Welcome, Choice Literacy Readers

A big hello and happy new year to all the Choice Literacy members and readers who have stopped by to peruse "The Best of the Best: Kids' Books '08," which rounds up the "best of" lists from many sources, including newspapers, magazines, web sites, and award-winners.

A bit about the blog: I started Chicken Spaghetti back in 2005, and at first I really did consider devoting the bandwidth to pictures of various incarnations of chicken-spaghetti casserole. I grew up in the South, and chicken spaghetti was a favorite meal, as well as a staple of ladies' lunches at church. (Serve it with a spinach salad with mandarin oranges, of course.) Anyway, better sense took hold. How many people are calling out for multiple photos of casseroles? Yeah, very few. I was enjoying reading with my son, then in kindergarten, so I cooked up this blog about children's books.

My professional background is in casserole-concocting print and online magazines, and I did write a teeny-tiny gift book about Elvis. "Your book is in the Smithsonian!" said my cousin ten years ago or so. He had visited on a class trip. What? The curators of that vaunted institution wanted my book in the shape of a record for their collections of Americana? Er, no. The Smithsonian gift shop.

Enough about that.

Everyone should be sure to check out Franki Sibberson's article at Choice Literacy; it's a roundup of great '08 read-alouds for the middle-grade and middle-school crowd. As its web site says, "Choice Literacy is dedicated to providing innovative, high-quality resources for K-12 literacy leaders. Founded in 2006, the website has grown to include over 700 professionally produced and edited video and print features from top educators in the field, as well as promising new voices."

Yay for teachers and librarians reading aloud to older kids at school! My son's teacher's read-alouds to her 4th grade class have had an enormous impact on what my boy chooses to read these days. He has added books like City of Ember and Fig Pudding to his own list of favorites.

I hope you'll stay a while and read around. Lately I've been posting about books for beginning readers. I volunteer as a first-grade reading buddy, and my visits at their school are highlights of my week.

Thank you for visiting. If you're on Twitter, look for me; I'm C_Spaghetti there.

Comments

[Cindy]

First Facebook and now Twitter. You are soooo evolved. I still have the old-fashioned cell that doesn't do e-mail. Maybe one day.

[Susan (Chicken Spaghetti)]

Cindy, I actually hate using the cell phone. Mine doesn't have anything but calls either.

Twitter is good for collecting links to fun stuff that doesn't always fit in the blog.

[Chris Barton]

Susan, do my four years (and counting!) as a happy and loyal Chicken Spaghetti reader count as "staying a while"?

I'm not ready to follow you to Twitter just yet -- I'm afraid my brain might explode from an additional stream of data -- but I once said pretty much the same about blogging and Facebook, and there I am.

Happy 2009!

[Susan (Chicken Spaghetti)]

Hey, Chris! You and Kelly H. were Chicken Spaghetti's first commenters; y'all have a place in the Loyal Reader record books.

I am so excited about The Day-Glo Brothers. I can't wait until it comes out.