Sam. As a freshman in high school, Sam struggles with the same issues as teenagers today. What is most poignant is how she grapples with ethical, social, and political questions of the time that have no easy, nor sometimes logical, answers.

Sam experiments with and learns to listen and speak through photography - what becomes her very own Pentax camera, the developing room, and the photographs that capture moments and memories. Sam can't be like all the other girls; her mom isn't even like all the other moms in the community. She also knows how to use a camera to be an activist, make a statement, and help her friends - those her age and adults. Sam encounters situations in life that influence her to be a good person, to help others, and, when necessary, to move with the ebb and flow of life.


The characters are real, the emotions are honest and raw, the actions are true to form, and the issues are bold. The sentences are well-written, creative, and provide for so much imagery, I had to laugh, smile, or grab a tissue.
One of my favorites: "The corners of Mill Welty's eyes crinkled like tissue paper as she smiled and welcomed us all (214).
A line I will try to remember: She'd told me fear was just one more thing you could change into something else, something else like anger or even love."

Source of Light provides the right aperture (I hope I'm using that word correctly!) on the history of our country in a way that is accessible, meaningful, and reflective.

I like the idea of curating tweets - be sure to follow the YALSA blog

Here's a sample from this week's blog:

Tweets of the Week – November 5, 2010
Linda W Braun | Prof. Development | Friday, November 5th, 2010

Tweets of the Week – November 5, 2010

Linda W Braun | Prof. Development | Friday, November 5th, 2010

A short list of tweets posted over the last week that librarians and the teens that they serve may find interesting:

• eschoolnews: parents more likely to purchase mobile device for child for classroom use http://tinyurl.com/2vx5olz – @wsstephens
• FCC taking on cyberbullying in schools http://reut.rs/a3lkQ4 Order linked to e-rate – @StephenBalkam
• 8 Tools Your Virtual Team Shouldn’t Live Without http://tinyurl.com/2abznod – @OPENForum
• WSJ.com – Why E-Books Aren’t Scary, according to Stephen King (unless an electromagnetic pulse deletes everything!) http://on.wsj.com/akBi7U – @jendimmick
• Does Screen Reading Count?: It should, according to this study. I’m not so sure the experience is the same, and I’… http://bit.ly/ciKmPK – @educationweek
• NPR.org » Wikipedia Teams Up With Academia http://tinyurl.com/2fa5lks – @pollyalida
• School Principals and Social Networking in Educationhttp://www.mchdata.com/PDFs/PrincipalsandSocialNetworkingReport.pdf – @libraryms
• Time to start reading & digesting latest Project Info Lit report. http://bit.ly/9Z0vqh – @sfrancoeur
• Supreme Court’s Video Game Violence Word Cloud http://bit.ly/aVOfhw – @fastcompany
• You’re the Boss: When the Tech Guy Is 13 (or Even 10) http://nyti.ms/dkpD6z – @nytimestech

If you aren't on Twitter yet for professional development, you need to be!