Blog Birthday Gala, Day 4

The party seems to be winding down a bit today. Everyone is tired from all of the dancing on Monday, the snacks on Tuesday, and they are feeling the impact of those wild party games on Wednesday! Today, most people are just sitting around chatting! Dictionary.com defines gossip as "idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others" OR "light, familiar talk or writing".

Kim and Jason sent over these great birthday cake hats for today's party! And in the back of the room, Jason is running a special showing of Adultitis: Case Study #2: The Birthday for those of us who just can't get into the fun of partying!

You can join lots of interesting gossip today--people talking about things related and non-related to the children's book world. The crowd seems ready to kick back and just chat about life in general. Stacey is showing everyone pictures of the wedding tradition at the wedding she just celebrated. She also has some thoughts on the best way to write a toast for the occasion. And Ruth is sharing a poem that she thought of the day of the wedding.

Many bloggers had new babies born this year and Bud the Teacher and Shannon Hale are busy showing off their new adorable additions! And Mindy from Proper Noun is sharing some of the great new books she bought for her new addition!

A lot of people were sad to hear about the end of an era. Betsy at Fuse #8 decided to end her very popular "Hot Men in Children's Literature" series. She is explaining her decision to a crowd of her disappointed fans. Looks like standing room only.

Mo Willems brought some of his best mail to share with other partygoers. Barbara O'Conner also brought some pretty amusing letters from her readers. Definitely worth a trip to that side of the room.

Favorite holidays are a big topic of conversation. Mother Reader Week was quite a celebration last year. Not yet a Hallmark Holiday, but one that we all enjoyed! Franki is happy to share the news that today is the second day of National Hot Tea Month, a holiday that is equally as exciting as Christmas and her birthday!

There is a small group in the back of the room chatting about the big book events of the year. Franki and Mary Lee are still talking about the "scrotum" controversy surrounding last year's Newbery winner while Monica is sharing her impressions of the Golden Compass movie.
And you can join in on the discussion about the last Harry Potter book at the Scholar's
Blog Spoiler Zone

In April, lots of bloggers went to the Golden Compass movie site to take the quiz and learn what animal their daemon is. Wands and Worlds did a round up. Mary Lee's daemon was the creepiest of them all.

People are also busy chatting about this year's GOLDEN FUSE AWARDS--Betsy Bird's top books of 2007. Sam Riddleburger is listening in--thrilled to have his QWICKPICK ADVENTURE on her list!

Looks like there is also a typing competition going on started by Miss Erin. She says she can type 83 words a minute. Megan at Read, Read, Read is not so happy about her typing speed! Join in on the fun!

Oh, now this is exciting--it looks like Hank and John from Brotherhood 2.0 have stopped by the party to sing their "Goodbye Brotherhood 2.0 Song". If you haven't seen it yet, you don't want to miss it!

So glad that you could join us on Day 4 of our Birthday Gala! Please stay as long as you'd like! We are thrilled that so many of our friends could stop by.
The party will end tomorrow with a special New Year's edition of Poetry Friday!
See you then!

Blog Birthday Party Gala, Day 3

Woo-hoo! Day Three! The party's really hoppin' now! How about some fun and...

Games
3 Silly Chicks, Lisa Yee, and HipWriter Mama are all busy sharing the fun contests they've run on their blogs. The contests have been quite creative and have given us lots to talk and laugh about. Anne at Book Buds is talking up her new CYBILS contest--you have to be quick to join--the deadline is January 5!

What would the Kidlitosphere be without the fun and games of memes? (Yes, I do know how some of you feel about this, but either play along politely, or take your snacks and move on to another part of the room! There's lots of fun for everyone!) Here's a Meme for teachers at My Breakfast Platter and 6 of our memes from 2007.

Sometimes it's fun to play around with the way we look at the world, or you can make a comic to show the world what you're thinking!

Writing Fibs is fun and games for Gregory K. at GottaBook. He even Fibbed about some games this year: golf, football, and hockey!

How about some word games? Try out Free Rice and Eight Letters in Search of a Word. But watch out, you might get addicted!

You might want to join the folks who are over by the fireplace. They are playing Name Your Favorite 2007 Carnival of Children's Literature. I'm hearing the10th, the State Fair, the Carnival carnival, the Fiesta, the Good News Carnival, The Play's The Thing Carnival, and the Tips Edition Carnival.

Are you working on your 2007 reading goals? There are some intriguing reading challenges at The Shady Glade. Maybe before you decide on your goals, you'd like to join in on a few (more)

Book Conversations
GoodReads took the Kidlitosphere by storm this summer and gave us yet another place to talk about what we're reading.

I know you've been admiring the table runners on our tables...we made them out of booklists! This one is our Master List of Books about Books and Reading, on that table over there is our 100 Cool Teachers in Children's Literature (we're up to 107), and over there on the longest table of all, you can see Mother Reader's Best Books of 2007 (so far) Megalist. After all the Best Books of 2007 posts are up this week, we'll probably be able to make wallpaper rather than just table runners!

Book conversation doesn't get much better than Kelly's Weekend Reviews at Big A little a. Lois Lowry recently highlighted a couple of great historical fiction titles for adults. Lots of book conversations get started by podcasts and other unique kinds of book marketing.

Hugo Cabret is a GREAT book for starting conversations. Children's Illustration gives us some new ways of thinking about the book and so does Planet Esme (along with a long ramble about other good books and trips and lives around books).

Stephanie invites us to join The Children's Literature Book Club, not just check out what they're reading.

The topic for discussion in this corner is, What's your Desert Island 10?

Over here, some teachers are comparing notes for the new year and asking, Have you found any good mentor texts recently?

This group is reminiscing about the Summer Blog Blast Tour -- One of our favorite author interviews Cecil Castellucci at Tea Cozy, what was yours?

Speaking of tours, lots of folks in the Kitlitosphere this year went to

Conferences
Of course, the biggest conference news in the Kidlitosphere was the Kidlit Bloggers' Conference in Chicago, and Jen Robinson gave us a very thorough summary of the Conference, as well as the implications of that conference for further promotion/development of the Kidlitosphere. Kelly did a roundup of all the conference posts. There were lots of bloggers at National Council of Teachers of English Conference in NYC.
Chris Barton attended Texas Book Festival and gave us thoughts from an audience member's chair about being on the stage. Mother Reader shares great gossip from ALA. Mary Lee shares details from NEA, and Read Roger shares the news from the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards.

Thanks for joining us again today! The fun's not over -- tomorrow is the last day of the party! Hope to see you again then!

Blog Birthday Gala, Day 2

HAPPY NEW YEAR and welcome to Day 2 of our Blog Birthday Gala! Yesterday, we got the party started with a look back at our second year of blogging, some dancing, and some Newbery conversations.

There's a buffet set up in the other room -- how about some snacks? You won't go hungry in the Kidlitosphere!

Snacks
There are lots of cookies left over from jama's Christmas Cookie party. (I took a couple of plates of candy.) Watch out for the screaming latkes still running around here and there.
If you've got a cup of cocoa, Farm School has some homemade marshmallows to float in your mug.

In the mood for healthier fare? Lots of us spent the summer talking about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. You can check out the roundup of posts at Adventures in Daily Living. There's always great food at A Wrung Sponge: figs, zucchini, fresh tomatoes, and more!

Is this blog A Year of READING, or A Year of EATING? We talk about Philly food, NCTE food, Dots, and even bacon!

Fill up your plate and head on over to the fireplace, where conversation has turned to

Teacher Talk
The beginning of school seems so long ago now. Remember that feeling you get when summer is ending? Borderland calls it Ground Rush -- the perfect term with a great story behind it. Camille at BookMoot had two great back to school posts -- one on pencils and one featuring a column from The Dallas Morning News.

Everybody's oohing and ahhing at the Thematic book lists Tricia has in the sidebar at The Miss Rumphius Effect. What a great resource for teachers who use literature in the content areas!

Speaking of great lists, Franki's list of best professional books of 2007 has a lot of folks talking. We're all comparing notes with The Reading Zone's monthly feature called Hot Books -- a list of books her students are loving. And don't forget, the best lists in all of the Kidlitosphere start making their debut today -- the Cybils Short Lists have begun rolling out!

Oh, hey! Did you see that Mo's Elephant and Piggie will be featured on the NEA Read Across America poster? Better order yours now!

Great teaching doesn't always take place in a classroom. Liz thinks about the differences between distance learning/teaching and classroom learning/teaching, and MsMac, a school librarian, facilitates a poetry writing club.

Glad you could stop by again today! Come back tomorrow for some party games and some book conversations!

Blog Birthday Gala, Day 1

Welcome to our BLOG BIRTHDAY GALA!
We are so happy that you're here! Last year, we posted a special Birthday Post. But, we have had such a great time with the blog community during our second year of blogging, we thought we'd throw a party to celebrate the year!

We've grown so much since Melissa Wiley at Here in the Bonny Glen invented the name--Kidlitosphere--for us! When she invented in on June 5, 2006, there were no hits on Google. Today, when I googled the word, I got 15,500 hits!

2007 was a great year to be a blogger. In our second year of blogging, there were traditions that we looked forward to:
Carnivals, Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge, new issues of The Edge of the Forest, and contests like Lisa Yee's Book Title Contest.

We were also excited about new things that we did as a community of bloggers. Robert's Snow,
Cybils , our very first Kidlitosphere conference sponsored by Robin Brande, and Sunday Lists posted each week by HipWriterMama.
We've invited lots of our old friends and are happy to have new friends who have joined the blogging world in 2007...friends like Katie at Creative Literacy, Megan at Read, Read, Read and Sara Lewis Holmes at Read, Write Believe who entered the blog world on July 6. We hope you have the perfect party experience--reconnecting with old friends, meeting new friends, reminiscing about favorite moments in the blog community, and starting new conversations.

So, in celebration of another great year of blogging, let the party begin!

As your hosts, we'll let you know all of the fun things going on each day at our week-long party!

We are your hostesses, Mary Lee and Franki. We are two teachers who read. A lot. If you don't like to mingle, but would rather chat with us, we have lots of things we enjoy chatting with friends about--exercising, shopping for new books, graphic novels, how to throw a summer book party for children, Harry Potter, our goals, silly words, thoughts on our classrooms, or miscellaneous trivia about ourselves. But, if you like to mingle, you can dance or chat about the Newbery---Hmmm. Such a difficult decision, we know. Feel free to do both!

Dancing!!!
There is a great deal of dancing going on at the party. For those of you in the mood for a Happy Dance, you can join the crowd with Brotherhood 2.0. If you are not in the mood to dance, but want to see some interesting dance moves, this is the place to be. Or, for those of you who are still in the holiday spirit, feel free to join Mary Lee and Franki who are busy elf dancing. If you are tired of the music we're playing, pop over to Saints and Spinners and try dancing to one of your favorite Songs of the Week.

Newbery
Since we started our blog as a way to read and predict the Newbery Award, we thought we'd make sure that there was lots of Newbery talk going on at today's party. You can chat about the poem that Mary Lee wrote for the occasion or find Shannon and chat about her group's final list of this year's mock winners. Franki is wondering about Newbery winners with a teacher's eye. Or you can catch Monica from Educating Alice who is part of the Newbery Committee this year talk about final preparations, hopes and reflections.

And there seems to be a roomful of people thinking hard about the various reflections surrounding last year's winners and ways. You can join Adrienne, Roger,
or Mary Lee and Franki


We hope that you had a great time at Our Blog Birthday Gala today!
Come back tomorrow for more fun including snacks and teacher talk!
Don't miss the fun!
Thanks for coming!