Book Lists and Comment Challenge

The Cybils Finalists have been posted -- five great books in each of eleven categories/genres.

Jules has done an amazing 2011 blog retrospective over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. It's a visual feast.

Sylvia Vardell shares her top 20 children's poetry books from 2011 at Poetry For Children.

And the motherlode of all lists: Susan's 2011 Best Children's Books: A List of Lists and Awards at Chicken Spaghetti.

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On another note, there's been lots of talk here at A Year of Reading and around the Kidlitosphere about reading goals. How about we all make it a goal to reading more blogs? And comment.

Mother Reader and Lee Wind have just the thing for us. For the next three weeks, they are running a comment challenge. Five comments on book blogs every day for 21 days. Get out of your rut and get (back) in the habit. Stop letting blog posts pile up in your reader until you finally just click "mark all read" on every blog and start over fresh...only to let it happen again in another couple of weeks. (Not that I know about that first hand or anything...)

Sign up for the comment challenge HERE.

Blog Post of the Day, Comments, Crud

BLOG POST OF THE DAY

How fun is this -- we are one of the Children's Literature Blog Posts of the Day on the Children's Writing Web Journal of the Children's Book Insider! We got noticed!

COMMENTS
But really, it didn't take being in a YouTube video to clue us in that we've been noticed. We could tell by all the comments you've been leaving!

Hasn't the 21 Day Comment Challenge been a blast? I started a day late, but I've had a few over-achieving days that have brought my average up to just over 5 comments per day. I have been using a combination of my GoogleReader, the links in our sidebar that aren't on my reader page, and random links I've picked up from your sidebars! 

CRUD

The best thing about the Comment Challenge is that I can chat away without having to use up the last scraps of my voice. 

Yes, it wouldn't be mid-November, it wouldn't be time for NCTE, if I didn't get an upper respiratory infection. I have been keeping a 10-year diary for 8 years now, and 5 out of the past 8 years I have lost my voice just about this time of year (in '01 on the 9th, in '03 on the 4th, in '05 on the 9th, in '07 on the 6th, and this year it will be the 13th, if things keep going the way they are right now.) 

In '06 at about this time, the numbness in my feet was creeping up my legs and I wound up having emergency back surgery right after NCTE. I'd rather lose my voice than have the pain and numbness and fear I had that year.

Who Invited Blogger to the Party?

November 6, the exact same day the 21 Day Comment Challenge started, Blogger rolled out a new way for readers to react to blog posts.  (Thank you, Megan of Read, Read, Read for the heads up on this, because I pay attention to the Blogger Blog, like, not at all.)

Give your readers a chance to give you feedback on your post with one click of the mouse.  Here are a couple of examples of what it might look like (from the Blogger Blog):

Check it out on Megan's blog -- let her know just how cute those nieces are!!!

The 21 Day Comment Challenge

Did you see the news at MotherReader and Lee Wind?  

Are you going to try to comment on 5 Kidlitosphere blogs each day for the next 21 (or so) days?

Give it a try. The bar is low. You can do it.

Here's my theory (well, one I borrowed that I like a a lot): The world doesn't get changed by single monumental acts. The world gets changed by doing something small over and over again. It's like the power of reading aloud to your students for 20 minutes EVERY DAY. Sharing a poem with your students EVERY DAY. Making time to make a personal connection to each student EVERY DAY. 

I'll be looking for you in the comments!