Celebrating Sylvia Vardell!

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Will Clayton

Even though our blog birthday was on January 1, we are celebrating it all year! On our 8th Birthday, we decided to celebrate 2014 by celebrating others who inspire us every day. Each month, on the 1st (or so) of the month, we will celebrate a fellow blogger whose work has inspired us. We feel so lucky to be part of the blog world that we want to celebrate all that everyone gives us each day.

This month, we are celebrating teacher and blogger, Sylvia Vardell. Sylvia blogs at Poetry for Children, which is one of the most amazing poetry resources for classroom teachers you can imagine! Sylvia works tirelessly to promote poetry for children at every professional conference she attends, through the journal articles and professional books she writes, and, of course, through the Poetry Friday Anthologies she edits with Janet Wong.

On her blog, Sylvia has thoughtful posts like the recent one on Poetry and Social Justice.

She also has a series called Poet to Poet, in which she features one poet interviewing another about his/her new book. 

Plus, she shares readers' guides she's written, like the one for the fabulous novel in verse, Crossover.

To honor Sylvia, we made a donation to the American Academy of Poets (poets.org), an organization that supports educators with tips for teaching poetry, a monthly educator newsletter, and events such as Poem in Your Pocket Day and National Poetry Month.

Please help us celebrate Sylvia for all she does for poetry and for teachers!