NCBLA News

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* * The Horn Book Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal and Amazon Editor’s have given Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out starred reviews and named it as one of the Best Books of 2008!  
Ask for it at your local library and bookstore. All royalties help the NCBLA further its educational and advocacy goals!

Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out is an extraordinary new book that will ignite young people’s interest in our nation’s past as well as provoke them to thoughtfully consider our future!

A creative tour de force, Our White House features the work of 108 award-winning contributors who have donated original art, poetry, nonfiction, historical fiction, and personal essays to help the NCBLA promote both literacy and historical literacy. Equally suited for home and classroom use, our book is interdisciplinary in nature and multicultural in outlook.  It stands on its own as an innovative concept covering 200 years of American history, but it also serves as a gateway book, inspiring young people to read more about our country’s rich heritage and culture. Our White House offers readers of all ages a vibrant way of looking at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – at the people who built it, have lived in it, and have been touched by it – and at the role we citizens have played in keeping it at the center of our astonishingly resilient and extraordinary democracy. This unprecedented anthology offers a dynamic view of American history that we hope will inspire young readers on their journeys to becoming the civic leaders of tomorrow!

For eight years, the NCBLA has worked with a talented team of editors and designers at Candlewick Press to create Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out. We are thrilled, and grateful, that a number of award-winning authors and illustrators have contributed their work to this remarkable creative effort; not one contributor has received any financial reimbursement for this project. Contributing writers and artists include:

Stephen Alcorn, Gigi Amateau, M.T. Anderson, Jennifer Armstrong, Jeannine Atkins, Tony Auth, Natalie Babbitt, Mary Brigid Barrett, Sophie Blackall, Jess M. Brallier, Calef Brown, Don Brown, Joseph Bruchac, Robert Byrd, Meg Cabot, Eric Carle, Nancy Carpenter, Joe Cepeda, R. Gregory Christie, John Y. Cole, Michael Cooper, Susan Cooper, Marguerite W. Davol, Kate DiCamillo, Diane Dillon, Leo Dillon, Carol Dyer, Jane Dyer, Timothy Basil Ering, Lou Fancher, Russell Freedman, Tony Fucile, Jean Craighead George, Leonid Gore, Max Grafe, Barbara Harrison, Kevin Hawkes, Homer Hickam, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Polly Horvath, Bagram Ibatoulline, Paul B. Janeczko, Steve Johnson, Stéphane Jorisch, Steven Kellogg, Barbara Kerley, Ralph Ketchum, Elizabeth Cody Kimmel, Bob Kolar, Kathleen Krull, Jim LaMarche, Stephanie Loer, William Low, P.J. Lynch, David Macaulay, Patricia MacLachlan, Gregory Maguire, Leonard S. Marcus, Albert Marrin, Petra Mathers, David McCullough, Emily Arnold McCully, Megan McDonald, Fredrick L. McKissack, Patricia C. McKissack, Milton Meltzer, Wendell Minor, Barry Moser, Roxie Munro, Walter Dean Myers, Claire Nivola, Linda Sue Park, Katherine Paterson, Richard Peck, Stephanie True Peters, Matt Phelan, Jerry Pinkney, Tom Pohrt, Don Powers, Jack Prelutsky, James Ransome, Chris Raschka, Mike Reagan, Lynda Johnson Robb, Barry Root, S. D. Schindler, Jon Scieszka, Brian Selznick, Chris Sheban, Anita Silvey, Peter Sís, David Slonim, David Small, Jerry Spinelli, Sarah Stewart, Matt Tavares, Mark Teague, Stephanie S. Tolan, Chris Van Dusen, Diana Walker, Andréa Wesson, Terry Widener, Nancy Willard, Mark London Williams, Michael Winerip, Virginia Euwer Wolff, Jane Yolen, Ed Young, James Young, M.D.

Be sure to check out the NCBLA’s companion educational website www.ourwhitehouse.org. Here you will find expanded book content for Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out that includes additional primary and secondary source materials and articles, activities, and discussion questions related to book and website topics. Also included is an American history resource and literacy center, a guide to presidential field trip destinations, and an extensive young people’s bibliography.

For the latest news on Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out including promotional events go to the NCBLA's blog spot at: http://thencbla.blogspot.com/

To go the NCBLA White House Book project page, click here.

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Letters from the White House contest winners announced

On Inauguration Day 2009, Adlit, Reading Rockets, and the NCBLA launched a creative writing contest open to students across America in celebration of the publication of Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out. We asked students to imagine what it would be like to live and work in the Executive Mansion and to write about that experience in the form of letters and journal entries.

Students were truly inspired and wrote about séances in the Red Room, a ladybug in the punch, and a ticklish rug in the Oval Office, as well as a Rough Rider's description of a trip out West. We were thrilled that over 1,500 students nationwide participated!

The NCBLA congratulates all our young writers and winners! View the list of winners on the AdLit.org website.

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our white house: looking in, looking out named a national endowment for the humanities we the people bookshelf selection!

The NCBLA is honored that the National Endowment for the Humanities has named Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out as a We the People Bookshelf selection for  2009-2010, when the book shelf theme will be “Picturing America.” The NEH has indicated that they will be purchasing 7,000 copies of Our White House to make them available for school and public libraries in need across the country.

The We the People Bookshelf is a set of classic books for young readers from kindergarten through high school. Each year the NEH identifies a theme important to our nation's heritage and selects books that embody that theme. This collection of theme-related books is the Bookshelf. In addition to introducing young readers to good literature; the Bookshelf promotes understanding of abstract or general ideas through the power of particular stories. NEH awards these Bookshelves to libraries across the country for use in programs primarily for young people. U.S. public and school (K-12) libraries are eligible to apply for Bookshelf grants. In return for receiving a Bookshelf, libraries organize programs that highlight the theme and encourage young readers to explore the selected books.

The American Library Association(ALA) collaborates with NEH to deliver this program. ALA staff and libraries help to select the books, and work directly with the nation's libraries to disseminate information and to encourage libraries to take part in the We the People Bookshelf grant program.

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the national endowment for the humanities awards the ncbla a grant of $25,000 to build www.ourwhitehouse.org

The National Endowment of the Humanities has awarded the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance a $25,000 grant to build a companion educational website for the NCBLA publication Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out! 

OurWhiteHouse.org will be written primarily for adults who live with and work for young people—parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, guardians, teachers, librarians, mentors, coaches, and community leaders. We hope that the additional historical content, and the ideas and activities we present on the site, will help adults ignite young people’s interest in our nation’s past as well as provoke them to thoughtfully consider our future. In her introduction to the first White House historic guidebook, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote, “it never hurts a child to read something that may be above his head.” With that in mind, we also hope that many young people will find our site compelling and useful.

In www.OurWhiteHouse.org you will find expanded Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out book content, as well as ideas, activities, and discussion questions related to book topics. And you will find an American history resource and literacy center, a guide to presidential field trip destinations, and an extensive young people’s bibliography. We will be continually adding to the site to include more book related content and activities, as well as information on civic education and media literacy.

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dominican university's graduate school of library and information science asks the national children's book and literacy alliance to serve in an advisory capacity for their new butler children's literature center!

Susan Roman, the Dean of Dominican University's Graduate School of Library and Information Science, has asked the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance to serve on the advisory board for their recently established Butler Children's Literature Center. The NCBLA is thrilled and honored to serve and will be represented at Advisory Board Meetings by NCBLA president and executive director Mary Brigid Barrett.

Established in 2007 with a gift from the Butler Family Foundation, GSLIS’s forthcoming Butler Literature Center seeks to become one of the nation’s premier centers for the study of children’s and young adult literature. The Butler Literature Center will serve as an examination center for children’s and young adult books published annually in the United States, and as an historical collection of the best children’s and young adult literature published nationally and internationally. The Center will also serve as an evidence-based, best practices professional collection in support of the application and integration of children’s and young adult literature in classrooms, libraries, childcare centers, and homes. Open to educators, scholars, researchers, librarians, teachers, parents, and other care providers for children, the Center plans to offer a robust selection of programs, conferences, continuing education courses, web resources, and research opportunities. University partners include the School of Education and the Rebecca Crown Library.

For more information visit
Dominican University's Graduate School
of Library and Information Science website at:
www.dom.edu/academics/gslis/home/

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NCBLA/America SCORES

NCBLA president Mary Brigid Barrett has been named to the advisory board for America SCORES, a national program that uses the popularity of soccer to get urban public school children excited about reading and writing (for more information see below).  On behalf of the NCBLA, Barrett has acted as consultant on the writing projects and has given presentations to both staff and students all across the East Coast and in Cleveland for many years.  The advisory board appointment is a formalization of an ongoing relationship.
America SCORES www.americascores.org develops literacy programs that use the world's most popular sport, soccer, to energize and inspire public school students.  All of our programs require that our children use the teamwork they learn on the soccer field to support each other as poets and authors in the classroom.  
 
America SCORES provides a host of resources to urban communities across the country. These include the following:
 
Soccer and Creative Writing Curricula that include complete lessons for developing teamwork, leadership, and communication skills among urban youth.

Professional Development resources to foster the development of urban public school teachers and coaches.

Technical Assistance to support and develop our soccer/academic enrichment model for both boys and girls within urban public schools.

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mbb interview on wondertime site

NCBLA president and executive director Mary Brigid Barrett was recently interviewed by Amy Maclin of Wondertime Magazine for its website at http://wondertime.go.com/. You can access the article, a parenting publication, “Five Big Ways to Help to Help Kids Love Books!” at: http://wondertime.go.com/learning/article/helping-kids-love-books.html

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