"For Mimi, the best day of the week is always Saturday, the day she gets to spend with just her Dad. But when Dad's work takes him away from Mimi one Saturday, 'Dadurday' is ruined. Can Mimi find a way to save 'Dadurday' and still make it special for herand her Dad?"--

Mimi and Dad's favorite day came after Friday . . . they called it DADURDAY. For Mimi, the best day of the week is always Saturday, because she gets to spend it with just her Dad. Every "Dadurday" begins the same way--Mimi and Dad make silly-shaped pancakes, read the comics section of the newspaper and make lists of fun things to do together. But when Dad gets a new work schedule, "Dadurday" is ruined. Can Mimi find a way to still make it a special day for her and dad?

This essential guide has exactly the right books to help you celebrate special days throughout the year—even "holidays" you've never heard of—and provides hundreds of fun titles and activities that could inspire your students to become life-long readers. Young students need to continually be presented with a vast variety of types of books, authors, illustrators, and subject matter in order to find the perfect concept or image that sparks their imagination, takes their comprehension to a new level, or helps them turn the corner to becoming a book lover. Nancy J. Polette's The Picture Book Almanac: Picture Books and Activities to Celebrate 365 Familiar and Unusual Holidays can be used year-round as a key to open that great literary treasure vault. The books Polette has painstakingly selected for their value as learning opportunities tie into both familiar and unusual holidays, ranging from official, nationally recognized holidays to obscure ones such as Milk Day and Thesaurus Day. The daily featured book titles cover the classics, such as books in the Paddington Bear series and Cinderella to outstanding current and just-published titles, collectively representing the best choices for collection building over time. This book is an excellent tool for collection development as well as an indispensable resource for reading teachers and classroom teachers.

Whether used for thematic story times, program and curriculum planning, readers' advisory, or collection development, this updated edition of the well-known companion makes finding the right picture books for your library a breeze. Generations of savvy librarians and educators have relied on this detailed subject guide to children's picture books for all aspects of children's services, and this new edition does not disappoint. Covering more than 18,000 books published through 2017, it empowers users to identify current and classic titles on topics ranging from apples to zebras. Organized simply, with a subject guide that categorizes subjects by theme and topic and subject headings arranged alphabetically, this reference applies more than 1,200 intuitive (as opposed to formal catalog) subject terms to children's picture books, making it both a comprehensive and user-friendly resource that is accessible to parents and teachers as well as librarians. It can be used to identify titles to fill in gaps in library collections, to find books on particular topics for young readers, to help teachers locate titles to support lessons, or to design thematic programs and story times. Title and illustrator indexes, in addition to a bibliographic guide arranged alphabetically by author name, further extend access to titles.

In current academic debates, leisure is increasingly defined as a discursive construction originating both from the specific meanings created by individuals, and the institutionalizing processes that legitimate certain experiences and their spatial-temporal conditions as “leisure”. As a result of social construction and the different social conditions existing at a certain historical moment in different societies, the borders among the various aspects of leisure are becoming more and more blurred; as is the case, for instance, with the borders between leisure and work activities. Such border-crossing is the leitmotif of this book. Although focusing on sociological research, it has in fact a multidisciplinary scope and will appeal to a variety of scholars and students interested in the study of leisure in contemporary society as a fundamental dimension of everyday sociality and sociability with very important effects on social cohesion as a whole. After an introductory section, offering general frames on key definitions of leisure and leisure issues, five other sections follow which concentrate on more specific aspects of leisure practices and forms in contemporary society.

The home–school connection is important to student literacy achievement. However, it can be time-consuming to develop and implement programming that keeps families engaged and involved. Empowering Families makes it easier to accomplish these goals! Chock-full of step-by-step plans for arranging a variety of parent/caregiver meetings and literacy booster events, the book enables educators to get families involved in their children’s learning in ways that are fun and non-intimidating. By hosting these events at your school, you’ll be empowering families to... read aloud to their children at home; minimize the summer slide; encourage male involvement in literacy; help their children avoid homework hassles; and much, much more! Bonus: The book includes ready-to-use handouts for your events, such as announcement sheets, follow-up evaluations, and tipsheets that describe ways parents can reinforce literacy at home. These handouts are photocopiable and the tipsheets are also available for easy download from our website at www.routledge.com/9781138803114. Spanish versions of the tipsheets are available on our website as well.

"This is that rare audiobook that truly makes the print version come alive. The sound effects alone are priceless, with homage to Grammy Award-winner Bobby McFerrin. If you've ever wondered what punctuation marks sound like, Beach provides hilarious voices and sound effects for each one. A masterful, creative, amusing, must-have production that simplifies the rules of punctuation." -School Library Journal