Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Exciting News!


Regular Book Chook readers will know how passionately I feel about children's literacy. This week, I spoke of reading as a free magical gift; other posts have been about my dream for all kids to be read to, or suggestions on what we can do to reach out to others and promote literacy.

My exciting news is this: in a couple of weeks time, there will be a huge online event, specifically to promote sharing stories with kids, and you're all invited! Here's the scoop!


Share a Story - Shape a Future, A Blog Tour for Literacy


Within the kidlitosphere, the children's literature bloggers comprise and reach a very broad audience. One of the group's greatest assets is its collective, community-minded approach to sharing information and ideas. Through events like blog tours, authors and illustrators have had wonderful opportunities to share their story and their craft. Given the success of tours for "producers," what about an event for and by the people who create and engage their readers: teachers, librarians, parents, and people passionate about literacy?

Voila! Share a Story - Shape a Future is just that event. This is an ensemble effort not only to celebrate reading among those of us who already love books, but to encourage each other to reach beyond ourselves and do it in a way that we are neither judging nor instructing others. This is a venue for communicating practical, useable, everyday ideas.

The event begins March 9, 2009 and lasts one week. Each day we will have a group of bloggers sharing ideas around a specific theme. There are a number of book giveaways and free downloads that will be announced by the various hosts as we get closer to the kickoff. Here is the tour schedule.

Day 1: Raising Readers
hosted by Terry Doherty at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, the Reading Tub blog
Day 2: Selecting Reading Material
hosted by Sarah Mulhern at The Reading Zone
Day 3: Reading Aloud - It's Fun, It's Easy
hosted by Susan Stephenson at the Book Chook blog
Day 4: A Visit to the Library
hosted by Eva Mitnick at Eva's Book Addiction blog
Day 5: Technology and Reading - What the Future Holds
hosted by Elizabeth O. Dulemba at Dulemba.com
Through Share a Story - Shape a Future we hope to build a community of readers, by sharing ideas and encouraging each other. When the event opens on Monday, March 9, 2009, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to join us and share your ideas.

In the meantime, we'd love for you to start spreading the word. Feel free to re-post, tweet, stumble, digg or whatever you can, to tell others. If you share my passion and you're interested in The Book Chook linking to a relevant post of yours during March 9-13, email me (see profile top right). If you're an author or publisher interested in donating books as giveaways on my blog, email me. If you'd like to join the Share a Story near circle group and get the widget in my sidebar for your blog, email me.

Children's literacy is such an important cause. I truly believe that together we can make a difference.

Posted by The Book Chook at 9:48 AM
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