Preparing Students To Smash Summer Reading Goals With Sora....Join This NEW Book Creator Webinar On April 2nd!

 

There is a NEW Book Creator webinar coming up this week on April 2 at 12:00pm EST that you won't want to miss! 

It's called Preparing Students to Smash Summer Reading Goals with Sora. 

As shared in the invite, 

Join David Hotler, Book Creator's Community Manager, and Tiffany Wincek, OverDrive’s Product Liaison, to learn how to smash summer reading goals with Book Creator and Sora! Sora’s new Daily Reading Goals motivate students with positive reinforcement, helping them explore the cosmos with every page they read.

You can register for this exciting webinar here, friends. 

The April 2025 Demco Activity Calendars For Early Literacy Activities and Children's Activities Are Here, Friends.

The April 2025 Demco Activity Calendars are here! 

I love finding these special calendars each month on the Demco site. I love printing them off to share with our teachers and families, and I love sharing them online too. 

You will find the Early Literacy Activity for April 2025 here.

And the Children's Activity Calendar for April 2025 here.

Both of these calendars are filled with ideas and activities for you to engage with your students and children all month long.

You can also find all of the Activity Calendars here at the Demco Ideas and Inspiration site. 

Have a fun April, friends. 

Celebrate National Library Week With These Mad Libs From Our Friends At Penguin School and Library

 

As we get ready to celebrate National Library Week, April 6-12, 2025, our friends at Penguin School and Library have created something super fun to use in our libraries. 

You will find the National Library Week Mad Libs here.

Free Author Events Every Friday In April From Our Friends At Storyvoice!

 

There is an amazing line up of author events in April from our friends at Storyvoice. 

These events start this Friday at 10:30am CST. 

You will find them here. 

Submit your Books For Book Creator's Be An Author Month By April 5, 2025, Friends!

 

In March, we have been celebrating our student authors by writing personal narratives using Book Creator for Be An Author Month.  It's been so much fun and such a wonderful way to give our students a special way to share their writing, creativity and voice. 

Now it is time to publish and submit the books for the contest, friends. The deadline for submission is April 5, 2025. 

You will find the link to submit your entry here on the Book Creator site. 

If you have more questions, you will find that information there too. 

Gear Up For Summer Reading With The NEW "Art of Reading" Site From Capstone!

 

I love getting ready for summer reading with my friends at Capstone!  And today is the day they shared a special site and lots of amazing resources for our students to read, color, create and explore all summer long. 

As shared on The Art of Reading site from Capstone, 

Summer is the perfect time for kids to explore new books, discover favorite authors, and keep their love of reading alive. Partnering with your local library can help families find exciting new booklists and fun programs that inspire kids to keep turning pages all summer long! 

On this site, you will find so many wonderful resources including, 

Downloadables such as a Reading Log, Summer Reading Bingo, Bookmark Bundle, and even the...

Capstone Summer Reading 2025 Coloring Book; 

Booklists to Spark Creativity, 

four Capstone books and activities, 

Quick Tips for Parents, and more. 

You will find Capstone's Summer Reading site, The Art of Reading, here. 

Let's Learn Together At The Creative Lib Fest, A Celebration of Creativity in School Libraries with Adobe Express for Education!

 

I am excited to be part of the very first Creative Lib Fest, A Celebration of Creativity in School Libraries with Adobe Express for Education and an amazing lineup of creative librarians. 

The Creative Lib Fest is on April 26 from 11:00am-2:30pm EST. This will be a wonderful event for all school librarians. 

As shared in the invite, 

April is School Library Month, and what better way to celebrate than by bringing together passionate school librarians and educators for a day filled with creativity, inspiration, and hands-on learning?

Join us for this free virtual event designed to spark ideas, build connections, and showcase innovative ways to bring Adobe Express for Education and creative learning strategies into school libraries.

📅 Event Date: Saturday, April 26, 2025

⏰ Time: 11am - 2:30pm ET

📍 Location: Virtual (links to sessions shared after registration)

Whether you’re looking to enhance digital storytelling, instructional partnerships, media literacy, student voice, or creative approaches to fostering a love of reading, this event is for you!

I hope you will join us for this special event, friends. I cannot wait to connect and learn with all of you.  The schedule will be shared very soon.

Register here today https://adobe.ly/creativelibfest

Episode 2 Of The Future Ready Librarians Podcast Is Now Live....Administrator Support Is Essential For Future Ready Librarians!

 

Season 10 of the Future Ready podcast series, Leading From The Library is now LIVE with 12 new episodes with amazing librarians, educators and other special guests. We couldn't be more excited about this new season full of amazing stories, timely topics and inspiring conversations. 

In the second podcast, former school librarian and current middle school assistant principal Blake Hopper and his school's new librarian, Andrea Wilson, talk about being a new school librarian and ways principals can support Future Ready Librarians and the library program. 

It was a great episode and one you won't want to miss. It's also the perfect episode to share with your administrators too.

On the Leading from the Library podcast site, you will find all of the future and past episodes.

There are so many important, interesting and exciting topics for all of us as Future Ready Librarians and educators. You won't want to miss them. 

You can subscribe to wherever you listen to your podcasts. 

A big thank you to our friends at Follett Content for supporting our Future Ready Librarian Podcast Series. 

We hope that you join us each week for the Leading from the Library Podcast, friends.  

Follow Us At "The Library Voice Pinterest" For Lots Of NEW Updates, Ideas, and Fun!

 

We love finding, sharing, and saving on Pinterest.  There are so many amazing things shared every day. 

Brianna and I have been doing a lot of work in The Library Voice Pinterest and can't wait to share more throughout the year.

You will find The Library Voice Pinterest here, friends. We hope you will give us a follow for lots of new updates, ideas, and fun! 

The NEW April 2025 PebbleGo & PebbleGo Monthly Holiday Calendar Is Here! Turn It Into An Interactive Research Choice Board For Your Students & Teachers!

The NEW April 2025 PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next Monthly Holiday Calendar is here!  I love these calendars that our friends at Capstone share each month.

In this post, I share more about the PebbleGo Monthly Calendars. 

I love making paper copies of these to share with our teachers and kids. 

They hang them up in their classrooms and hang them in our library too. I also share them online through social media and as an image in Google Classroom or Seesaw. 

Here is the PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next April 2025 Holidays Calendar. 

Last year, when I was sharing the calendars with teachers and students, I thought....Hey, this would be really fun in a choice board! 

So, I opened up a Google Slide, uploaded the PebbleGo April 2025 Holidays Calendar, and added a little chalk board with text over the top.  

Then I went through the calendar and found every special day in PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next. 

For example, Children's Book Day on April 2, so they have the How Books Are Made PebbleGo article featured. I went to PebbleGo and found the article in PebbleGo.

I grabbed the link, as shown in the image above.  

I took that link and added a linked text box around each special date. 

Now, when the kids click on a holiday, it will take them directly to that PebbleGo article.  

One thing I LOVE about this years PebbleGo Calendars is that we include Capstone Interactive eBooks too!  You can just grab the link just like we do in an article and...

 ...add it to the choice board where the book covers are located in the calendar. 

If you want to use the template to create your own, you will find the Google Slide here to make a copy and add links to the PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next articles. 

And to make it a choice board, just Publish to the web, as shown in this image above. 

You will share that Published Link with your students.  

I love sharing these interactive PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next Holiday Calendars with our students and teachers. They love learning all about these special days that are highlighted each month too.

I am excited to have the April 2025 PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next ready to go for the month. I hope you will find ways to use it with your students and teachers this month, and all throughout the school year too. 

Create A Collaborative Joke Book With Your Students For April Fools Day in Book Creator!

 

April Fools Day is on April 1, so we are getting ready to celebrate with our students. 

We are using Book Creator to gather jokes from all of the students.  Let me show you how we are creating this collaborative joke book so you can do it with your students too. 

I went to the April Book Creator Journal Activity Book here. 

I copied the April Fools Day page into a new book and deleted the poem text from the page. 

I added a circle in the middle with the text Record Your Joke. 

I added two little images giving them a prompt to click on the + and then on the camera icon to record themselves sharing their joke. 

I created a New Library for the Van Meter April Fools Day Joke Books and added the book to this Library.

I Assigned it to anyone who joins that Library. 

And the last step was to share the Invite Code or URL with all of our students in their Google Classroom. 

Once everyone has a book created with their joke, I will bring them all together into one big joke book. 

I can't wait to see what our students and teachers create for April Fools Day.  It will be a special book to share with our families too.  

This is going to be so much fun! 

You can Remix a copy here of the April Fools Day Joke Book to use with your school too.  

Learn At The 4 Follett Institutes! You Can Sign Up For One Today, Friends.

 

Last week, I wrote about the NEW Follett Academy...

...your path to engaging and effective learning from Follett Software.  You can read my post here where I talk about how Follett Academy is our one-stop shop for all Follett Software Training Courses. 

Today I would love to highlight the Follett Institute within Follett Academy.  

There are currently 4 Follett Institutes.  They cover the topics of Back Office Basics, Back Office Advanced, Destiny Discover, and District Users.  These are perfect for all users, especially librarians and staff new to the library and Destiny Library Manager.

You will find the Follett Institutes here, friends.  I know you will find these valuable to support your work, library staff, and other library essentials too. 

Makerspace Magic! 15 Top Makerspace Books That Spark Curiosity, Invention, Discovery and Fun!

 

The readers at my school love our Makerspace books! 

We have a special Makerspace book area on the end of a shelf in our library. It's so fun to find books to add to this area as our students love reading them in the library and classroom, and checking them out to take home.  They are always such a hit.

Our friends at Capstone have a wonderful new blog post featuring 15 top Makerspace titles that support curiosity, invention, and discovery.  You will find this post here.

I just added several to my list and can't wait to add these to our Makerspace collection.