TASL Media / Virtual Presence Award Nomination

I'm excited to announce that I've been nominated for the Texas Association of School Librarian's Media and Social Presence Award. This award is "given to those school librarians who show excellence in their virtual presence through several different avenues, including but not limited to Twitter, professional websites, Facebook, school library websites, blogs, Pinterest, and other social media. Winners for this award will be selected by the TASL MVP Award Committee."

We will find out the winner of this award at the Texas Library Association annual conference in late April, but it is truly an honor just to be nominated! 

Mrs. Vetter is Paraprofessional of the Year

Mrs. Vetter, Forest North Library Assistant, has been working here since last year.  She's so good at her job, she was voted by all of the Forest North Staff as our paraprofessional of the year!  She attended a special breakfast at the Northwest Austin Rotary Club this morning to celebrate her win with Mr. Martir, 5th grade teacher and our Teacher of the Year, with our principal, Ms. Jacobs.  Mrs. Vetter brought her daughter Lauren along to watch her accept her award.  Congratulations, Mrs. Vetter.  I'm so lucky to work with you every day and so glad you're on Team Library.  

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!

Forest North @ 1st Annual RRISD Battle of the Bluebonnets

Library Award!

Mrs. Fournier won an award! The Round Rock ISD Library Services Department has awarded Mrs. Fournier $4200 towards the purchase of new books for our students! That's about 1 book per student!

How did she earn it? For keeping the collection fresh and weeding out overworn or unused books, for increasing circulation in the library 25% in one year by buying new, exciting books that students want to read!

Mrs. Fournier already has a wishlist that's worth $10,000 of books, so she'll pare it down and place her order soon! Look for these bew books before the semester ends!