• Poetry Friday: On a Flake-Flying Day

    This week’s Poetry Friday host is Jama at Jama’s Alphabet Soup. https://jamarattigan.com/   On a Flake-Flying Day       On a Flake-Flying Day: Watching Nature’s Wonders by Buffy Silverman Millbrook Press, 2023   On a Flake-Flying Day is another book in Buffy Silverman’s season series. You can see…

  • NF10for10 2018: Sidebars are Not for Skipping

    As a kid, I’m pretty sure I only read sidebars if they looked interesting. But there are a whole bunch of nonfiction picture books with excellent sidebars. As a writer and a librarian I’ve been keenly interested in nonfiction books that have two levels of text—a main text and…

  • ReFoReMo is Here!

    ReFoReMo stands for Reading for Research Month. It is run by Carrie Charley Brown and her team and focuses on diving into picture books as mentor texts. My post is the first one in the line up today with a focus on reader engagement in picture books. Hop on…

  • Mentor Texts in the Classroom: Pet Projects by Lynne Marie

    Please welcome author Lynne Marie to our Mentor Texts in the Classroom series. Teachers are always looking for new ways to help kids tell their own stories. Pet stories often make their way into student writing. What better way to help students become better writers than to introduce them…

  • Poetry Mentor Texts: A Rock Can Be by Laura Purdie Salas

    A Rock Can Be… By Laura Purdie Salas Illustrated by Violeta Dabija Millbrook, 2015 On Tuesday, my students and I had a Skype visit with Laura Purdie Salas. Just hearing her talk about her process was so encouraging to all of us. In preparation for her Skype visit, we…

  • Poetry Mentor Texts: Some Bugs by Andrea DiTerlizzi

    Some Bugs By Andrea DiTerlizzi Illustrated by Brendan Wenzel Beach Lane, 2014 Some Bugs is one of those books that completely absorbs the reader in it’s fun but spare language. It’s a brilliant 94 words! Like Raindrops Roll, it’s one I typed up because I wanted to study the…