For my first Reading Journal entry, I read School Library Journal (July 2012). It is a magazine that is produced for school librarians. I chose to use this because my mentor/Head librarian at my job gave me a copy to read. This is one of the Journals that she subscribes to, and she feels that it is a valuable resource for me to become familiar with. It is one of the tools that she uses to review books prior to purchasing.
I skimmed the entire magazine and then went back and read in depth two specific parts of the journal: first I read an article on Pinterest and how it is influencing the world of school libraries-I chose this particular article because I love Pinterest and thought it would be cool to see how professionals are using it as an educational tool; second, I spent the majority of my time reading the Book Review section of the journal.
Overall I love this journal as a resource. It is easy to read, colorful, and informative with practical information that can be used right away. The most helpful section of this entire journal is the Book Review-it is jam packed with multi-aged neutral reviews of a wide variety of literature. I will absolutely be using this journal as a resource regularly because of the review section. I am not familiar enough with middle school fiction selections, and after reading the reviews find this portion of the journal to be exceptional. Not only can I use these reviews as a guide to book purchasing, but I have already used them to get to know what kind of books are out there for middle school/junior high readers.
The content of this resource is a gold mine of useful information. I learned that there is information readily available to help a librarian learn more about the books that are out there for a variety of grade level. This journal provides concise information on current topics (Pinterest) that I can apply quickly and also provides resources in the form of reviews. Like we have talked about in class, there is NO way that we can do this job on our own-this journal is a great resource to come back to time and time again. I cannot emphasize this enough-the Book Review section is seriously amazing!!! Again, I will be using this resource on a monthly basis and intend on subscribing myself. If for no other reason it will be one of my many "go to" sources for the book review section alone. I feel a bit insecure with upper grade level fiction, so having the journal to read makes me feel empowered to help students when they are selecting a book that I would otherwise know very little about. The only question that I had about the book review selection was-are these reviews really neutral enough? Are they skewed because they are being done by fellow librarians? Don't we each bring our own prior knowledge and values into this arena of picking what we think is a good book? To answer that question I went a step further and looked up a few titles on Novelist and Amazon to see if the reviews matched up. For the most part each reviewer gave the same synopsis of the book and had the same viewpoint on the review. It gave the journal the credibility I was looking for.
I would HIGHLY recommend the journal to my classmates. It really is an excellent resource that is fun and easy to read.
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