Howard_Samantha_Blog Share_ Blog #4

School librarians wear so many hats, including community builders and literature lovers. They have notoriously big hearts and want to share their passions and resources with everyone. Thankfully, this means there are tons of great blogs written by school librarians at all levels who share their ideas, lessons, literature reviews, and more. Below I am sharing a few of my favorite blogs and I recommend you bookmark any that benefit you to review later.

For starters, Don’t Shush Me! is the first school library blog I ever stumbled across and has been a constant resource for me. It is written by Kelsey, who is a high school librarian, and was started in 2014 when she was writing her own blog for one of her graduate school classes! She took the assignment and expanded it to the robust platform it is today, and she includes a well organized Blog Index for easy navigation of her posts. She writes about anything and everything related to school librarianship, but some of my favorites include her explanations of genrefication and her book displays. Additionally, she has a multitude of posts on using TikTok as a high school librarian.

Bonus: When I was first hired as a middle school librarian and given access to our school’s online cataloging system, Destiny, I used her post on End of Year Reports to gather valuable information to present to my new administrator.

Speaking of middle school, another great blog is Ms.Yingling Reads: Books for the Middle Grades. Ms. Yingling has been a middle school librarian for 14 years in Columbus, Ohio and boasts that she has “read every fiction book in my school library and reads all books before purchasing” which is an amazing feat! What I enjoy about her blog are the book reviews and, more specifically, how she writes about the strengths and weaknesses of each story. She also includes a “what I really think” section in each review which highlights her personal thoughts on the book as well as what type of read might enjoy it. Additionally, she organizes her blog with tabs for different fiction genres that take the reader to lists of books that fit that genre for quick and easy recommendations.

Bonus: She has a link to her Goodreads account and a progress bar showing that she’s currently read 603 books in 2023 alone with a yearlong goal of 850!

Finally, The Story Sanctuary is another great blog for book reviews with a specific focus on content warnings. While the blogger, Kasey Giard, is not a school librarian, she does have over ten years of experience writing book reviews and never charges for her reviews so she can maintain her honest opinion as a reviewer. Most of the titles on the site are middle school to young adult level, with almost no elementary specific titles. The reviews are considerably longer, but Kelsey breaks them into three main sections: an overview of the book, her personal review, and then content notes. I specifically bookmarked this blog for the content notes because it goes beyond the basic age rating and trigger warnings to gives specific information about the content. For example, in the content notes of the review for “Hamra and the Jungle of Memories” by Hanna Alkaf, there is violent content which Kelsey goes on to specify it involves men using spears to hung the main character, animal attacks, and even how the main character has to pull out teeth from a dangerous creature. I personally find the detailed examples helpful when recommending books because there are different types of triggers for different readers and violence between adults might not be one, but violence against animals might be.

Bonus: The Story Sanctuary has a specific page for readers/parents to find out more information about the age range for books, representation, and content warning including profane language types and frequency.

 

Reading List for Week 4
Ghost Story	Gustavo: The Shy Ghost	Flavia Z. Drago
Ghost Story	Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark	Alvin Schwartz
Ghost Story	Bunnicula	Deborah and James Howe
Ghost Story	Lon Po Po	Ed young
Ghost Story	The Dark	Lemony Snicket
Ghost Story	In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories	Retold by Alvin Schwartz
Ghost Story	Spooky Libraries	Jessica Rudolph
Poem	Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening	Robert Frost
Poem	Still I Rise	Maya Angelou
Poem	Oh Captain! My Captain!	Walt Witman
Poem	In This Place (An American Lyric)	Amanda Gorman
Poem	Annabel Lee	Edgar Allen Poe
Poem	The Soul Unto Itself	Emily Dickinson
Poem	Ah! Sunflower	William Blake
Poem	A Giraffe and A Half	Shel Silverstein
Poem	Dream Variations	Langston Hughes
Poem	Jabberwocky	Lewis Carroll
Poem	Mother Doesn’t Want a Dog	Judith Viorst
Poem	Nonsense Alphabet	Edward Lear