The following report was submitted by a recipient of our new CMLE scholarship program.
Submitted by: Mary Berning
The 31st Annual Children’s Literature Workshop was help on Monday, June 21st and Tuesday, June 22, 2010 in St. Cloud, MN. It was sponsored by the Center for Information Media at St. Cloud State University.
On Monday morning Will Hobbs, author of 17 adventure novels for upper elementary, middle school and YA readers, shared where he gets the ideas for his books. Much research goes into each of his books. By visiting his website (willhobbsauthor.com) and clicking on the book covers, you can see photos and also learn about where Will gets his ideas. In the afternoon, Susan Carr Brown, a librarian at the Minneapolis Public Library shared what she feels are the best of children’s books for 2009 – 2010. Her list included Will Hobbs’s Go Big or Go Home and Derek Anderson’s Hot Rod Hamster.
On Tuesday morning, participants attended three out of four of the small group sessions. Small group sessions included Secrets and Skullduggery: Mysteries and More for Tween Readers, Motivating Readers through Technology, Hands-on Bookmaking and Award-Winning Children’s Books of 2009-10. Kelly Killorn, a 6th grade reading teacher for Bloomington Schools presented Motivating Readers through Technology. She shared ideas for using 21st century technologies like wikis, blogs, graphic posters, social networks, voicethread, and videos to motivate readers. To learn more about how she uses these technologies visit her wikispace (kidlittechnology.wikispaces.com). In the afternoon, Derek Anderson, illustrator of eight books including the Little Quack series and author/illustrator of six of his own titles, shared photos and drawings from his childhood and young adult years that showed how he became the illustrator he is today. Curtis Hed, a magician, ended the workshop with his Magic of Reading show; his show shared how reading and using the library has played an important part in his life,and how it can do the same for others.
