Monday, March 26, 2012

Winners and More Cool Book Club Stuff!

Spellbinders Logo
March 26, 2012
Caroline's Classroom Connections
AND
The Winner of Dr. Fred's three books!
The winner of Dr. Fred's Seven Wonders of Space Technology, Seven Wonders of Exploration Technology and Astrobiology is . . .

GARY BODMAN!! Middle School Science Teacher!

Congratulations!!! We hope your students enjoy the books! Happy Reading! (Gary, please email Kimberley at kglittle@msn.com to receive the books by mail to your school or home address.)

Thank you everyone for entering! And stay tuned for more giveaways in April and May! 


Book Clubs, Part Five: What Works
This is the last installment of the Book Club articles. To see parts 1-4, be sure to stop by our Spellbinders blog.


Classroom Involvement
In an ideal world, you could post information about your meetings in classrooms and school libraries. Teachers would mention your group, provide titles, remind kids of meeting times, and possibly offer incentive / create some sort of tie-in to curriculum. Or better yet, you as the organizer could approach teachers to learn what books or topics they'd love to see their students read about. You could enhance what goes on in the classroom by selecting authors and titles that compliment school work.

Guiding Discussion
Some kids will come prepared to talk. And talk a lot! Others won't really be sure how to begin. Even if you've given them idea starters, know not everyone will remember or even know how to get a book conversation going. Part of your role is to model how this works by coming with your own observations and questions. When kids hear you sharing a quote you think is key to the story or the obstacles a character had to overcome, they learn how to do this for themselves. Discussions naturally start to grow. Kids begin to read with ideas toward what they might share later. It's an amazing process to watch.

Sometimes talks get so animated, everyone wants to talk at once. I found it helpful to have a way to visually show whose turn it was to speak. We passed around pencils, stuffed animals, and even a Kleenex box to show who currently was in charge. The kids loved this and were (usually!) willing to wait their turn.
Regular Attendance
To make regular attendance happen, you'll need a combination of the following: committed kids, involved parents, a regular meeting time and place, consistent communication, a planned-out book schedule, and an easy way for children to get their hands on books. Be willing to be flexible, too. If something isn't working, evaluate and determine how things could improve. Ask kids and parents for input. Be willing to cancel titles hard to find or add a new book everyone is anxious to read. Plan ahead but be willing to change, if necessary.

And don't forget: Cookies are always a great draw!

Ultimately, we want kids reading and responding to literature. There's no perfect way to have this happen, but I can tell you this: when an adult is excited about books and shares this regularly with kids, it's almost impossible for them not to get enthusiastic themselves.

There is nothing like loving children. There is nothing like loving books. To experience the two together is a gift indeed.
 Black Stripes
Meet the Spellbinders

Caroline Starr Rose
Caroline Starr Rose spent her childhood in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and New Mexico, camping at the Red Sea in one and eating red chile in the other. She's taught English and social studies to upper elementary and middle-school students in New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, and Louisiana. Back in New

Mexico, Caroline now writes middle-grade novels and picture books full time. 

To find teacher's guides, writing activities, and information about author visits, go to her website.

  


 
Carolee Dean
Carolee Dean has made numerous appearances as a guest poet/author at schools, libraries, poetry events, and teacher/library conferences. She holds a bachelor's degree in music therapy and a master's degree in communicative disorders, and she has spent over a decade working in the public schools as a

Comfort Paperback Cover
speech-language pathologist.

Her first novel, Comfort,was nominated as a Best Book for Young Adults, was named the Best YA Novel of 2002 by the Texas Institute of Letters, and was on the TAYSHAS (Texas Library Association) reading list. Take Me There is a YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers.
Take Me There Cover

She conducts teacher trainings on inspiring reluctant writers including "The Secret Language of Stories" and "Random Act of Haiku."


 Follow me on Twitter 
  
  
  

Kim Bio PhotoKimberley Griffiths Little is the recipient of the Southwest Book Award, The Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel of 2010, and the author of the highly acclaimed, The Healing Spell and Circle of Secrets, published by Scholastic Press. Look for her books at the Scholastic Book Fairs, as well Circle of Secretsas two more forthcoming novels in 2012 and 2013.
  
She lives on a dirt road in a small town by the Rio Grande with her husband, a robotics engineer and their three sons. Kimberley is a favorite speaker at schools around the country, presenting "The Creative Diary", a highly successful writing workshop and has been a speaker at many conferences.

Please visit her website to download free Teacher's Guides and Book Club Guides. 
  
Follow me on Twitter 
  

Upcoming Author Events


Saturday, March 31
Caroline presents at the
Jambalaya Writing Conference
Houma, Louisiana


Saturday, 14 April
Alamosa Bookstore, Albuquerque, NM
Carolee and Caroline discuss verse novels for poetry month

Sunday, April 29th 
9-5 Preconference Session  
Author's Panel at the
International Reading Association Conference
Chicago, Illinois
"Rekindling the Reading and Writing Fire"
  
Join us for this all day session
featuring 11 authors including
all 3 Spellbinders
Carolee Dean
Kimberley Griffiths Little
Caroline Starr Rose 
  
Tuesday, May 1
3 p.m. - 4 p.m.
International Reading Association Conference
Chicago, Illinois
"The Secret Language of Stories"
Carolee Dean


November, 2012
YALSA Literature Symposium 
"Author Research Panel"
Carolee Dean
Kimberley Griffiths Little
and two other authors
St. Louis, Missouri


Monday, March 19, 2012

MELTDOWN Winner! And Giving Away 3 MORE books!!!

Spellbinders Logo


March 19, 2012
    March Book Buzz and WINNER of MELTDOWN!

PLUS another Giveaway! More Books by Dr. Fred! Nonfiction rocks the house!
On March 5th of this month we featured children's nonfiction writer, Dr. Fred Bortz, author of outstanding books in the fields of science and technology.
 
If you missed it, go here to read: Dr. Fred Bortz SPELLBINDER Interview 
 
Lerner Publishing generously donated copies of his books as prizes.  
 
The WINNER of Dr. Fred Bortz's new book MELTDOWN is . . .  
 
 
 
Janet Schoentrup, a great librarian in Kansas!!! 
 
Congratulations!!!  
 
Please email Kimberley at kglittle@msn.com to claim your prize!  
 
***AND because your SPELLBINDERS are so excited about non-fiction we are giving away MORE of Dr. Fred's books!!!***
 
One lucky person will win
these THREE BOOKS below!!! 

Please email Kimberley at kglittle@msn.com to enter.  
Or go to the SPELLBINDER blog to enter by leaving a comment.  

 
 
 
 
  

Next Month we've got some fascinating pieces about Historical Fiction coming up and how to get your students and kids excited about it! Plus Historical Fiction Book Buzz! Don't miss it! 
      
 Black Stripes
Meet the Spellbinders

Kim Bio Photo
Kimberley Griffiths Little is the recipient of the Southwest Book Award, The Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel of 2010, and the author of the highly acclaimed, The Healing Spell and Circle of Secrets, published by Scholastic Press. Look for her books at the Scholastic Book Fairs, as well Circle of Secrets
as two more forthcoming novels in 2012 and 2013. She lives on a dirt road in a small town by the Rio Grande with her husband, a robotics engineer and their three sons. Kimberley is a favorite speaker at schools around the country, presenting "The Creative Diary", a highly successful writing
workshop and has been a speaker at many conferences. Please
to download free Teacher's Guides and Book Club Guides. 


Follow me on Twitter 

 Carolee Dean
Carolee Dean has made numerous appearances as a guest poet/author at schools, libraries, poetry events, and teacher/library conferences. She holds a bachelor's degree in music therapy and a master's degree in communicative disorders, and she has spent over a decade working in the public schools as a Comfort Paperback Coverspeech-language pathologist. Her first novel, Comfort,was nominated as a Best Book for Young Adults, was named the Best YA Novel of 2002 by the Texas Institute of Letters, and was on the TAYSHAS (Texas Library Association) reading list. She conducts teacher trainings on inspiring reluctant writers including "The Secret Language of Stories" and "Random Take Me There CoverActs of Haiku."

To find teacher's guides, writing activities, and information about author visits, go to www.caroleedean.com.

 Follow me on Twitter 
  

Caroline Starr Rose
Caroline Starr Rose spent her childhood in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and New Mexico, camping at the Red Sea in one and eating red chile in the other. She's taught English and social studies to upper elementary and middle-school students in New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, and Louisiana. Back in New 
Mexico, Caroline now writes middle-grade novels and picture books full time.
May B



Blog   
  

UPCOMING AUTHOR EVENTS
         

Sunday, April 29th, 2012
9-5 Pre-conference Session
Author's Panel at the
International Reading Association Conference
Chicago, Illinois
"Rekindling the Reading and Writing Fire"
Join us for this all day session
featuring 9 authors including
all 3 Spellbinders:
Carolee Dean
Kimberley Griffiths Little
Caroline Starr Rose   

*Kimberley will be signing at the
Scholastic Booth in the IRA Exhibit Hall
Monday, April 30 from 3:00 - 4:00 p.m.*
Tuesday, May 1
3 p.m. - 4 p.m.
International Reading Association Conference
Chicago, Illinois
"The Secret Language of Stories: Beyond Story Grammar"
Carolee Dean 
      

  
  

Monday, March 12, 2012

Story Poems By Carolee Dean

Spellbinders Logo
March 12, 2012
THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF STORIES -Need a Break from SBA?
STORY POEMS
by Carolee Dean

I would like to start by welcoming all of our new subscribers from School To World.

If your school is like mine, then your primary focus right now is one of two things, either SPRING BREAK or SBA testing. You may not be spending much time talking about stories or poems at the moment, unless it's to explore the types of literary devices that might be found in the SBA, or to practice skills (like skimming and scanning) that are related to the SBA, or to teach your kids how to become a whiz at answering multiple choice questions of the sort that might be found on the SBA.

But don't despair. Something exciting awaits you at the end of SBA.

April is poetry month.

Of course, after spending all of your time preparing for the SBA, you may be behind on all those other benchmarks and standards. You might not think you have time to explore poetry, and yet poetry offers more literary bang for your buck than just about any other form. Consider the story poems that not only offer a complete plot in one to two pages, but also explore literary devices like metaphor, simile, and personification (things often addressed on the SBA). Trudging through a novel or even a chapter would take days or weeks, while a story poem may be presented and discussed in detail in an hour or less. Unlike poems whose meaning may be unclear to students, a story poem at least tells a story they can understand.

Consider some of these great story poems:
"The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes
"Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer
"The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe

While writing my upcoming verse novel, Forget Me Not (Simon Forget Me NotPulse, October 2012), I took the poetic structure of "The Raven" and wrote a story poem about the rapper, 2Pac, showing up in a class as the substitute teacher. The poem is found below.

If you and your students need a break from the SBA, you might have them read the poem and then skim and scan (important SBA skills) to find the 2Pac song titles hidden in the lines.

If you happen to teach in the Albuquerque Metro Area, you have a special treat in store. I have partnered with Alamosa Books, along with another Spellbinder, Caroline Starr Rose, to bring a free workshop to students, teachers, and writers on Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 2pm. Winners of a special poetry contest will be announced at the time. Poems may be submitted to Alamosa until April 10th at 8p.m. The elementary school in the Albuquerque area with the most submissions will win a free author visit by Caroline, and the secondary school with the most submissions will when a free author visit by me.

If your students are not in the Albuquerque area, they may still enter to win a cool poster containing the poem by finding at least four of the eight 2Pac song titles hidden in the poem below. If they email those titles to Alamosa, they will automatically be enterred in a drawing. For more information visit Alamosa Books. You may also contact me for additional information or for ideas about how to set up your own local poetry contest at my email.
  
Here is the poem:
  
DEAD RAPPER RAP by Carolee Dean (from the Paranormal Verse Novel, Forget Me Not- coming October 2012 from Simon Pulse)

Once upon a Friday morning, almost all the class was snoring.
Our teacher left a vocab worksheet for a sub who was a bore.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
followed by a man's voice rapping, rapping lines I'd heard before.
"I'm Skandalouz," the voice he muttered, rapping at the classroom door.
"Open up, or I'll kick in this door."

Ah, distinctly, I remember, it was a bleak day in September.
Dude told the sub he came to send her to a class on the second floor.
She grabbed her books and packed her bag, running past the man in black.
And then I saw it was 2Pac, standing at the classroom door.
"All eyez on me," yelled the man, standing on the cold tile floor.
"I'm your new sub, Mr. Shakur.

"I'm here to wake you from your dreaming, give your simple lives some meaning."
He smiled at us, his white teeth gleaming, then he pointed at the door.
"If you're thinking about jetting, don't want to get caught here abetting
someone who'll have you forgetting what the h--- this class is for.
If you get out now, I won't detain you, block you, trap you, or restrain your
exit." No one touched the door.

"Ah, I see you've all decided to listen to your uninvited
guest get down. I must confide that I've got a special treat in store.
Forgive me if my words are cryptic. Guess I'm just 2Pacalyptic.
Get off your butts, we're gonna kick it, like you've never kicked before."
And soon he had the whole class rapping and break-dancing on the floor.
Dancing on the classroom floor.

He rolled his sleeves and there I saw it, a tattoo of a black bird on his
arm, and then I heard the haunted whisper of the raven's words:
"Keep ya heads up, no regrets, don't know if heaven's got a ghetto,  
but only God can judge what debt you'll have to pay forevermore.
He don't care if you scream and shout, 'cause big G knows there's no way out.
Once you've crossed the line-you're down, and you won't be getting up no more.
Hope you're open to suggestion, 'cause there only is one question
left. I'm pretty sure you've guessed it. Heard it many times before."
Ah, distinctly, I remember, it was a bleak day in September,
when I heard the raven whisper    
"What are you willing 2 die 4?"  

To learn more about the twelve step story analysis I use to teach writing and to plot my books, visit my blog at Carolee Dean Books.

 Black Stripes

Meet the Spellbinders
CaCarolee Deanrolee Dean has made numerous appearances as a guest poet/author at schools, libraries, poetry events, and teacher/library conferences. She holds a bachelor's degree in music therapy and a master's degree in communicative disorders, and she has spent over a decade working in the public schools as a
Comfort Paperback Cover
speech-language pathologist.

Her first novel, Comfort,was nominated as a Best Book for Young Adults, was named the Best YA Novel of 2002 by the Texas Institute of Letters, and was on the TAYSHAS (Texas Library Association) reading list. Take Me There is a YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers.
Her upcoming paranormal verse novel, Forget Me Not, will be published by Simon Pulse in October of 2012.
Take Me There Cover
 
She conducts teacher trainings on inspiring reluctant writers including "The Secret Language of Stories" and "Random Act of Haiku."Forget Me Not


 Follow me on Twitter 
  
  



  
Caroline Starr RoseCaroline Starr Rose spent her childhood in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and New Mexico, camping at the Red Sea in one and eating red chile in the other. She's taught English and social studies to upper elementary and middle-school students in New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, and Louisiana. Back in New
Mexico, Caroline now writes middle-grade novels and picture books full time. 
 


To find teacher's guides, writing activities, and information about author visits, go to my website.

  







Kim Bio PhotoKimberley Griffiths Little is the recipient of the Southwest Book Award, The Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel of 2010, and the author of the highly acclaimed, The Healing Spell and Circle of Secrets, published by Scholastic Press. Look for her books at the Scholastic Book Fairs, as well Circle of Secretsas two more forthcoming novels in 2012 and 2013.
  
She lives on a dirt road in a small town by the Rio Grande with her husband, a robotics engineer and their three sons. Kimberley is a favorite speaker at schools around the country, presenting "The Creative Diary", a highly successful writing workshop and has been a speaker at many conferences.

Please visit her website to download free Teacher's Guides and Book Club Guides. 
  
Follow me on Twitter 
  

Upcoming Author Events

Sunday, March 11
Kimberley presents at the 
Tucson Book Festival
  
11:30 -12:30 Panel with Author Will Hobbs: "Opening Minds Across Borders: Characters in Conflict" 
AND
2:30 - 3:30 "Breaking into Children's Novels through Magazine Writing"
  
Each session followed by autographing

Saturday, March 17
UNM Continuing Ed  
Young Writers Conference

Kimberley is presenting "The Creative Diary" - a hands-on Writing Workshop for kids and teens   

Saturday, April 14
Novels-in-Verse
at Alamosa Books
8810 Holly Ave. NE
Albuquerque, NM

Carolee and Caroline will be presenting a workshop for teachers, students, and writers.

Sunday, April 29th 
9-5 Preconference Session  
Author's Panel at the
International Reading Association Conference
Chicago, Illinois
"Rekindling the Reading and Writing Fire"
  
Join us for this all day session
featuring 11 authors including
all 3 Spellbinders
Carolee Dean
Kimberley Griffiths Little
Caroline Starr Rose 
  
Tuesday, May 1
3 p.m. - 4 p.m.
International Reading Association Conference
Chicago, Illinois
"The Secret Language of Stories"
Carolee Dean


November, 2012
YALSA Literature Symposium 
"Author Research Panel"
Carolee Dean
Kimberley Griffiths Little
and two other authors
St. Louis, Missouri



Monday, March 5, 2012

Giveaway & Nonfiction Books Rock with Dr. Fred Bortz!

Spellbinders Logo

March 5, 2012

Nonfiction Books Rock with Guest Dr. Fred Bortz!

PLUS Enter to WIN Fred's New Book MELTDOWN! Info to Enter Below (Scroll down)!
www.fredbortz.com
Tell us about your career(s) and what led you to write children's non-fiction? 

I have had two different careers, one as a scientist and one as a writer for young readers. I studied physics in college, and I enjoyed it so much that I kept studying until I had earned a Ph.D. At that point, if I wanted to keep learning, I had to go to work and learn things that my employers were willing to pay for.

One of those things was how to compute what happens inside a nuclear reactor core. I did that for three years. I could have continued, but I am the type of person who likes to jump from one project to another, so I left to work for another company in another industry for three more years. Then I went to a university, where I switched projects several times over fifteen years, finally ending up in science education and outreach.

After one more short hop to a different university, I realized I would be happiest working on my own as a writer. That was 1996, and I have been learning about as many different science subjects as I can. The best part is I can share what I learn with young readers who get as excited about them as I do.

    Why is non-fiction so important for kids?

First of all, I'll rearrange the standard librarian's categorization and include most plays and poetry under fiction, unless they are written to be specifically factual. Also it is important to distinguish nonfiction books for kids and textbooks. Textbooks cover a lot of territory but rarely go very deeply into any topic. That means they can't really satisfy young readers' natural curiosity or their imagination.

Fiction allows readers to exercise their imagination by exploring plausible human situations. Nonfiction exercises both imagination and curiosity by exploring factual material, real human relationships, the real world, and other real scientific and natural phenomena. That's why nonfiction takes up so much more space in libraries.

But as a writer, I also recognize the power of story, and so I make a point of using good story-telling techniques to capture and challenge my readers. That is certainly the case in Meltdown!

Were you a huge reader growing up and what were your favorite books?

Unlike most authors, I was not a "huge" reader. I enjoyed reading and literature as ways to learn, but I especially appreciated experiential learning. I lived in a city (Pittsburgh) with easy access to great museums, including a wonderful planetarium, and I was fortunate enough to go to a school that had great field trips and to be selected for programs with even better ones. You might say I was a "huge learner" who had great opportunities to discover and pursue interesting materials and questions.

We'd love to hear a couple of favorite stories/anecdotes about some of your research adventures.

My favorite research adventures involved spending time with notable scientists who were happy to allow me to share their work with young readers. I have a knack for asking them the kinds of questions that release their inner teenager. I love it when my question unleashes their enthusiasm for and excitement about what they do, usually in words that speak directly to middle-graders and teens.

Two of my books take readers on those research adventures with me. To the Young Scientist (Franklin Watts, 1997, http://www.fredbortz.com/YoungScientist.htm ) contains many memorable in-their-own-words interviews. It includes the late Richard Smalley, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in the year after my interview and before the book was published, stating, "I don't think that most people thought I would amount to anything as a high-schooler. Neither did I, frankly."

Also in that book, I had a chance to visit the late Eugene Shoemaker, founder of the field of astrogeology, and his wife Carolyn who has found more comets than any living person. They were so gracious and pleased about my project that Carolyn made sure I got to see the original image of "squashed" Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 that had been captured by Jupiter and broke into pieces. The Shoemakers enjoyed a bit of public fame when those fragments smashed into Jupiter and produced dramatic images.

Another person who gained fame from what became known as "the Great Comet Crash" was a young planetary scientist named Heidi Hammel, who had been selected to head the Hubble Space Telescope imaging team for the event. She had a way of explaining the images that endeared her to the public. The Chronicle of Higher Education called her "Astronomy's Newest Star." So you can imagine how excited I was when the National Academies Press selected me to write Heidi's biography, Beyond Jupiter, for its Women's Adventures in Science series (Joseph Henry Press/Scholastic Library Publishing, 2005,  http://www.fredbortz.com/HammelBio/ ).  

My research for that book included three dusk-to-dawn nights with Heidi and her team at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility at the peak of Hawaii's Mauna Kea. I have a section on my website devoted to that book with a travelogue of my Hawaiian adventure, including both a significant setback and an unexpected discovery for Heidi and her colleagues. Fascinating! 

Why is your new book, MELTDOWN, so important?

 
When the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami struck Japan, my first reaction was that the tragedy could have been so much worse. Japan was remarkably well-prepared for large earthquakes and tsunamis, and its toll of dead and missing, though large, was less than a tenth of the losses in the 2005 tsunami in Indonesia and the Haitian earthquake of 2010. But soon word came that the tsunami had washed out key backup generators at the Fukushima Dai'ichi power plant and that multiple meltdowns were possible.

Because I had written a chapter ("Fission with Melted Rods") about nuclear reactor meltdowns in my 1995 book Catastrophe! Great Engineering Failure--and Success (W. H. Freeman, Scientific American Books for Young Readers, http://www.fredbortz.com/Catastrophe.htm, I knew that the same political arguments that followed the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents were likely to arise after Fukushima, and they would probably get much louder.

In Catastrophe!, I predicted that my readers would have to make difficult political choices about nuclear power as adults. I noted that as time passed, reactor technology would improve, while the need for electricity would grow. I didn't specifically mention that nuclear energy doesn't produce greenhouse gases, but I was aware that global warming was likely to become a major concern and would be an argument in favor of going nuclear. I was right on target with that analysis.

Now the big question from Fukushima, which is still being argued about, is what the events teach us about the necessity for and possibility of building safe nuclear power. The economic cost and societal impact on Japan are still being evaluated. So are questions of whether the meltdowns were preventable and how likely a similar event would be with new standards and technology. These questions will need time and careful analysis to be answered.

And even when we have answers, the political process will have to produce decisions on policy and regulation. That means we will have to evaluate alternative "green" power technologies. Meltdown! lays out the facts and policy questions about nuclear and other sources of electric power but, like Catastrophe! before it, leaves the answers to those questions open.

And that's another thing that nonfiction can do for readers. A novel is supposed to have a clear ending or at least send the readers in a clear direction with their thoughts. In real life (and science), we are often left with unanswered questions, which, as likely as not, will lead us to other unanswered questions. Meltdown! arms the readers with resources to follow those questions as future events and development dictate.

Any advice for using non-fiction in the classroom or school library?

I think my answers to the previous questions contain the answer to this one, but I will add that my publisher and I have created a specific classroom project called "Build an Energy Campaign Policy" based on Meltdown! It can be found in the eSource links at the publisher's webpage for the book (https://www.lernerbooks.com/products/t/12465/9780761386605/meltdown ). The eSource links also include some supplemental information about the electric power industry and a list of live website links.  

One of those live links is the "Meltdown! Links and Updates" page at my website (http://www.fredbortz.com/Meltdown/LinksandUpdates.htm), which is particularly valuable because we are learning more about the Fukushima meltdowns, and the world is still reacting to the disaster.

What are you working on now? 
 
Now that I have dipped my toes into a technological topic with significant political connections, I am eager to tackle global warming. The scientific evidence of what to expect and why is quite well established, but the political solutions to the problems ahead are likely to be difficult.

Different political points of view lead to different policies, and I do not intend to recommend one political policy over another. But the politics of climate change have been beset with arguments that distort the scientific conclusions in order to support a particular political agenda.

I hope to counter that by returning to the genre of my favorite research projects, the story of a science as seen through the eyes of a scientist. In particular, I have a proposal for a book about how scientists develop and use climate models. It's a topic that I discussed in a chapter of my 2010 book, Seven Wonders of Exploration Technology (Twenty-First Century Books,  http://www.fredbortz.com/7WXT.htm ).

I also have a completed manuscript about humanity's future in space, including the possibility of settling other worlds. 

It sounds fascinating, Fred! We hope to read it in the near future! Thank you so much for being with the SPELLBINDERS today!  

****** 

WIN A COPY OF MELTDOWN for your library, classroom or homeschool!!!

Email Kimberley (your humble Spellbinder) at kglittle@msn.com 

OR Enter by leaving a comment at our SPELLBINDERS blog here: www.spellbindersbooknews.com 

OR Enter by leaving a comment at Kimberley's Blog here:  

Winner will be Announced Monday, March 19th in Kimberley's Book Buzz Column so Stay Tuned!  

 Black Stripes

Meet the Spellbinders!
 
Carolee Dean

Carolee Dean has made numerous appearances as a guest poet/author at schools, libraries, poetry events, and teacher/library conferences. She holds a bachelor's degree in music therapy and a master's degree in communicative disorders, and she has spent over a decade working in the public schools as a

Comfort Paperback Cover
speech-language pathologist.

Her first novel, Comfort,was nominated as a Best Book for Young Adults, was named the Best YA Novel of 2002 by the Texas Institute of Letters, and was on the TAYSHAS (Texas Library Association) reading list. Take Me There is a YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers.
Take Me There Cover
 
She conducts teacher trainings on inspiring reluctant writers including "The Secret Language of Stories" and "Random Act of Haiku."


 Follow me on Twitter 
  
  
  
Caroline Starr RoseCaroline Starr Rose spent her childhood in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and New Mexico, camping at the Red Sea in one and eating red chile in the other. She's taught English and social studies to upper elementary and middle-school students in New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, and Louisiana. Back in New
Mexico, Caroline now writes middle-grade novels and picture books full time. 
 


To find teacher's guides, writing activities, and information about author visits, go to my website.

  
   
Kim Bio PhotoKimberley Griffiths Little is the recipient of the Southwest Book Award, The Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel of 2010, and the author of the highly acclaimed, The Healing Spell and Circle of Secrets, published by Scholastic Press. Look for her books at the Scholastic Book Fairs, as well Circle of Secretsas two more forthcoming novels in 2012 and 2013.
  
She lives on a dirt road in a small town by the Rio Grande with her husband, a robotics engineer and their three sons. Kimberley is a favorite speaker at schools around the country, presenting "The Creative Diary", a highly successful writing workshop and has been a speaker at many conferences.

Please visit her website to download free Teacher's Guides and Book Club Guides. 
  
Follow me on Twitter 
  

Upcoming Author Events!

Sunday, March 11
Kimberley presents at the 
Tucson Book Festival
  
11:30 -12:30 Panel with Author Jewell Parker Rhodes: "Visions and Spells: Characters in Conflict"  

AND
2:30 - 3:30 "Breaking into Children's Novels through Magazine Writing"
  
Each session followed by autographing

Saturday, March 17
UNM Continuing Ed  
Young Writers Conference

Kimberley is presenting "The Creative Diary" - a hands-on Writing Workshop for kids and teens   

Sunday, April 29th 
9-5 Preconference Session  
Author's Panel at the
International Reading Association Conference
Chicago, Illinois
"Rekindling the Reading and Writing Fire"
  
Join us for this all day session
featuring 11 authors including
all 3 Spellbinders
Carolee Dean
Kimberley Griffiths Little
Caroline Starr Rose 
  
Tuesday, May 1
3 p.m. - 4 p.m.
International Reading Association Conference
Chicago, Illinois
"The Secret Language of Stories"
Carolee Dean


November, 2012
YALSA Literature Symposium 
"Author Research Panel"
Carolee Dean
Kimberley Griffiths Little
and two other authors
St. Louis, Missouri

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Spellbinders | 3 YAF Authors | Albuquerque | NM | 87181