The Rampart Guards by debut author Wendy Terrien

Are you bemused by Bigfoot, nuts about Nessie, and fascinated with faeries? Mystical and mysterious creatures have captured our imagination since humans first began to swap stories over campfires. The world of unexplained and unverified lifeforms now falls under its own fringe scientific category – cryptozoology. Debut author Wendy Terrien has her own ideas about this secret world and has turned them into an action-packed, magical mystery.

When Jason Lex arrives home with his dad and siblings from his afterschool basketball game to find his mom missing, he isn’t sure what to think. Has she abandoned them or did something terrible happen to her? Night stretches into the next morning and the police arrive on their doorstep with her bloodied shirt in hand. While they never find a body, the conclusion based upon the amount of blood on the shirt is that she was attacked by a mountain lion and can’t possibly have survived.

The family mourns for several months before Jason’s dad finally decides it would be better for all of them to pack up and move several hours away to be near his mother’s family. As the moving van is pulling away from the house, Jason looks back at it one last time and he is convinced he sees his mom walk past a window. Everyone seems convinced Jason is simply consumed with grief.

The mystery continues to deepen when he meets his mom’s brother – an uncle he never knew existed. His uncle is known around town as a quirky oddball who wanders about gathering data for his research on mythical creatures as a self-proclaimed cryptozoologist. As he begins to build a relationship with his uncle, he learns about the secret role his mother’s family has played in maintaining balance between cryptids and the human world; his mother was a Rampart Guard.  

Terrien has crafted a fun romp that is sure to please middle grade readers clamoring for a new series after devouring Rick Riordan, JK Rowling, and the 000 section of their elementary and middle school libraries.  

The Rampart Guards was released February 25, 2016 by Camashea Press. 

Would you like to go to National Library Legislation Day in DC May 2-3, 2016?

Every Spring, librarians from all over the country swarm Washington, DC to speak out for libraries and our patrons. It is a sight to behold! In 2014, a group of librarians even coordinated a flash mob "Happy" dance on the steps of the Capitol! Many of us serve patrons who, for various reasons, can't advocate for the services we provide. Perhaps you work with homeless teens or students in high poverty school districts with no school libraries. Maybe you work with college students working multiple jobs just to afford their education. Perhaps you run a a maker space that provides opportunities for anyone to explore technology, art, and innovation simply because they are interested. Whether you are a school, public, or academic librarian - or any myriad of other specialty librarian - we all have stories to share that can help lawmakers understand the value Americans gain from strong libraries. And stories from the trenches speak volumes. 

If you are a member of YALSA who has never participated in this exciting event, you can apply for the chance to be selected for a $1000 stipend to attend this year's National Library Legislation Day (NLLD) in Washington, DC on May 2-3, 2016. In order to be considered, members must have not previously attended NLLD must apply via website application by February 1. For more information and to access the application form, go to the advocacy section of the ALA website at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/nlld

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Using the Library of Congress Archives to Teach Visual Literacy

My favorite part of travelling to national library conferences is meeting innovative professionals and hearing about the remarkable things they are doing in libraries with young people. At the AASL National Conference in Columbus during the first week of November, I got to meet librarian Tom Bober and hear a wonderful presentation about using Library of Congress digital resources -- with elementary school students! Tom is an elementary school librarian from Clayton, MO currently serving as teacher in residence at the Library of Congress (http://captainlibrary.blogspot.com/).

There is still such a huge misconception among the general public about just what the role of a school librarian is, what sort of training goes into becoming one, and what we teach. Yes, we do curate collections of books, in all of their formats. We are champions of literacy, although not just in the traditional sense. What sets school librarians aside from other types of librarians is our role in teaching students the skills for ethically using, critically evaluating, effectively searching for, and successfully synthesizing information in an increasingly diverse variety of formats. What I loved about Tom’s AASL presentation was the way he is taking these critical skills and scaffolding them down to our youngest learners so that even Kindergarten students are building a base in research skills.

Just before Thanksgiving break, I had an opportunity to experiment with one of his lesson ideas with my 3rd and 5th graders. The lesson used a series of photographs from the Library of Congress digital archives. The photos depict scenes from a family Thanksgiving dinner in 1940. Most of the photos are taken from various perspectives of a single room. Students were tasked with examining the photos and creating a room diagram showing placement of furniture, doors, windows, etc.
It was fascinating to see students working through the thought process of trying to record only what they see and not what they think they are seeing. Many of them initially started drawing and labelling things as they saw them in relation to their own homes -- kitchen, dining room, family room, mud room, etc. It was a wonderful exercise in visual perception and point of view and quite different from what they are used to doing in school.

The biggest challenge I found was time. We only have a short 45 minute library class and that really wasn’t enough time to effectively complete the exercise. I would also have limited the photos to just the ones showing a single room. Overall, however, I count the lesson as a success and am excited to try more of the lesson ideas from the Library of Congress website in the future! Thanks Tom!