BROOKLYN PROSPECT HS LIBRARY

Happy New Year & Happy New Information to Explore!

1/4/2023

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Here are 9 things I thought were worth sharing:

Use the Six Word Memoir magic in your classes!
Want to be able to access Wikipedia even if you have no wifi? Download the Kiwix app and never be without the whole of human knowledge!
Time to subscribe to Daily Jstor if you don’t already!
What will enter the Public Domain in 2023?
Search in a whole new way!
What books did some of your favorite writers and thinkers read & love last year?
Visit (or revisit) a living library of trees in NYC?
Want to know what advice Ray Bradbury gave for being more creative?
David Byrne’s “The Year in Cheer” is full of good (and often surprising) news from around the world.

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'Tis the season to buy, borrow & read more books!

11/30/2022

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Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing:

PBS to the rescue with their new and constantly-updated U.S. History Collection!
Wikipedia is great for many things, and one of them is this list of common misconceptions…
For the many of us who loved Anthony Bourdain, here is Bourdain’s World Map so we can see all the places he went to eat!
Read your way through Rome. (And other destinations at the bottom!)
Free amazing artwork for your classroom walls!
How to be a better reader.
This has nothing to do with books or reading, but everything to do with the beauty of our universe. Check out a new photo each day!
Find a Little Free Library wherever you are by using the new Little Free Library app!
Ken Burns is someone you definitely want in your classroom!
BEST BOOKS OF 2022 LISTS!

30 of the Best Fall Fiction Books of 2022 to Cuddle Up With (And Poetry Too) (Oprah Daily)
Top 10 Books of 2022 (Book Page)
Best Books of 2022 (Goodreads)
Best Books of 2022 (School Library Journal)
The Best Books of 2022 (So Far)—According to Real Simple Editors
The Best Books of 2022 So Far (The New Yorker)
100 Notable Books of 2022 (New York Times)
Books We Love (NPR)
Best Books of 2022 (NYPL)
The Best Books of 2022 So Far (Vogue)
The Best Books of 2022 (So Far) (Esquire)
Best Fiction Books of the Year (Kirkus)
The Best Books of 2022 So Far (Book Riot)
The 10 Best Books of 2022 (The New York Times)
The 100 Must-Read Books of 2022 (Time)

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Knowledge is Power...

8/23/2022

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Here are 18 things I thought were worth sharing:

1. Click here to get your Brooklyn Public Library card, and click here to get your New York Public Library card, and you NEVER need a card to check out one of our books in our school library!
2. If you like logging in all the books that you read (and seeing which books your friends reading), consider creating a free account on Goodreads! A great way to up your Goodreads numbers is to read lots of amazing shorter books (and here, also)…
3. Also, check out Shepherd (currently in Beta) for another angle on how to choose your next book! Want some new book recommendations by thought leaders? Then check out Book Authority!
4. Whenever you have a chance to read a printed book over a digital book, do it!
5. The Brooklyn Book Festival (September 25 - October 3, 2022) is back in-person as well as with online offerings!
6. The beginning of the school year is the perfect time to find creative ways to get to know your students! Rob Walker, author of The Art of Noticing, freely shares his “Icebreaker of the Week” database that you can contribute to if you have a great one to share!
7. For all you Digital Natives out there, don’t forget the internet didn’t always exist! Want to check out the first time things were searched for ever? Check out Oldest Search.
8. Information is beautiful, or it can be when showcased in the right way!
9. The Brooklyn Public Library is celebrating their 125th birthday, and they’ve curated a list of 125 essential Brooklyn books. How many have you read?
10. Want to see what people want to know about?
11. Check out this new way to record yourself over a presentation!
12. The National Gallery of Art wants to see if you know your art!
13. Want to capture your tweet & make it look sweet? Try this!
14. Tiny Wow can solve a TON of your online issues! Try it and see!
15. See some of the world’s most interesting places right from your screen & dream about your future travel plans to see them in person!
16. You can now borrow vinyl records from the Brooklyn Public Library!
17. Synesthesia, anyone? Hear your paintings with this addictive software from the folks at Google Arts & Culture!
18. Can’t make it to the National Book Festival in DC this year? You can still watch fascinating conversations featuring the many authors featured at the festival! Click on the name of the program & watch the videos on YouTube!

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Summer Reading is my favorite season of the year!

6/5/2022

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Here are 4 things I thought were worth sharing:

1. Here is a treasure trove of Summer Reading Lists that should keep you busy:
Publishers Weekly Summer Reads 2022
The Best Books of 2022 (So Far)—According to Real Simple Editors
The 14 best books of the year so far 2022
Summer Reading 2022 (Barnes & Noble)
Summer Reading 2022 (Brooklyn Public Library)
The Best Books of 2022 (So Far) (Esquire Magazine)
200+ New Books That Are Must Reads in 2022 (PopSugar)
The Best Books of 2022 So Far (Vogue)
28 of the Best New Books to Welcome Spring (Oprah Daily)
What Should I Read This Summer? (NYTimes)
Summer Reading Guide (The Atlantic)
The 10 Most-Banned Books in America
WHAT’S THE BUZZ: 40 OF THE BEST SUMMER READS FOR 2022 (Book Riot)
The 40 Best New Books of 2022 (So Far) That You Won't Be Able to Put Down (Good Housekeeping)
New York Public Library Summer Reading 2022
Traveling this summer? Here are book picks for all 50 states (and then some) (NPR)
UC Berkeley Summer Reading List 2022 for incoming students
88 Books to Bring Your Summer Alive (NYTimes)
The Best Books of 2022 So Far (Barnes & Noble)

2. How well do you know where you live? Test yourself and find out!

3. Learn from Google’s top Search Expert!

4. Want to fall in love with our planet again and also know what time it is? Try this!

5. Do you know a student who wants to be published in the New York Times? Show them this!

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Fake News, Real War & the Power of Information

2/27/2022

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Here are 8 things I thought were worth sharing:

It's important for all of us to stay informed and up-to-date on the war in/on Ukraine. There are some resources for you here, here, here and here. It's also important to be aware of the many other real-time conflicts in the world and to always fight disinformation with information.
Here are 192 ways the world got better in 2021.
Love books & love movies? Then the Netflix Book Club may be for you! A no-pressure online space where readers can talk about the amazing books being made into Netflix series!
Here’s another paywall buster for you when you come across the perfect full-text article you can’t access.
NYPL’s Center for Educators and Schools recently put together Vibrant Voices: New Books from Authors of Color.
Find your next read via Penguin Random House’s The Year in Books. Graphic Novels are having a great run right now!
The OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer is “an interactive map of the evolutionary links between all living things known to science.”
Looking back over all of my blog posts to date, here are my favorite things that I’ve shared with you: Language Reactor, Internet Archive, Five Books, By the People, Radio Garden, Project Muse Open Access, Open Textbook Library, and Aporee.

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"Books may well be the only true magic. -- Alice Hoffman"

1/5/2022

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Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing:

Do you know what each January bestows on us? Exciting works of art that are now in the public domain!! Feast on all we can now freely access & adapt!
New York is a City of Readers. Enjoy a peek into our city’s past and how reading added to our collective personality.
Bibliotherapy is real & really helpful! Some bright souls even prescribe specific poetry for what ails you and Brooklyn’s own Center for Fiction is now getting into the game!
Time is a precious resource for all of us, so subscribe to “The Marginalian” so that Maria Popova can share her thoughts on amazing books and do some “pre-reading” for you!
We have LOTS of new books in our Library! They each proudly sport a red sticker on their spine, so check them out when you have a chance!
Serious about YA books? Check out Stacked!
Librarians fight back against push to ban books from schools.
Join Goodreads, feel free to “friend” me & sign up for the Goodreads Reading Challenge! I pledged to read 33 books in 2022, and am on my way!
If you don’t already, sign up for JSTOR Daily! Here are their most popular stories from 2021.
Since 2014, Tom Whitwell has been compiling a great list full of 52 fascinating facts you didn’t know but might like knowing! Jason Kottke started keeping one, too!

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Happy Reading Season!!

12/9/2021

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Here is 1 thing I thought was worth sharing:

1. READ MORE BOOKS!! They are rectangular tickets to internal VR experiences and one of the most effective ways to boost your empathy quotient! Here are some end of year Best Books Lists that I collected for you. Happy Shopping, Happy Reading & Happy 2022 to you all!

The 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 (Time)
NPR’s Book Concierge 2021
100 Notable Books of 2021 (New York Times)
Best Books 2021 (Publishers Weekly)
Best Books of 2021 (New York Public Library)
Best Books of the Year (So Far) (Amazon)
Best Books 2021 (School Library Journal)
Best Books of 2021 So Far (Book Riot)
The Best Books of the Year 2021 (Barnes & Noble)
Best of 2021 (Kirkus Reviews)
The 10 Best Books of 2021 (Washington Post)
Smithsonian Scholars pick their favorite books of 2021
Best Books 2021 (Library Journal)
Our 20 Favorite Books of 2021 (Oprah Daily)
The 50 Best Books of 2021 (Esquire)
Best Books of the Year (The Guardian)
The 2021 Book Releases to Order Now and Thank Yourself Later (Marie Claire)
The Best YA Books of 2021 (Read Brightly)
The Best Books to Read in 2021 (Vogue)
200 Books that Shaped 200 Years of Literature (Center for Fiction)

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Time to get a library card (if you don't already have one!)

9/21/2021

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Here are 14 things I thought were worth sharing:

September is Library Card Sign-Up Month! If you work at or go to school at BPHS, your name is already in my list of patrons and you can check out books anytime! Here are the links to apply for cards for the "other" libraries in our area: NYPL, BPL & QPL. And IF you have one of those library cards, you can get this for free!
September is also National Hispanic Heritage Month, so take a minute to check out our library catalog for our titles of Hispanic interest and stop by to see our display!
September is also the month of the (temporarily hybrid) Brooklyn Book Festival! It kicks off on September 26th & runs through October 4th and features hundreds of authors from all over the world...
For those bookish types out there, bookmark (truly no pun intended!) Booklist Reader's reviews and features so you can be in the know about the latest things being published!
The Library is hosting our first BPHS Reads! event of the year on October 25th! We'll be reading Traci Chee's "We are Not Free" and we hope you can make it! Pick up a free-to-keep copy of the book in the Library today!
Time Magazine came out with their list of "The 100 Best YA Books of All Time". See if you agree with their choices! We have many of these books in our Library, so come and check them out!
Get into the Cooper-Hewitt (Smithsonian's Design Museum) free through Halloween!
Skipped History is the brainchild of historical satirist Ben Tumin who shines a light on "events, moments, and people conveniently skipped in U.S. History".
The NYPL is now morphing (just a little) into a museum!
Have your students enter this Coming of Age in 2020 Contest sponsored by the New York Times! It runs from September 15-October 27th and is "an invitation to show us — in words or images, audio or video — how you and your generation are being shaped by these extraordinary times."
Help your students be better news consumers with the News Literacy Project! Also check out this online guide by First Draft with tips & activities for your students!
Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) is a free online magazine you should definitely subscribe to!
Check out Google's free Digital Literacy & Citizenship curriculum!
Do some "forest bathing" from anywhere! Should help us all destress as we navigate the tail end of this pandemic! And if you prefer to destress to the foghorns of San Francisco Bay, Austin Kleon has you covered!

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Happy Almost 2021 & Happy Reading!

12/2/2020

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Here are 12 things I thought were worth sharing:

IMAGE: Shaylyn Esposito

1. Publishing companies want to tell you all about their new books!
2. To help commemorate their 125th Anniversary, the New York Public Library has some opinions on their favorite 125 Books for Teens.
3. A new kind of historical podcast series from a new kind of public educator.
4. The American Experience in 737 Novels: a history of American literature in map form.
5. For those of you who loved The Things They Carried, it will now be a movie!
6. Some thoughts from our amazing National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, in the middle of his 2-year term.
7. Open access image libraries – a handy list!
8. I missed this in October, but we now have a LIVE NYC Subway Map! Here’s a great video about how this complicated digital map was created.
9. Are you a bit moody after the year we’ve all had? Use your moods to find your next book!
10. If you haven’t checked it out already, head to Bookshop, the “Rebel Alliance” fighting Amazon for market share, and in turn, supporting scores of independent bookstores.
11. Here are some of the top Best Books lists of 2020:
Time Magazine’s Best YA and Children's Books of 2020
NPR’s Book Concierge 2020
100 Notable Books of 2020 (New York Times)
Best Books of 2020 (Goodreads)
Best Books 2020 (Publishers Weekly)
The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 (Time Magazine)
Best Books of 2020 (New York Public Library)
Best Books of the Year (So Far) (Amazon)
Best Books 2020 (School Library Journal)
Center for the Study of Multicultural Children's Literature Best Books of 2020
Best Books 2020 (Worst Year/Best Books; Library Journal)
Times Critics’ Top Books of 2020
The Best Books we read in 2020 (The New Yorker)
Best Books of 2020 (Book Riot)
The Ten Best History Books of 2020 (Smithsonian)
The Ten Best Books of 2020 (The Washington Post)
Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Books of 2020
The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020 (Time Magazine)
The Best Books of the Year 2020 (Barnes & Noble)
12. As we hurtle towards January, we can look backward (just like the God Janus), at the many book awards that were given out this past year...

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It's Good to See You!

8/27/2020

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Here are 13 things I thought were worth sharing:

Welcome back to possibly the weirdest school year in recent history! All over the world, content creators have been retooling their offerings to make it easier for you and your students to learn and connect with each other. In advance of one of the most contentious presidential elections ever, it’s even more important than ever to consume and spread accurate information. Taking a free class from Checkology can help you do this.
One of my favorite things to do each September is to head to the Brooklyn Book Festival to buy books, meet authors, and steep myself in book culture. This year the festival will be online from September 28th-October 4th. Further uptown, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (a division of the NYPL) will be hosting their own online literary festival from September 21-26. I’ve already signed up for one of the events! Further afield, the National Book Festival (sponsored by the Library of Congress) will also be held online from September 25-27th. For the first time ever, part of the National Book Festival will be broadcast on PBS, so set your DVRs!
I have dusted off my list of Remote Learning Tools from this spring for you and your students, and will be adding new things on a regular basis (noted in yellow).
Our country is going through a much-needed racial reckoning, and our corner of Brooklyn is taking a deeper look at our collective educational history and is doing something about it.
Even if you don’t subscribe to The New York Times (you really should!), their Learning Network is always free to both educators and students. Take some time to peruse their many tools and make them work for you and encourage your students to enter their student contests!
Our school has an educational subscription to the New York Times. Please let me know if the link doesn’t work!
Leave it to a school librarian to rally her librarian comrades to crowdsource a free interactive ebook full of tech tools that will help you do your job!
Over the summer, I updated my Anti-Racism Reading List and will continue to add books to this list.
I just updated our Election 2020 page with new resources.
While Covid-19 has narrowed the options about where we can go in person, it has enlarged our virtual opportunities! Consider signing up for e-newsletters from local cultural organizations (like The Brooklyn Historical Society or Community Bookstore) so you can attend their many online offerings!
We may not all be ELA teachers, but we are all readers! It’s always good to take a fresh look at what we teach and what we read, with an eye for tweaking and for making some switches. Penguin Random House gives us some suggestions!
Want to send your students on a field trip to better understand diseases like Covid-19? Here are 7 virtual museum exhibits that explore pandemics.
Powered by Common Sense Media, Wide Open School makes it easier for you to provide engaging content to your students, wherever they are!

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<<Previous

Happy New Year & Happy New Information to Explore!

'Tis the season to buy, borrow & read more books!

Knowledge is Power...

Summer Reading is my favorite season of the year!

Fake News, Real War & the Power of Information

"Books may well be the only true magic. -- Alice Hoffman"

Happy Reading Season!!

Time to get a library card (if you don't already have one!)

Happy Almost 2021 & Happy Reading!

It's Good to See You!

Leslie Gallager

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