Tuesday, June 28, 2011

American Library Assocation 2011 Annual Conference

Mrs. Fournier, your loyal librarian, had a whirlwind trip to New Orleans for the 2011 American Library Association 2011 Annual Conference!

First, I had to drive for 10 hours to get there. I checked in at my awesome hotel, the Renaissance Arts. I shared a room to save money. My roommate was Sheri Boggs, who was also on the 2011 Theodor Suess Geisel Committee with me! Look how cool my hotel was! Here's a picture of this cool art made out of puzzles at the check in desk and a picture of the cool chandelier.

















I had a wonderful time touring New Orleans and its rich history. Here are some of my favorite moments!

1. Eating beignets at Cafe du Monde with some old friends from library school
2. Posing near a giant snow globe with the cover of the new Wimpy Kid book inside
3. Letterboxing in the garden district and seeing lots of streetcars
4. A skull with "offerings" at the Voodoo Museum
5. A house where one of my favorite authors wrote a book!
6. A cool old jazz club on the famous Bourbon Street.

















































Of course, my very favorite moments were meeting some of my favorite authors! We were so lucky to be invited to lunch or dinner with each of our 3 Geisel award winners and honorees. I was so sad to miss lunch with our winning authors and illustrators from Bink & Gollie (you'll see why later), but had a great dinner with Mo Willems and a great lunch with Grace Lin, who both won Geisel honors in 2011, and my pal Sheri Boggs sent me photos of the great stuff we got from the authors, illustrator, and publishers of Bink & Gollie - most special to me being a watch!































After these wonderful meals, I was also graciously invited by Little, Brown & Co to attend the Newbery Caldecott Wilder Banquet. It's a special night where everyone gets really dressed up and listens to speeches from the people who won the most prestigious awards in children's literature for the year. It was a very special moment in my career as a Librarian!

I was also a lucky duck and got to sit next to Grace Lin! Even though I'd had lunch with her earlier that day, I never got to talk much to her then, so this was a very special meal for me!


I was also sitting at a table with two other famous authors - Andrea Davis Pinkney and Jewell Parker Rhodes.


As soon as the Newbery winner, Clare Vanderpool, finished her great speech, I jumped in my car and drove all through the night back to Austin! It was quite an adventure, and I was surprised that I barely got tired. I got back just in time to take a shower, pick up Shelby, my junior counselor, and to be right on time for CAMP BLUEBONNET! More on that later!

I didn't forget you either, Forest North! I lugged this giant bag of books (it must weigh 50 pounds!) from the Convention Center back to my hotel, and then drove it all the way back to Austin. I took a picture of the stack of books (there are 23 - I need to make sure they're all good for elementary students) but it doesn't look nearly as heavy as it felt to carry it for a half mile in the heat!


Wednesday, June 8, 2011

RRISD Battle of the Bluebonnets! How did we do?

top 5 Bluebonnet Champions!






10 Bluebonnet Champions!











Bluebonnet Winners announced!




Andy and Phil Bildner are buds!


Tuesday, June 7, 2011

New Awesome Books!

Two new exciting books to report today! First, there is a new Gerald and Piggie book out by Mo Willems! It's called Should I Share My Ice Cream? Also, I finished one of our Bluebonnet books, The Shadows from The Books of Elsewhere and it's awesome! The second Book of Elsewhere, Spellbound, will be released in 4 weeks. Mrs. Fournier will work on getting a copy for our library as quickly as possible! Check out this awesome video about The Books of Elsewhere!

Friday, June 3, 2011

Camp Bluebonnet!

There are still a few spots left in our June session. Come sign up for Camp Bluebonnet with Mrs. Fournier (and Mrs. Kuperzstoch, the Brushy Creek Elementary Librarian) and be ready for the voting party before school even starts! Go to the website listed to register your incoming 3rd, 4th or 5th grade student. All RRISD 3rd-5th grade students are welcome! We'll be posting entries each day after we do our awesome activities at Camp!

Mrs. Fournier serving on Armadillo Committee!

I'm thrilled to announce that I have been asked to serve on the 2011-2012 Armadillo Readers Choice Award Committee. I met with my other committee members in the past few weeks to get our nominees together, and they've been announced! The nominees are:

Wink wins Armadillo Readers Choice Award!

Hello Eagles! I hope your summer is starting off swimmingly. I'm happy to report that Wink: the ninja who wanted to be noticed has officially won the Armadillo Readers Choice Award for 2010-2011! It definitely won by a landslide here at Forest North, and when all the votes were tallied around Round Rock ISD, it still beat out all the other competition.
Stay tuned to a library near you in the fall, because we're going to get a copy of the sequel- Wink, the ninja who wanted to nap! Other favorite Armadillo titles from this year are also already available for checkout, so keep your eyes peeled. If they're checked out when you come in, you can always put it on hold!