And here it is...
After a wee bit of tinkering, I've created a VoiceThread of me, reading aloud the first letter from Letters From Rapunzel. I've allowed comments, but they are moderated, which means that you will only be able to see your own comment until I approve it to be seen by all. By using the icons under the picture, you can leave a comment as text, audio, video, or even by phone---and if you aren't pleased with the comment you create, you can always delete it.
I've also posted this on my website.
Fun, huh?
Showing posts with label booktalks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label booktalks. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
A new way to review or promote books?
Cloudscome introduced me to VoiceThread, and I can't stop thinking about ways authors could use it to reach out to their readers. It's like an interactive booktalk.
Here's a VoiceThread where a class reviews The Landry News by Andrew Clements:
And one more, where fifth graders talk about their favorite books:
Couldn't an author record a reading from her own book, and post it as a public VoiceThread? Then readers could record their responses. The only hitch is that you have to give an email address to register, which I would never ask a child to do. (Although there's an option for a family or educator account, so a child could use an identity under the main account without giving out his email.)
Check it out and if you don't start immediately playing around with your own VoiceThreads, well...you're a stronger person than I was. (You can also search the public threads under the term "review" to pull up more booktalks.)
Here's a VoiceThread where a class reviews The Landry News by Andrew Clements:
And one more, where fifth graders talk about their favorite books:
Couldn't an author record a reading from her own book, and post it as a public VoiceThread? Then readers could record their responses. The only hitch is that you have to give an email address to register, which I would never ask a child to do. (Although there's an option for a family or educator account, so a child could use an identity under the main account without giving out his email.)
Check it out and if you don't start immediately playing around with your own VoiceThreads, well...you're a stronger person than I was. (You can also search the public threads under the term "review" to pull up more booktalks.)
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Lucky Me
I'm back. All went well. (Sigh of relief)
I did, indeed, have the correct laptop cord. My slides showed up beautifully. I had an interested audience, signed a few books, and I didn't spill coffee on myself. (I took an extra pair of pants, just in case. Is that paranoid or what? Maybe not, because I was wearing white, and driving with a steaming mug o' joe and chocolate milk.)
The best part was that I got to stay for the whole conference, and happened to luck into lunch with the keynote speaker, Deborah Taylor.
Deborah is Coordinator of School and Student Services for the Enoch Pratt Free Library. She (I'm pulling this right from the conference program) "has served on the 2004 Michael Printz Award Committee, the 2006 Printz Committee, the 2006 Best Books for Young Adults Committee, the 2002 Newbery Award Committee and was Chair of the 2000 Coretta Scott King Award Jury. She has also served on the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Committee and has reviewed for Horn Book."
In short, if I had to balance my plate of salad on my lap for half an hour in a lobby chair, instead of going upstairs to where the tables were laid out, it was a very small price to pay for that 30 minutes of intense conversation. Deborah loves books with a passion, and we discussed Looking for Alaska, and Black Juice (winner and honor the last time she served on the Printz) and feed and Octavian Nothing and M.T. Anderson's brilliance, and how he and Katherine Paterson offered dueling philosophies on hope in children's books at Children's Literature New England. We talked of Kadir Nelson, and Christopher Paul Curtis, and on and on.
And then, Ms. Taylor got up and gave a fantastic speech about Memory, Reason and Imagination, and filled her presentation with so many more mentions of great books that my to-be-read pile just doubled, I believe.
A lovely day. Oh, and I won a bag of books! How great is that?
I did, indeed, have the correct laptop cord. My slides showed up beautifully. I had an interested audience, signed a few books, and I didn't spill coffee on myself. (I took an extra pair of pants, just in case. Is that paranoid or what? Maybe not, because I was wearing white, and driving with a steaming mug o' joe and chocolate milk.)
The best part was that I got to stay for the whole conference, and happened to luck into lunch with the keynote speaker, Deborah Taylor.
Deborah is Coordinator of School and Student Services for the Enoch Pratt Free Library. She (I'm pulling this right from the conference program) "has served on the 2004 Michael Printz Award Committee, the 2006 Printz Committee, the 2006 Best Books for Young Adults Committee, the 2002 Newbery Award Committee and was Chair of the 2000 Coretta Scott King Award Jury. She has also served on the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Committee and has reviewed for Horn Book."
In short, if I had to balance my plate of salad on my lap for half an hour in a lobby chair, instead of going upstairs to where the tables were laid out, it was a very small price to pay for that 30 minutes of intense conversation. Deborah loves books with a passion, and we discussed Looking for Alaska, and Black Juice (winner and honor the last time she served on the Printz) and feed and Octavian Nothing and M.T. Anderson's brilliance, and how he and Katherine Paterson offered dueling philosophies on hope in children's books at Children's Literature New England. We talked of Kadir Nelson, and Christopher Paul Curtis, and on and on.
And then, Ms. Taylor got up and gave a fantastic speech about Memory, Reason and Imagination, and filled her presentation with so many more mentions of great books that my to-be-read pile just doubled, I believe.
A lovely day. Oh, and I won a bag of books! How great is that?
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
On the Road
If you see a strange sight on I-95 South today, it's probably me and my dog and pony show, heading to the VEMA Rappahannock Regional Conference. (That's where all the cool Media Specialists gather.)
Well, I WISH I had a dog and pony I could take along, but it's just going to be me and my laptop and several thousand of my well-rehearsed words.
Wish me luck.
Let's catch up when I get back...
Well, I WISH I had a dog and pony I could take along, but it's just going to be me and my laptop and several thousand of my well-rehearsed words.
Wish me luck.
Let's catch up when I get back...
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
At It (Again)
I'm at it again. Another presentation---filled with sight and sound---is being created on my laptop, and this one, I'm sure, will be seen in its full glory next week at the
because this time, I have the correct connecting cord (mini-DVI to VGA, if you must know.) I will, however, again be backing up everything to a PowerPoint DVD, on the off-chance that this cord flunks as spectacularly as the last three. I feel simultaneously like the most careful and the most daring presenter in the world.
I'm also working (more slowly) on the YA poetry manuscript I burned through after the SCBWI NY conference. 40 poems! Yippee! On the other hand, I have only a vague idea of how they tell a story. Not-so-yippee. Must work on this. Actually, I love working on this.
And I have completed a pass at an outline of New Recruit that my editor requested. I need to clean it up a bit, and also scribble madly in my novel notebook everything that came to the surface as I did this. An outline is never simply an outline. An outline is like those x-rays they take at the dentist to detect hidden cavities. Yup, I see all my novel's flaws in stark contrast to what I had hoped it was. I knew this would happen, which is why I had to trick myself into doing it by importing the manuscript into Scrivener, and using the synopsis function, so I could have those cute little index cards to push around and play with. *
On the other hand, I had moments as I was re-reading my manuscript for the first time in two months, of not recognizing my own writing. Oh! That's good! Look how she did that! That's when I know the story is working---when I don't recognize the hand behind it.
*Anybody else out there use techno-gadgets, like presentation or writing software, to motivate themselves to tackle a task? I feel as if I might be a geek amongst Luddites.
VEMA Rappahannock Regional Conference
because this time, I have the correct connecting cord (mini-DVI to VGA, if you must know.) I will, however, again be backing up everything to a PowerPoint DVD, on the off-chance that this cord flunks as spectacularly as the last three. I feel simultaneously like the most careful and the most daring presenter in the world.
I'm also working (more slowly) on the YA poetry manuscript I burned through after the SCBWI NY conference. 40 poems! Yippee! On the other hand, I have only a vague idea of how they tell a story. Not-so-yippee. Must work on this. Actually, I love working on this.
And I have completed a pass at an outline of New Recruit that my editor requested. I need to clean it up a bit, and also scribble madly in my novel notebook everything that came to the surface as I did this. An outline is never simply an outline. An outline is like those x-rays they take at the dentist to detect hidden cavities. Yup, I see all my novel's flaws in stark contrast to what I had hoped it was. I knew this would happen, which is why I had to trick myself into doing it by importing the manuscript into Scrivener, and using the synopsis function, so I could have those cute little index cards to push around and play with. *
On the other hand, I had moments as I was re-reading my manuscript for the first time in two months, of not recognizing my own writing. Oh! That's good! Look how she did that! That's when I know the story is working---when I don't recognize the hand behind it.
*Anybody else out there use techno-gadgets, like presentation or writing software, to motivate themselves to tackle a task? I feel as if I might be a geek amongst Luddites.
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