Empowering Learners advances school library programs to meet the needs of the changing school library environment and is guided by the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner and Standards for the 21st-Century Learner in Action.

All parents want their children to read well and to succeed–and experts agree that improving literacy begins at birth. Reading aloud to your child, sharing simple games and wordplay, and developing letter knowledge start your child off on the right foot for school and life. Now the esteemed Lee Pesky Learning Center has created this easy, accessible reference for parents to help foster better literacy skills in children. Topics are individually tailored for three age ranges–infant, toddler, and preschool–and include • the best read-aloud books to develop sound awareness • the perfect picture books for encouraging letter knowledge • ways to promote verbal language and build vocabulary • the benefits of symbolic play • fun (and educational) games for car trips • helping youngsters “write” at home • great gift ideas for kids • warning signs of a learning disability The fundamentals of reading start at home. Every Child Ready to Read helps parents motivate their children to learn, and to become confident readers who will always enjoy reading.

A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present Across a turbulent history, from such vital centers as Harlem, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. Capturing the power and beauty of this diverse tradition in a single indispensable volume, African American Poetry reveals as never before its centrality and its challenge to American poetry and culture. One of the great American art forms, African American poetry encompasses many kinds of verse: formal, experimental, vernacular, lyric, and protest. The anthology opens with moving testaments to the power of poetry as a means of self-assertion, as enslaved people like Phillis Wheatley and George Moses Horton and activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper voice their passionate resistance to slavery. Young’s fresh, revelatory presentation of the Harlem Renaissance reexamines the achievements of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen alongside works by lesser-known poets such as Gwendolyn B. Bennett and Mae V. Cowdery. The later flowering of the still influential Black Arts Movement is represented here with breadth and originality, including many long out-of-print or hard-to-find poems. Here are all the significant movements and currents: the nineteenth-century Francophone poets known as Les Cenelles, the Chicago Renaissance that flourished around Gwendolyn Brooks, the early 1960s Umbra group, and the more recent work of writers affiliated with Cave Canem and the Dark Room Collective. Here too are poems of singular, hard-to-classify figures: the enslaved potter David Drake, the allusive modernist Melvin B. Tolson, the Cleveland-based experimentalist Russell Atkins. This Library of America volume also features biographies of each poet and notes that illuminate cultural references and allusions to historical events.

Based on the groundbreaking research of VIEWS2—the first systematic study of storytimes done to date—this book recommends simple interactive ways to emphasize early literacy techniques and encourage children to use and practice their pre-reading skills while preserving the delight inherent in storytime.

Provides vision for strong school library programs, including identification of the skills and knowledge essential for students to be information literate. Includes recommended baseline staffing, access, and resources for school library services at each grade level.

This all-in-one resource for researching library and school grants is back in a new edition, and more useful than ever, offering refreshed content and even more guidance on locating grant funding sources.