For Children’s Book Week, we want to highlight books and authors talks available for free online from the Library of Congress. Of course, these can be powerful and engaging literacy tools any week of the year!
Explore Read.gov to discover familiar and unknown classic books for teens and children, offering both textual and visual delights for readers of all ages. Some of our favorites are:
- The Children’s Object Book – pictures of objects in and around homes a century ago might help students better understand life at that earlier time;
- Gobolinks – inkblots and short poems offer ideas for an art project that can also be a writing game;
- The Rocket Book – a rollicking tale with drawings that might prompt students to wonder about life in the early 20th century;
- The Jungle Book – a familiar story with beautiful illustrations that students might compare to one of the films based on the book; and,
- The Raven – haunting art by Gustave Doré interprets scenes from Poe’s narrative poem and might prompt students to create their own visual or performed interpretation.
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The Library also has an archive of author talks from past National Book Festivals. Younger children might enjoy hearing from Jacqueline Woodson, Kate DiCamillo, Rafael López or others. Teens might begin with webcasts by Kwame Alexander, Sabaa Tahir, Sonia Manzano, or Gene Luen Yang, current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and then explore on their own.
Share your students’ favorites or discoveries in the comments.
Comments (2)
This is some resource! The “author talks” links to the numerous 2015 webcasts can run a literature/literacy curriculum on its own for at least a year. Read.gov should be everybody’s bookmark and the five favorites are for every age. Thank you for sharing this celebration post so that we who read it can share the treasures with others.
Thanks for the generous words, Neme – yes, please share! And explore Read.gov and the National Book Festival site on your own, too…this post only scratches the surface.