Friday Blurbs: Helping Local Schools, VA Book, and Keeping Busy

This was supposed to be a quiet, get-back-to-the routine kind of week after the WONDERFUL Share a Story-Shape a Future event last week. Even taking out March Madness (dog-gone Hoyas! blew my bracket to smithereens … but I digress), it was a pretty busy week.

First there was the Texas Sweetheart feature, then along came the Internet Radio interview on Getting to the Heart of the Matter yesterday, today it’s Poetry Friday at Some Novel Ideas, the Virginia Festival of the Book (I hope!), and a few other tidbits for you.

A couple of weeks ago, Cathy Colley, a mom and EDC/Usborne representative in the Charlottesville area, has launched  a project for Drop Everything and Read Day (April 12, 2010). From Cathy: “I am working on a project to get each of the 400 students at Red Hill Elementary and Scottsville Elementary in honor of D.E.A.R. When local businesses make donations to the project, EDC will match all donations by 50 percent.” For those outside the Albemarle County area, almost half of the student populations in each of these schools are economically disadvantaged, and in the case of Scottsville 50% are ELL students. If you would like to help and promote this project, go to Cathy’s site usbornetosucceed.com and/or send her an email [cathycolley [at] earthlink [.] net]

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen several reviews of  Miss Brooks Loves Books (and I Don’t).  That got me thinking … is there a list of children’s books about reading? Books where the theme of the story focuses on a love of, distaste of, discovery of, exploration of …. books and reading.  I went to some of my go-to resources (thank you Mary Lee and Franki, Anastasia, Jennifer, and Cathy). I thought for sure there would be such a list somewhere! I even tweeted it – no response. Well, I’m happy to report there is now a list started. I’ve added a widget over on the right hand side and am including a little slideshow here.

I know we’re missing some … so please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments. I’m torn about including books like Shelf Elf and Our Librarian Won’t Tell Us Anything because the emphasis seems to be on the process of selecting books. Am I splitting hairs? I’d love to have your thoughts.

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