President’s Message

By the time you read this, our NJASL Annual Fall Conference will be a memory. It is an event I look forward to every year. I enjoy reuniting with colleagues I haven’t seen in a year, attending sessions to sharpen my skills and meeting authors, illustrators, and vendors. I’d like to congratulate April Bunn and her conference committee for a job well done. Planning the conference is a tremendous amount of work, and we all appreciate it.

If you attended the conference, you heard Dr. Ross Todd speak about the New Jersey Study of School Libraries Phase 2, One Common Goal: Student Learning that was released in September, 2011. If you weren’t able to attend, the study is posted on our website. Please take the time to read and familiarize yourself with Parts 1 & 2. You will be hearing much more about the study in the coming months.

Phase 1 of the Study was released in July of 2010. In an article to be published in December, 2011, in School Leader, Dr. Todd and Dr. Gordon discussed the results of Phase 1. Approximately 30% of the public schools responded. The data suggests this number is representative of the state. Some of the findings:

84.5% of the libraries are staffed by certified school librarians. 53% have some support staff. School librarians team teach an average of 47 times a year. 63% of librarians provide professional development in information literacy to teachers. 72.8% provide professional development in information technology skills. Library collections are old, need weeding. and upgrading.

According to Dr. Todd and Dr. Gordon’s analysis of the responses received in Phase 1, they state that NJ school libraries appear to improve learning. School Leader, December, 2011. http://www.njsba.org/school-leader/index.html.

Phase 2 attempts to answer the question “What do good school libraries look like?”

Both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the NJ Study are also available on www.cissl.rutgers.edu.

Some of you may have attended one of the conference Q & A sessions with Dr. Ross Todd, Dr.Carol Gordon, and Dr. Ya Ling Lu. If your questions weren’t answered, or if you have additional questions, please send them to me (president@njasl.org), and I will forward them to Dr. Todd. Dr. Todd has graciously consented to do a Q & A for a future Bookmark. We all need to understand this important study in order to effectively use the information.

bookmarkNewsletter of the

New Jersey Association of School Librarians

Vol XLI, Number 4 PO Box 610, Trenton, NJ 08607 609-394-8032 http://www.njasl.org

Calendar2011

Dec 2, 3, 4 - NJASL Fall Conference Ocean Place Resort and Spa Registration on the website

2012Jan 6 - Letters About Literature Deadline Entry coupon on the website http://www.lettersaboutliterature.org

At NJASL, we will be releasing the study information to all stakeholders. To aid us in this endeavor, we have been offered help from LibraryLinkNJ in the form of a partnership. LibraryLinkNJ has offered NJASL $20,000 to help with the public relations aspect of the study. What is significant about this partnership is that 100% of the LLNJ Board voted to extend the offer to NJASL. The LLNJ consists of all types of libraries: public, academic, school, institutional, corporate, special libraries, and other library agencies. We are deeply appreciative of the assistance LLNJ has offered to us and want to thank Cheryl O’Connnor and the LLNJ Board for their generous assistance.

Congratulations to all of our NJASL Award Winners announced at the conference: Janice Cooper, Library Media Specialist of the Year; Amy Rominiecki and Kathy Donoghue , Jean Harris Award; Lisa Bakanas, Villy Gandhi Award; Mimi Rosenbaum, Administrator of the Year; Leslie Blatt, President’s Award; Donna Haye, Exemplary Advocate; Donna Caroselli, Library Volunteer of the Year; and Jane Vitone, Library Assistant of the Year. Congratulations also to Jackie Gould, Lifetime Membership Award, and Brian Selznick, Author of the Year. Wasn’t Brian Selznick’s mother hilarious?

Happy Holidays to all!

Fran KingPresident, NJASL

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If we fail to speak up about the value of school library programs and state certified school librarians, who will?

Point to Ponder:

The Letters about Literature contest reaches so many New Jersey students. It is a perfect blend of literacy and authentic writing. This is a wonderful national contest that is sponsored by the Library of Congress Center for the Book. Students write letters to an author. What could be simpler? Please be sure to put your email address on your entry. The deadline is January 6, 2011, and more information is available at http://www.lettersaboutliterature.org, including the entry coupon that must be attached to the entry.

President’s Message continued

President’s Award winner Leslie Blatt, on left, accepting the award from President Fran King

December, 2011. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 3

AASL in MinneapolisHilda K. Weisburg

AASL Liaison, AA Delegate

I know it’s difficult and expensive to attend an AASL Conference, but this biennial event needs to be put on your calendar. Start saving now, because you shouldn’t miss a three-day national conference completely focused on you and your program. All the vendors are there to meet and attract school librarians. All the programs are about what you do—or could do. The professional development is enormous, and the networking is almost as good.

PreConference – Wednesdays are always devoted to full- and half-day workshops. While these extend your stay, once they are announced, you can identify any that would be of particular interest in your district, and then bring that information to your administrator when requesting your professional time. For example, there was a half-day workshop on “Engaged Learning Through Curriculum-Aligned Games,” one at the elementary level and another for secondary. Both were led by Christopher Harris and Brian Mayer, authors of Libraries Got Game: Aligned Learning through Modern Board Games.

Tours – Tours were scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. Four school tours were available, two of Independent Schools, one of a “unique” school --Perpich Center for Arts Education and Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion School—the latter stop possibly being of high interest to some of you, and another that included a junior and a senior high school. Additionally, there was a tour of the University of Minnesota Libraries’ Special Collections and a walking tour of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s homes, which could add to a high school unit on his work. For those who wanted something more “touristy,” there was a historic cave tour at the Wabash Street Caves.

Exploratorium- NJASL leaders have taken this idea back for our own conference. This one-to-one poster session on Thursday afternoon allows you to see a broad variety of programs and ideas that you can introduce in your own school. The forty-five tables covered a broad range of topics, helpfully grouped in the conference program. There were three on 21st Century Standards, four on Collaboration, three on Curriculum & Instsruction, four on Information Literacy, and seven on Reading Promotion, and more.

Keynote – Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains ,was the keynoter. Carr’s book was also the topic of the “One Book-One Conference” discussion which began on the AASL Ning before the conference and concluded before the opening session. Carr reviewed the main ideas of his book. The history and neuroscience he presents in explaining what is happening to us in the “age of distraction” makes for interesting thinking. While he offers no solutions, most librarians present realized that what we do in having our students step back from their surface scans of the Internet to do inquiry-based learning and construct new knowledge is the best possible answer to the challenge. Now we need to show our administrators both the problem and how we contribute to dealing with it.

Concurrent Sessions – Presentations began at 8:00 a.m. on Friday and continued through 2:15 p.m. on Saturday. Choosing among the offerings was difficult, as always. New Jersey was well represented. Mary Moyer did Beyond the Basics—Sparking a Culture of Literacy Re-igniting Readers Within a Secondary School Setting, Carol Gordon, Ya-Ling Lu, and Ross Todd reported on The New Jersey School Library Study: Student Learning—One Common Goal, Mary Fran Daley, our Emerging Leader, was on the panel for The Best Websites for Teaching and Learning: Inquiry, Standards, and Curriculum, presented by the AASL Committee of which she is a member, and I did Tag—You’re It! Becoming Visible and Vital (which I will also present at the NJASL conference)>

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One of my favorite sessions was Buffy Hamilton’s Transforming Learning for Today’s Students: Libraries as Sponsors of Transliteracy. Among the highlights of her presentation was that transliteracy should be thought of holistically, with the different literacies not thought of in isolation. We shouldn’t make assumptions about prior knowledge of digital natives because a participation gap exists. Many lack access or resources to create and connect (lack of broadband), and we need to discover how to harness the power of emerging technologies to deal with the gap. Buffy also told us we need to put pedagogy before tools, fight the school culture that requires THE right answer, and help our students realize that constructing new understanding – synthesis - and developing conclusions is a messy process.

Another session that interested me was a panel on Putting It All Together: The Integration of Print and Digital Resources in the Information Literacy Curriculum of School Libraries. The presentation “put together” a broad range of perspectives, as speakers included a representative from Mackin Educational Services (a book jobber), the president of Rosen Publishing, Chris Harris for the gaming component, and three, including Joyce Valenza. The president of Rosen discussed the many formats from which publishers must choose-- ebooks, interactive ebooks, databases, and print. The decision is content-driven, and it’s important to recognize that, for beginning readers, too many enhancements are a distraction. Chris Harris noted that gaming is a natural form of learning, but games need to connect with curriculum and learning; he proceeded to present a number of examples. Joyce Valenza said we have a new job in the library – curation - and curation tools make the best search engines.

Authors, Authors, and more Authors. Authors are everywhere at an AASL Conference. Andrea Davis Pinkney, Pat Mora, and Joan Bauer were Friday night banquet speakers. Gennifer Choldenko was a brunch speaker on Sunday, as was Maggie Stiefvater (I was privileged to be at her table, and she was enchanting.). Authors are also scheduled for signing at vendor booths (Great photo opportunity!). There was also a storytelling festival on Thursday evening, featuring Judi Moreillon, Jerry Blue, and Dianne De Las Casas.

Learning Commons – I missed attending this, but it ran throughout the conference. It is a physical and virtual space for sharing and celebrating our achievements. Topics, times, and facilitators were listed online in advance of the conference, and people signed up to facilitate as they wished.

Exhibitors – Over 200 exhibitors were at the conference. Besides collecting all the “swag”—free books, posters, pens, canvas bags, etc.—floor time is invaluable for seeing what’s new and sitting in on product demonstrations. These give you ideas for what you might want to purchase for your school or teach you more effective uses of the ones you have.

What’s Next? Of course, there is ALA Midwinter in Dallas, January 20-24, 2012, and ALA Annual in Anaheim, June 21-26 (combine it with a trip to Disneyland), but mark your calendars now, and start planning for the next two big events. The AASL Fall Forum will be on Transliteracy and the School Library Program (we all need to get proficient in this) in Greenville, South Carolina, October 12-13, and then the 16th AASL Conference, November 13-17, 2013, in Hartford, Connecticut!! You can’t miss that one –it’s in our backyard!!!

As always, if you want any information about ALA/AASL, including membership and committee appointments, or if you want further information about anything relating to AASL, contact me at 732-566-1995 or e-mail to: hildakw@gmail.com.AND JOIN AASL NOW, SO YOU CAN VOTE FOR BARBARA STRIPLING for ALA PRESIDENT!

December, 2011. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 5

Alice DinizoNJASL-R Reporter

When my husband and I visited my home state of Vermont at the end of October, it was upsetting to witness the teachers and, of course, school librarians on strike in several Bennington school districts. The teachers had been asked to take a pay cut and contribute more to their health benefits. This reporter refuses to read citizen responses to this strike, for all of us know that we spend far more hours preparing for our students then those we spend in teaching library/media skills during the school day. None of us are interested in hearing that we work so few hours we shouldn’t want to be paid a decent wage. When graduating from library school in those long ago days of the 1960s, we were happy to be hired. Off we went to our first library positions with great plans for influencing positively the lives of the students we’d be teaching. And remember the jokes we made about saving our money so that in twenty years we could afford our own apartment and maybe even a car? Bringing joy to a child or teenager’s life by reading them the opening lines of a book cannot be measured in dollars and cents. The gift that draws us into library work is also one that is valuable beyond words.

Retired? Looking for work? Here is a book that you can read while waiting for the snow to melt and a job opening to appear just for you. Bruce Cameron has written a coming-of-age novel entitled Emory’s Gif,t and what a gift this story truly is! The setting is Idaho of the early 1970’s, and thirteen year old Charlie Hall and his father are alienated, each of them lost in grief after the death of Charlie’s mother, Laura. Charlie is tormented and bullied by former friends, and then has to watch as the people of his hometown try to interest his father in romance. Charlie comes upon a grizzly bear near his home, and, instead of brutalizing Charlie, the bear, Emory, wants to be Charlie’s friend. Emory sleeps on the couch in Charlie’s dad’s pole barn and frequently eats the frozen meals given to Charlie and his dad by well-meaning friends. He writes not just his name, Emory, but a message on the pole barn wall for everyone to read. Can Emory be for real? Read this gem of a book, and find out.

New Jersey Center for the Book, www.njcenterforthebook.org

The Miss Rumphius Award celebrates collaboration between librarians and teachers. What great project have you done recently that can be replicated by your peers? This year’s win-ner, Kim Zito, school media specialist at Crossroads North Middle School, South Brunswick, was the driving force behind South Brunswick’s first ever 2011 community-wide reading

initiative entitled South Brunswick Reads . . .,The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was a ground-breaking partner-ship between the South Brunswick Public School District and the South Brunswick Public Library. The concept won quick approval from both the School District Board of Education and the Public Li-brary. Kim created a wiki for school district staff, library staff, students, and the public to explore and celebrate South Brunswick Reads. The wiki included access to free e-book and audio versions of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as well as video clips from different film versions. There were resources for students, links to lesson plans for teachers, and listings for activities at the public library. The wiki also included interactive learning opportu-nities for students and a number of internet resources. In the schools students who read the book hung a golden brick with their name on it on the school walls, building a yellow brick road throughout the district. Kim was nominated for the award by Chris Carbone, Library Director of the South Brunswick Public Library. Carbone pointed out that schools and public libraries can easily partner together and promote a title for their community to read. The program naturally lends itself to creative ways to incorporate a theme into library programs, school assignments, family experiences and a shared journey that will increase a sense of community.

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Middle School Literacy Corner - Bruce DuBoff

Haddix, Margaret Peterson. The Always War. Simon & Schuster BFYR, 2011. 197 pages. ISBN 13: 978-1-4169-9526-5. This book is appropriate for grades 5 and up, or ages 10 and older, depending on reading level and interests.

I grew up loving dystopias, and reading 1984, Brave New World and We was epiphanous for a young science fiction fan who had seldom pondered the bigger questions that good science fiction always poses. At fourteen years old, the politics of war and peace, the seductive nature of control and domination, and the genetic implications of cloning and human engineering were all brave, new concepts. As evidenced by her impressive portfolio, featuring the underrated Running Out of Time and the still-popular Shadow Children series, Margaret Peterson Haddix has thought quite a bit about those issues, and she has probably read the aforementioned books and more. But Ms. Haddix may have watched the same TV and movies as I did back in the day, because her new novel, The Always War, was influenced, or at least predated, by two plots of which I am aware: the 1967 Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon,” in which Kirk and Spock try to understand a war between two diametrically opposed but technologically advanced races, and D. F. Jones’s 1960’s thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, which discusses the possibility of technology sophistication outracing our ability to control it. But remember: Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games is simply a combination of the Star Trek episode “Bread and Circuses” and the modern reality television show, with a dash of 1984 for good measure. A derivative idea is not necessarily a bad idea, just one that us older folks have seen already.

Tessa is in a bind. For some reason, maybe admiration, maybe envy, maybe nostalgia, maybe fear, maybe infatuation, maybe all of them mashed together, she has visited Gideon Thrall, the recently-disgraced war hero, and now she is on the run. Gideon has done the unthinkable: he has showed remorse and regret for killing over 1,600 of the enemy. As a soldier in Eastam, he is determined to surrender to the Westam authorities and face punishment for his

war crimes. Because Tessa is Gideon’s next-door neighbor, she discovers his dilemma and is strangely fascinated by and drawn into Gideon’s plight. But when Tessa tries to comfort Gideon, he lashes out at her and himself: “‘Go on! Get out of here! Before you’re contaminated too . . . What I did—it was wrong! Evil! Evil! Evil!’” (28). Tessa does not abandon her violently moralistic companion; instead she accompanies him on a dangerous and reckless adventure in which each character must question his or her understanding of the nature of both their society and the war that dominates so much of their lives.

The concept Ms. Haddix explores, a war conducted impersonally by drones for so long that no one actually knows what is really happening, is both current and relevant, so our middler readers will recognize the plot as dystopian right away, and that element of the work will resonate with them. What may not resonate is the lack of richness in description that Ms. Haddix has demonstrated in the past. I understand that the world she describes is stark, but her choice of a lack of characterization in favor of a fast-moving plot denies the reader the opportunity to connect to and empathize with Tessa, Gideon, and their suspicious companion Dek. Without truly seeing them, smelling them, and hearing them, we cannot fully buy-in to the new universe being created, we can only be a slightly bored passenger on the dystopian bus driven by the author. The Always War by Margaret Peterson Haddix will probably end up on your shelves, and it’s not a bad book, but I would still point readers toward her earlier works as the best representatives of her writing style.

-Bruce DuBoff is the librarian at Pennsauken Intermediate School and Howard M. Phifer Middle School in Pennsauken, NJ. Bruce’s e-mail address is bduboff@pennsauken.net and his web URLS and blog site are as follows: Websites: http://ww2.pennsauken.net/pim and http://ww2.pennsauken.net/pms, Blog: http://phiferbooks.blogspot.com

Bookmark is published monthly, September through June, by The New Jersey Association of School Librarians, PO Box 610, Trenton, NJ 08607. October through May are online editions. Deadlines are always the 15th of the month. Editors: Pat Morris, Bev Siti. Email to <justbev@juno.com> and please put NJASL or Bookmark in the subject line.

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HOLIDAY TREE LIGHTING AT THE NEW JERSEY VIETNAM VETERANS› MEMORIAL

The New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Foundation, Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 800 from Bergen County and the Jewish War Veterans, Department of New Jersey, will host the annual Holiday Lighting Ceremony at the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Holmdel, NJ, on Saturday, December 10, 2012, at 6:00 PM. The ceremony will include the lighting of the Christmas tree and Menorah, and readings about Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. The Brick Memorial High School Caroling Choir will lead the singing of patriotic and holiday songs. The festivities are open to the public at no charge, and hot chocolate and cookies will be offered. The New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial and Vietnam Era Museum & Educational Center are located on the grounds of the PNC Bank Arts Center, off the Garden State Parkway at exit 116. The Memorial is open 24 hours, 7 days a week. The Educational Center is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Regular admission to the Museum & Educational Center is free for veterans and active-duty military personnel. Regular adult admission is $5.00; student and senior citizen admission is $3.00; and children under 10 are admitted free. Please call (732) 335-0033 xt. 100 for additional information or to RSVP your attendance.

Christine Hartigan

5 December 2011

Extra Credit: NJASL Conference, Kindles and

Ebooks presentation

On December 2, I attended the NJASL (New Jersey

Association of School Librarians) conference in Long

Branch, New Jersey. During the day, I attended workshops

on Web 2.0 websites and the new Common Core Standards,

but probably the most interesting and helpful workshop

was the one on Kindles and Ebooks.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a lot of parents

calling me to ask about Kindles, ebooks, and libraries.

They want to know if the library has any ebooks available

to check out, so I’ve been looking into some options.

The presenter, who is the Media Specialist at West

Orange High School, was awarded a grant to purchase

some Kindles and preload them with books. These Kindles

are then circulated to students as if they were books, only

the Kindles have around 50 popular books loaded on them.

She went over some rules and procedures: how she

created the permission slips, how she decided on overdue

fines, how she ensured that kids would return them, etc.

She discussed things I never even thought of, like different

cases they used, whether they’d be checked out with or

without chargers, etc.

This workshop was extremely informative, even

though this isn’t something I’m looking to do right away.

I am looking to purchase some ebooks for the catalog

that students can load onto their own Kindles, but she

didn’t talk about this at all. Overall, it was an informative

presentation, and I’m glad I attended. It definitely sparked

some ideas.

INTERESTING URLConsider subscribing to email highlights atAwesomeStories.com. Visual Vocabulary Builder for stories, such as The Descendants, War Horse, Broadway Empire, ongoing profiles of current and historical events, and video clips. Very interesting stuff.

TENAFLY — Students at the Walter Stillman Elementary School collected 300 books and donated them to a school library in Essex County that was damaged by Hurricane Irene.

“Our school decided it wanted to do something,” said Walter Stillman Elementary School Librarian Charlotte Shaffer. She said many students expressed concern about the books and supplies in the schools that were flood-ed as a result of the hurricane. “The students said to me ‘kids like to read, how are they going to get books to read.’”

After doing some research, Shaffer found that the Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary School in Fairfield was flooded. Shaffer contacted Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary Library Media Specialist Janet Goodman to tell her that the Stillman students would like to send some books.

The two librarians corresponded via email until Nov. 17, when Stillman students presented Goodman with the 300 books they collected.

“The entire school was flooded and anything that was wood was destroyed and had to be removed,” said Goodman. “There was six to eight inches of water in the library and everything on the bottom shelves were destroyed.”

The storm forced the school to close for eight days and caused the library to lose 25 percent of its book collec-tion.

Tenafly students hold book drive for Fairfield school by Amanda Baskind, Staff Writer for the Northern Valley Suburbanitereprinted by permission

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Wordelmann_WorkshopReview1

Theresa Wordelmann Behavior Management NJASL Workshop – Extra Credit December 5, 2011

There were a number of valuable workshops presented at the NJASL Conference this weekend. The one that furthered my knowledge of life as a School Library Media Specialist, though, was the CISSL Study – Phase 2 results shared by Ross Todd during the General Session Membership Meeting on Friday, December 2.

CISSL (the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries) was hired by NJASL to “determine the effectiveness of library programs in New Jersey’s K-12 schools” (One Common Goal –Student Learning, Conference Report). There were two phases of this program – the first was completed in 2009 and is a snapshot of 30% of New Jersey’s school libraries. The second focused on twelve programs whose school librarians reported “high levels of instructional collaboration with classroom teachers” (ibid.) and was completed in 2011.

The results of the 2nd phase of the report were amazing. In the twelve schools studied in Phase 2, the librarians were viewed by their colleagues as fellow teachers and the library itself was not seen as a place to go to get “stuff,” rather it was seen as “a learning center”, “a center for learning innovation,” and as a place where the primary focus was on “building capacity for critical engagement” (from presentation given by Dr. Todd at NJASL conference). As Dr. Todd noted, we (meaning SLMS’) don’t have our own curriculum, so we need to meet the curriculum goals for ALL subjects. The librarians from the 12 districts who were seen as highly collaborative did just that – they focused not only on the traditional role of helping students conduct research but also expanded their nets to include the curriculum for many subjects… and their colleagues noticed. They were seen as teachers of teachers!

One of the findings that Dr. Todd shared was that information literacy, such a buzz word for many of us, was referred to only a few times in the entire survey. He reported that “digital citizenship” was the term that was foremost in people’s minds. (Interestingly enough, there was an article in last week’s USA Today about teaching K-12 students digital citizenship.)

Finally, the session handouts included writings from each of the twelve SLMS’ whose schools were highlighted in phase 2. The librarians teachers reflections offered practical advice and tips for ways to achieve success as a LMS.

There were many workshops that were enjoyable and informative – the book talks, author performances, and the overviews of various programs instituted by SLMS’. This session, though, was the most valuable for me. In the short span of one hour, I received an overview of the “state of the school library in NJ” and insights from professionals who are seen as “living the dream of collaboration.” This workshop provided me an idea for where I should aim to be as my career in the SLM field continues.

Theresa Wordelman and Christine Hartigan, whose article is on page 7, are both students in the Rutgers SCI PDS program and sub-mitted the Extra Credit papers about workshops at the Annual Conference of NJASL.

December, 2011. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 9

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Celebrate the Bill of RightsJoin in the live web chat with our education staffDecember 12–16, 7 a.m.–6 p.m. EST Join us from your classroom! Tune in to our interactive webcast series, Constitution Hall Pass: Bill of Rights, to commemorate the ratification of this historic document and learn about its 10 Amendments—which gave Americans many of the freedoms we enjoy today. All you need is an internet connection to participate, and it’s free!

Join us at the Center! Activities include our fast-paced, interactive game show “Who Wants to Be a “Bill-ionaire?” and a special tour of our iconic attraction Signers’ Hall. Free with museum admission. December 15, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. To book your school group, call 215.409.6800 or email groupsales@constitutioncenter.org.

Holiday Week at the CenterMonday, December 26, 2011 – Saturday, December 31, 2011Bring the whole family to our festive holiday celebration. Create arts and crafts, sing holiday favorites during seasonal karaoke, and send special greetings to the men and women serving overseas in the U.S. military. A spe-cial interactive program will reveal the history of the New Year’s holiday and the stories behind traditions such as singing “Auld Lang Syne,” the ball drop at Times Square and Philadelphia’s own Mummers Parade. Free with museum admission. 10:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

Coming in January! Constitution Hall Pass:Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., A Legacy of ServiceJoin in the live web chat with our education staff and watch the engaging webcastJanuary 9–13 and 16, 7:00 a.m. –6:00 p.m. ESTThis must-see episode of Constitution Hall Pass will take an in-depth look at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of service. We’ll explore how his use of nonviolence was not just a political tool but a way to demonstrate ser-vice to others. Students will learn about other activists who drew their inspiration from Dr. King. And we’ll even discover ways that you can serve your community! Join us as we honor the memory of this great American by talking about service.

National Constitution Center525 Arch StreetPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania 19106

www.constitutioncenter.org

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Kim Zito, center front, displays the Miss Rumphius Award she received from Renee B. Swartz, Director of the New Jersey Center for the Book, center back. NJASL President Fran King and Conference Chair April Bunn give their congratulations.