The Books and Stories to Read with Your Children

What to Read When: The Books and Stories to Read with Your Child and All the Best Times to Read Them

by Pam Allyn

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Book Description
In What to Read When, award-winning educator Pam Allyn celebrates the power of reading aloud with children. In many ways, books provide the first opportunity for children to begin to reflectively engage with and understand the world around them. Not only can parents entertain their child and convey the beauty of language through books, they can also share their values and create lasting connections.

Here, Allyn offers parents and caregivers essential advice on choosing appropriate titles for their children taking into account a child’s age, attention ability, gender, and interests along with techniques for reading aloud effectively. But what sets this book apart is the extraordinary, annotated list of more than three hundred titles suitable for the pivotal moments in a child’s life. With category themes ranging from friendship and journeys to thankfulness, separations, silliness, and spirituality, What to Read When is a one-of-a-kind guide to how parents can best inspire children through reading together. In addition, Pam Allyn includes an indispensable “Reader’s Ladder” section, with recommendations for children at every stage from birth to age ten. With the author’s warm and engaging voice throughout, discussion questions to encourage in-depth conversations, as well as advice on helping kids make the transition to independent reading, this book will help shape thoughtful, creative, and curious children, imparting a love of reading that will last a lifetime.

About the Author
Pam Allyn is the founder and executive director of LitLife, an internationally recognized organization that trains hundreds of K-12 teachers each year in literacy techniques. She is also the founding director of Books for Boys, an award-winning mentoring and reading initiative at the Children’s Village. The recipient of a Points of Light Award from the Bush Foundation and two James Patterson Pageturner awards, Allyn speaks frequently to parents, teachers, and librarians at major conferences, and has also appeared on the Today show.

Readers' Advisory for Children & Tweens

Readers' Advisory for Children and Tweens

by Penny Peck

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Book Description
Finding children and Ôtweens great books to read is still a key library service, even in the age of computers. Readers' Advisory for Children and 'Tweens is an easy-to-use, practical guide that will help any library staff member become more comfortable offering this service and more adept at producing satisfying results.

Beginning with basic advice on the readers' advisory interview, the book details how to find books for different age groups, including young children and their parents, emergent readers, transitional readers, and adept readers. It explores genre fiction for Ôtweens, nonfiction, poetry and folklore, and graphic novels, and it offers techniques on promoting books and reading. Potentially sensitive issues such as book challenges, assisting English language learners, serving children from various cultures, working with teachers, and helping reluctant readers are addressed, as well. The advice is augmented with handy booklists and descriptions of dozens of websites that aid in youth readers' advisory.

Review
"There are plenty of books on readers' advisory for adults….Now comes Readers' Advisory for Children and 'Tweens. Service to this group requires special skills, author Penny Peck asserts. She describes some of the issues, including censorship challenges, before exploring the ins and outs of RA for different age groups and in different categories, including genre fiction, nonfiction, folklore, poetry, and graphic novels. The numerous book lists are especially helpful."