The Wash Rag Returns

Mar 17, 2016

The Wash Rag Returns! It could be a fun name for a book, but it is the long-time name of the Reading Tub’s newsletter. As you may remember, one of my goals for this year was to “get a regular newsletter going by spring.” Woot! Spring is three days away and we have a newsletter!

wash rag newsletter

The Wash Rag is a curated newsletter with a few articles. It is “short, sweet and filled with literacy ideas and news. [You can subscribe here.] For those who are new to Family Bookshelf or missed The Wash Rag, we’re republishing it here so you can get a sense of our editorial intent.

The last article includes links to a survey to help us build our FLIP App. We’d love to have the input of our Family Bookshelf readers, too!

The Wash Rag, Spring 2016 Issue

Spring Forward – A New Wash Rag

Welcome Spring! One of our goals for 2016 is to bring back The Wash Rag.

With Daylight Saving Time pushing us ahead, it seems like perfect time to spring forward with a newsletter (re)launch. We’ll keep them short, sweet, and filled with literacy ideas and news.

It’s been a busy first quarter. We just passed the 50 Books Read milestone, and by next quarter expect to have 2,700 reviews in our book bag!

The most exciting news is that the Family Literacy Integration Project is moving forward. Read on to see how you can be part of our project.

Happy reading!

Terry

Terry Doherty
Founder & Executive Director

Genre Reads and Nonfiction

What makes wordless picture books and nonfiction wonderful genres for young readers is that it sparks thinking. Wordless picture books and many nonfiction titles are powered by imagery. Photographs and illustrations that grab the reader without saying a word.

award winning wordless picture booksJust last month, the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (aka Cybils) announced the winners of its 2015 awards.

  • The Fiction Picture Book winner is Sidewalk Flowers, a wordless picture book by JonArno Lawson.
  • The Young Adult Nonfiction winner is Most Dangerous, Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin.

In two recent posts at Family Bookshelf, I wrote a how-to on reading wordless picture books and the diversity of nonfiction options for teens. I hope you’ll click through.

The Cybils lists – from nominees and finalists to winners – are a wonderful resource for finding books that combine the best of literary quality and reader appeal.

FLIP Update

We are most excited to announce that our Family Literacy Integration Project (FLIP) is now moving forward.

As a Reading Tub subscriber, we value your input as we seek to make FLIP a forward-leaning, first-of-its-kind literacy tool. We have created a short survey to collect data in three essential areas:

  • Literacy-related Needs and Habits
  • Patterns of Technology Use
  • Roles & Experiences

Please take our short survey to help make FLIP the best family literacy tool it can be. [Survey length: six minutes or less.]

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