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October 3, 2011
A New Face for Spellbinders
Caroline Starr Rose  Welcome back to Spellbinders, the educational newsletter for teachers, librarians, therapists and authors who are striving to inspire students with literature and to create lifelong readers!

 

This year we have two exciting changes. First of all, we are proud to introduce a new columnist, Caroline Starr Rose, who will be hosting Classroom Connections. Caroline is a previous middle school language arts and social studies teacher with a wealth of experience connecting kids with books. Her first book, MAY B. (Schwartz and Wade/ Random House Children's Books), debuts January 2012. It's a novel in verse about a young girl who travels miles from home to help out on a neighbor's homestead only to be abandoned there in the middle of the harsh prairie winter.

 

It's already received a Kirkus starred review!

  

Our second big change is that Spellbinders will be moving to a weekly format. We all lead busy lives and rather than overwhelming our readers with three columns and a feature article all at once, we will be presenting one per week each Monday. Our schedule will be:

Week One: Feature Article

Week Two: Carolee and the Secret Language of Stories

Week Three: Kimberley's Book Buzz

Week Four: Caroline's Classroom Connections

Week Five: Special Edition - This month on October 31st we will explore Kim's new ghost thriller Circle of Secrets with Q&A and TREATS (aka: giveaways).

In addition to our newsletter, the same columns will appear on our blog at our Spellbinders BlogBe sure to add us to your favorites at home if you would rather read us there.

See you next week with The Secret Language of Stories. We are looking forward to a great year!

A special note to those of you who have generously been forwarding our newsletter to your entire school - Please use the button at the bottom of this page marked Forward this email to send to your list. If you forward through your email server, you may inadvertantly get unsubscribed. It's a quirky feature of Constant Contact. Sorry about any inconvenience.

Another option is to follow us on Twitter in which case the newsletter will come right to the phone.

 
Meet the Spellbinders

Kim Bio PhotoKimberley Griffiths Little is the recipient of the Southwest Book Award, The Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel of 2010, and the author of the highly acclaimed, The Healing Spell and Circle of Secrets, published by Scholastic Press. Look for her books at the Scholastic Book Fairs, as well Circle of Secretsas two more forthcoming novels in 2012 and 2013. She lives on a dirt road in a small town by the Rio Grande with her husband, a robotics engineer and their three sons. Kimberley is a favorite speaker at schools around the country, presenting "The Creative Diary", a highly successful writing Healing Spellworkshop and has been a speaker at many conferences. Please visit her website to download free Teacher's Guides and Book Club Guides. 

 

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 Carolee Dean

Carolee Dean has made numerous appearances as a guest poet/author at schools, libraries, poetry events, and teacher/library conferences. She holds a bachelor's degree in music therapy and a master's degree in communicative disorders, and she has spent over a decade working in the public schools as a Comfort Paperback Coverspeech-language pathologist. Her first novel, Comfort,was nominated as a Best Book for Young Adults, was named the Best YA Novel of 2002 by the Texas Institute of Letters, and was on the TAYSHAS (Texas Library Association) reading list. She conducts teacher trainings on inspiring reluctant writers including "The Secret Language of Stories" and "Random Take Me There CoverActs of Haiku."

 

To find teacher's guides, writing activities, and information about author visits, go to www.caroleedean.com.

 

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Caroline Starr RoseCaroline Starr Rose spent her childhood in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and New Mexico, camping at the Red Sea in one and eating red chile in the other. She's taught English and social studies to upper elementary and middle-school students in New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, and Louisiana. Back in New May BMexico, Caroline now writes middle-grade novels and picture books full time.

 

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