Friday morning AUTHOR BREAKFAST

October 25, 2024; 7:30 - 9:00 AM; Ballrooms AD
Breakfast with presentation by author Erik Slangerup.
Register by October 7, 2024 to be guaranteed a book.
Use the dropdown below to choose one book to receive at the breakfast!
(The $40 charge is the cost to attend the event)

Fact vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News

Help students discern fact from fiction in the information they access not only at school but in the devices they carry in their pockets and backpacks. The advent of the 24-hour news cycle, citizen journalism and an increased reliance on social media as a trusted news source have had a profound effect not only on how we get our news, but also on how we evaluate sources of information, share that information and interact with others in online communities. When these issues are coupled with the “fake news” industry that intentionally spreads false stories designed to go viral, educators are left facing a new and challenging landscape. This book will help them address these new realities, providing strategies and support to help students develop the skills needed to effectively evaluate information they encounter online.
The book includes:
 Instructional strategies for combating fake news, including models for evaluating news stories with links to resources on how to include lessons on fake news in your curricula.
 Examples from prominent educators who demonstrate how to tackle fake news with students and colleagues.
 A fake news self-assessment with a digital component to help readers evaluate their skills in detecting and managing fake news.

Developing Digital Detectives

From the authors of the bestselling Fact vs. Fiction, this book offers easy-to-implement lessons to engage students in becoming media literacy “digital detectives,” looking for clues, questioning motives, uncovering patterns, developing theories and, ultimately, delivering a verdict. The current news landscape is driven by clicks, with every social media influencer, trained and citizen journalists chasing the same goal: a viral story. In this environment, where the race to be first on the scene with the most sensational story often overshadows the need for accuracy, traditional strategies for determining information credibility are no longer enough. Rather than simply helping students become savvy information consumers, today’s educators must provide learners with the skills to be digital detectives – information interrogators who are armed with a variety of tools for dissecting news stories and determining what’s real and what isn’t in our “post-truth world.”
This book:
~ Shares meaningful lessons that move beyond traditional “fake news” protocols to help learners navigate a world in which information can be both a force for good and a tool used to influence and manipulate. 
~ Includes resources and examples to support educators in the work of facilitating engaging, relevant (and fun!) instructional opportunities for K-12 learners, in both face-to-face and digital learning environments. 
~ Unpacks the connection between social-emotional learning and information literacy.
~ Includes access to the Digital Detective’s Evidence Locker, an online collection of over 100 downloadable and remixable resources to support the lessons in the book.
As the authors state: “Remember, the detective’s job is NOT to prove themselves correct. Their job is to detect the truth!” This statement reflects the way they approach the lessons in this book, providing clear and practical guidance to help educators address and overcome this ever-expanding issue.

Molly and the Machine

Perfect for fans of Stuart Gibbs and James Ponti, this “absolute blast” (Jarrett Lerner, author of the EngiNerds series) of a middle grade sci-fi adventure set in 1980s Ohio follows a young girl who makes incredible discoveries about family and belonging while chasing a kidnapping robot.

Molly and the Mutants

Molly and her friends take on giant mutant creatures in this second book in the hilarious and poignant Far Flung Falls middle grade sci-fi series set in 1980s Ohio—perfect for fans of Stuart Gibbs and James Ponti!

This is a School

A school isn’t just a building; it is all the people who work and learn together. It is a place for discovery and asking questions. A place for sharing, for helping, and for community. It is a place of hope and healing, even when that community can’t be together in the same room. John Schu, a librarian and former ambassador of school libraries for Scholastic, crafts a loving letter to schools and the people that make up the communities within in a picture book debut beautifully illustrated by Veronica Miller Jamison.

This is a Story

This is a word on a page
This is a page in a book.
This is a book on a shelf…waiting.
With a sea-horse kite in hand, a child heads out with Dad to the library. On the way they stop at a park, joining lots of people, some of whom are flying kits, too. At the library, a person toting a big pile of books hands over a story on a favorite subject: the sea horse.
All around, there are readers poring over books, each with their own questions, ideas to explore, hopes for the future, and imaginations ready to spark. With a warm, lyrical text and tenderly expressive illustrations, John Schu and Lauren Castillo invite us to image the myriad ways that books can foster connection and understanding—and how they can empower children, through their own passions, to transform the world.

The Gift of Story

When we share our hearts through story, we inspire others to think more deeply about their own hearts and how stories connect us all. In this book of the heart, teacher, librarian, book lover, and story ambassador, John Schu, known to reading communities all over as Mr. Schu, invites readers to consider literacy beyond its academic benefits, highlighting the ways story speaks to our hearts and brings us together. Presented through a study of five affective elements of story --- healer, inspiration, clarifier, compassion, and connector --- The Gift of Story explores how the universal truths found in stories can change us, inspire us, connect us to others,
answer our deepest questions, and help us heal. Along the way, readers will encounter insightful contributions from educators, children’s writers, and illustrators, as well as recommendations for sharing the gift of story with learning communities including: treasured book suggestions that stir reflection, engaging tips for celebrating literacy, and heart-growing applications to lift classroom and library practices.
The Gift of Story is a celebration of the ways we define, revise and imagine ourselves through literacy, a celebration of the way we connect to others and build community through reading, a celebration of children, authors, illustrators, teachers, librarians, books, and readers---and, ultimately, a celebration of hearts and the stories they hold dear.

Louder Than Hunger

Revered teacher, librarian, and story ambassador John Schu explores anorexia—and self-expression as an act of survival—in a wrenching and transformative novel-in-verse.

But another voice inside me says,
We need help.
We’re going to die.

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . .and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books—the weird one, the outsider—and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears? A fictionalized account of the author’s experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder, Louder than Hunger is a triumph of raw honesty. With a deeply personal afterword for context, this much-anticipated verse novel is a powerful model for muffling the destructive voices inside, managing and articulating pain, and embracing self acceptance, support, and love.