Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Our team: from Newbery Medal committee member to gourmet cook to swimming with dolphins


As our November 1 features are being readied to appear tomorrow, I want to do a "shout out" about the team members who make keen readers happen.
Nothing makes me prouder than the hard work they all go to to bring you new material each month.
There's Cameron, reading and judging all the youth contest entries between his work as a science center presenter and substitute teacher. (Having recently finished his teachers' training, he hopefully will land on his feet in a lucky school soon.)
And Darian, who burns the midnight oil posting new features and keeping our website up and running in addition to coping with a staggering college workload (and on top of that, being a gourmet cook for friends and lucky keen-readers staff like myself).
I don't know what we'd do without Teresa Bateman, whose prodigious book reviewing output happens in her "spare time" between serving as a school librarian and writing books herself. (She has promised to give us a head's up when the next one is out.)
Then there's Stacey Matson, whose passion besides children's literature (and working on a novel of her own) is working with marine life. (I'd love to post a photo of her swimming with dolphins one of these days...)
Tony keeps tabs on the operation between voluminous travel trips (he's just off a cruise ship in Spain right now, the bum). 
And why have I saved our longest-serving book reviewer Rob Bittner till last? Because we're particularly proud of him this month. He has just learned that he will be a member of the 2014 Newbery Medal committee through the American Library Association. You rock, Rob! Plus, at about the same time, he learned that an article written with Dr. Eric Meyers will be included in the essay collection, Children’s Play Worlds: Culture, Learning and Growth in Virtual Spaces. Hard to top that!
Finally, thank you, readers, for making our work worthwhile.

No comments:

Post a Comment