I just did some reorganizing on the website, consolidating related topics that were scattered all over the place into two groupings (in parentheses is the number of article summaries for each topic so far):

Leadership: Courage (1)
Leadership: Creativity (3)
Leadership: Crisis management (2)
Leadership: Customer service (1)
Leadership: Delegation (29)
Leadership: Difficult conversations, critical feedback (15)
Leadership: Effective principals (206 - I'll break this one up)
Leadership: Emotional intelligence (56)
Leadership: Getting input, questionnaires, surveys (19)
Leadership: Group facilitation skills, staff meetings (25)
Leadership: Time management (34)

Planning: Goal-setting, SMART goals (6)
Planning: Mission and vision statements (22)
Planning: Strategic plans, comprehensive school plans (69)

Enjoy!

My best,

Kim

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Quotes of the Week

“Without breakfast, you’re not all there.”
New York City subway advertising campaign aimed at students

“The relationship between confidence and interest is close. If they feel they can do it, it feeds their interest.”
Nadya Fouad on girls’ math and science achievement (see item #5)

“[T]he goal should be to experiment constantly, fail early and often, and learn as much as possible in the process.”
Teresa Amabile and Mukti Khaire (see item #3)

“A couple of decades ago, people associated testing results with so-called ability. We have come to a clearer understanding that those scores have more to do with opportunities.”
William Fitzsimmons, Harvard admissions dean (see item #4)

“In a perfect world, high-school curriculum standards would link up with college-admissions placement decisions. There needs to be a shift in tone from aptitude to achievement.”
Nicholas Lemann (ibid.)

“If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can’t just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works.”
Barack Obama in a 2007 speech on education, quoted in “24/7 School Reform” by Paul Tough in the New York Times Magazine, Sept. 7, 2008
 

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1. Three Reasons Why Learning About Evolution Matters

In this passionate New York Times op-ed piece, columnist Olivia Judson worries that as the debate on the teaching of evolution continues, evolution is treated by some “as an abstract subject that deals with the age of the earth or how fish first flopped onto land. It’s discussed as though it were an optional, quaint and largely irrelevant part of biology.” The result, Judson says, is that it’s often dropped from the curriculum. She believes this is dangerous, and argues that teaching evolution is vital to our future because:
• First, it gives us a framework for understanding the world we live in. “Without evolution,” says Judson, “biology is merely a collection of disconnected facts, a set of descriptions… Add evolution – and it becomes possible to make inferences and predictions and (sometimes) to do experiments to test those predictions. All of a sudden patterns emerge everywhere, and apparently trivial details become interesting.”
• Second, our survival depends on it. “The impact we are having on the planet is causing other organisms to evolve – and fast,” says Judson – widespread resistance to pesticides among insects, the evolution of drug resistance in malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases, and the possibility that the virus that causes bird flu will evolve in a way that spreads from person to person. Similarly, our hunting of various animals is causing evolutionary changes in them – and their prey. “Thus, a failure to consider the evolution of other species may result in a failure of our efforts to preserve them,” says Judson. “And, perhaps, to preserve ourselves from diseases, pests, and food shortages.”
• Third, learning about evolution shows a respect for evidence. “A society where ideology is a substitute for evidence can go badly awry,” says Judson. Following the trail of evidence, on the other hand, “contains a profound optimism. It means that when we encounter something in nature that is complicated or mysterious, such as the flagellum of a bacteria or the light made by a firefly, we don’t have to shrug our shoulders in bewilderment. Instead, we can ask how it got to be that way. And if at first it seems so complicated that the evolutionary steps are hard to work out, we have an invitation to imagine, to play, to experiment and explore. To my mind, this only enhances the wonder.”

“Optimism in Evolution” by Olivia Judson in the New York Times, Aug. 13, 2008, no free e-link
 

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2. Five Standards for Evaluating a Leader

In this Harvard Business Review article, former CEO Stephen Kaufman recalls that when he first became the leader of a company, he received minimal feedback from his board. All they cared about was whether the company “made its numbers”, he said, and his evaluation and compensation package were delivered each year in a ten-minute conversation with the board’s chairman (who didn’t even take the time to sit down in his office).
Kaufman thinks this was ridiculous, and he worked with his board at Arrow Electronics to develop a thorough mid-year evaluation process on the five criteria below, with him doing a self-assessment and key board members gathering information from others in the company and assessing the CEO’s ongoing performance and giving him feedback.
• Leadership – How well does the leader motivate and energize the organization? Is the organization’s culture reinforcing its mission and values?
• Strategy – Is it being effectively implemented? Is the organization aligned behind it? Is it working?
• People management – Is the leader putting the right people in the right jobs? Is there a stream of appropriate people for the succession and to support growth goals?
• Operating metrics – Are internal and external measurements of success heading in the right direction?
• Relationships with external constituencies – How well does the leader engage with the organization’s stakeholders on the outside?
The bottom line? “I found that the Arrow process exposed my blind spots before I could get into too much trouble,” says Kaufman. And he was a successful CEO at the company for 14 years.

“Evaluating the CEO” by Stephen Kaufman in Harvard Business Review, October 2008 (Vol. 86, #10, p. 53-57), no e-link available; Kaufman can be reached at skaufman@hbs.edu.
 

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3. How to Foster Creativity and Innovation

In this Harvard Business Review article with direct relevance to school leadership, professors Teresa Amabile and Mukti Khaire share the wisdom gained from a recent two-day conference about how to enhance creativity. “The first priority of leadership,” write the authors, “is to engage the right people, at the right times, to the right degree in creative work.” Here is their manager’s guide to increasing innovation:
• Remember that you are not the sole font of ideas:
- Be an appreciative audience. “A good leader can do much to challenge and inspire creative work in progress,” say Amabile and Khaire. Russ Wilcox of E Ink agrees: “The greatest inventions in our company are always done to impress someone else.”
- Ask inspiring questions. “The way in which a leader asks a question can move a team very positively,” says Mark Addicks of General Mills.
- Allow ideas to bubble up from the workforce and allow people to pursue their passions.
• Enable collaboration:
- Combat the myth of the lone inventor. “Though past breakthroughs sometimes have come from a single genius,” say Amabile and Khaire, “the reality today is that most innovations draw on many contributions… People don’t do what they do because someone told them to do it. Contributing to an interdependent network is its own reward.”
- Define “superstar” as someone who helps others succeed.
- Use metaphors, analogies, and stories to help teams conceptualize together.
• Enhance diversity:
- Get people with different backgrounds and expertise to work together.
- Encourage individuals to gain diverse experiences that will increase their creativity.
- Open the organization to outside creative contributors.
• Map the stages of creativity and tend to their different needs:
- Avoid efficiency-minded management in the early stage of innovation, which is “inherently muddle-headed.”
- Provide enough time and resources for exploration.
- Manage the transition from creative work to hard-headed implementation – a phase that requires different skills and processes.
• Accept the inevitability and utility of failure:
- Create psychological safety to maximize learning from failure. “Arguably, the managerial reactions that speak loudest to creative workers are reactions to failure,” say Amabile and Khaire. “…[T]he goal should be to experiment constantly, fail early and often, and learn as much as possible in the process.” Leaders must convince people that they “will not be humiliated, much less punished, if they speak up with ideas, questions, or concerns, or make mistakes.”
- Recognize the different kinds of failure and how they can be useful.
- Create good mechanisms for filtering ideas and stopping projects that are headed for a dead end.
• Motivate with intellectual challenge:
- Protect creative workers from the pressure to produce immediate results.
- Shepherd good ideas through the bureaucracy, which tends to kill them.
- Let people do “good work” – described by Howard Gardner as technically excellent, meaningful and engaging to the worker, and carried out in an ethical way.
- Show the higher purpose of projects whenever possible.
- Grant as much independence as you can.

“Creativity and the Role of the Leader” by Teresa Amabile and Mukti Khaire in Harvard Business Review, October 2008 (Vol. 86, #10, p. 100-109), no e-link available; the authors are at tamabile@hbs.edu and mkhaire@hbs.edu.
 

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4. Should Colleges Stop Using the SAT and ACT for Admissions Decisions?

This Chronicle of Higher Education article by Eric Hoover gives a sneak preview of a forthcoming NACAC (National Association for College Admission Counseling) report on how college admissions officers should use SAT and ACT test results. Chaired by Harvard admissions and financial aid dean William Fitzsimmons, the 21-member panel concluded that tests won’t go away because they have face validity and also give students second and third and fourth chances to improve. “If you did away with the current tests, something would replace them,” said Randall Deike, a panel member. “As human beings and as a society, we want to quantify everything.”
However, the panel raised some strong cautions and urged colleges to take back control of test scores from testing companies, test prep services, and the media. It said that colleges should:
- Regularly scrutinize their testing requirements to see if they can make good admissions decisions without the SAT and ACT;
- Do their own internal studies on how well test scores predict students’ college performance (as a general rule, SAT and ACT scores predict freshman performance quite accurately);
- Stop using minimum test scores for scholarships;
- Ensure that admissions policies account for inequities among applicants, including access to test preparation, which is often linked to family income;
- Be transparent about how much tests count in the admissions process (for example, Earlham College tells applicants and their parents that scores are 12.5% of the overall evaluation, with grades and the rigor of courses counting much more heavily);
- Move toward replacing the SAT and ACT with state tests, College Board subject tests, or International Baccalaureate exams.
On this last point, Fitzsimmons said, “A couple of decades ago, people associated testing results with so-called ability. We have come to a clearer understanding that those scores have more to do with opportunities.” Harvard has discovered that College Board subject test results are a better predictor of students’ college success than the SAT and ACT. “The message is that students succeed by studying the material in their courses, not by spending an enormous amount of time trying to prepare for the ACT and SAT,” says Fitzsimmons. Shifting to subject tests would also apply healthy pressure on high schools to improve their curriculum offerings and the quality of teaching.
Nicholas Lemann, a member of the NACAC panel and the author of The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), agrees: “In a perfect world, high-school curriculum standards would link up with college-admissions placement decisions,” he said. “There needs to be a shift in tone from aptitude to achievement.”
One member of the panel, Randall Deike of Case Western Reserve, persistently advocated for the responsible use of the tests. “Too often standardized testing is condemned,” he said, “when it’s really test misuse that’s at issue.” The report ended up criticizing the National Merit Scholarship Corporation for using minimum PSAT scores as a requirement for awards, and U.S. News & World Report for using test scores for its college rankings.

“Take Tests Down a Notch, Report Says” by Eric Hoover in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 26, 2008 (Vol. LV, #5, p. A1, A21, A22), no free e-link
 

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5. What Discourages Girls from Pursuing STEM Careers?

This Science Daily article reports on a three-year study by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee psychologist Nadya Fouad and two colleagues on factors that encourage or discourage girls from careers in science and math. Since the number of women pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is rapidly declining (women make up 20 percent of graduates with degrees in engineering but only 11 percent of engineers), this is a hot topic. The main findings:
• Many girls see math and science as difficult and have more test anxiety and less confidence in their ability to do well in these subjects, which leads them to take as few courses as possible in high school and college, cutting themselves off from lucrative careers.
• Building girls’ confidence in the early grades is as important as piquing their interest in science and math. “The relationship between confidence and interest is close,” says Fouad. “If they feel they can do it, it feeds their interest.”
• Elementary teachers who engage students and give them positive experiences with math and science are very important.
• Boys and girls believe that teachers think boys are innately better at math and science than girls, which encourages boys and acts as a barrier to girls.
• Parental support and expectations are especially important for middle- and high-school girls.

“Tracking the Reasons Many Girls Avoid Science and Math” in Science Daily, Sept. 22, 2008 reporting on a study by Nadya Fouad (spotted in PEN Weekly NewsBlast, Sept. 12, 2008)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080905153807.htm
 

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6. Ideas for Preventing Student Cheating

In this Essential Teacher column, ESL teacher Dorothy Zemach says she empathizes with students who cheat because of her own guilty behavior in a high-school German class. The overly trusting teacher used to leave students unattended during tests, and never locked his classroom door. During her second year with him, Zemach regularly stole test booklets from his desk, Xeroxed copies, replaced the originals, and then filled out tests for her friends, making different plausible mistakes on each student’s copy so that all the papers were different but all got an A. When the teacher stepped out during tests, Zemach would switch the fraudulent tests for the ones he had distributed, and the cheaters were never caught. That spring, the teacher announced that Zemach and her friends had done so well that he was registering them to take a national high-school German proficiency exam. The result? Zemach’s friends flunked, but she scored in the 90th percentile because filling out the tests and choosing the “mistakes” had helped her become more proficient in German. Zemach says that this taught her a lesson, and she swears that she never cheated again.
With her own students, Zemach introduces the topic of cheating with a joke: A lion and a cheetah have a race, and although the cheetah is faster, the lion wins. Did the lion cheat? No, because winners never cheat and cheetahs never win. She then asks students how people cheat in classrooms (she believes the brainstormed list makes students embarrassed to try any of the methods they name) and then why people cheat. The reasons usually boil down to two: (a) The cheater feels unequal to the task, and (b) The cheater doesn’t respect the assignment.
The first motivation is more common, and Zemach believes the best way to combat it is to make sure students really know the material. “Far better to limit your syllabus and teach a moderate amount solidly than cover too much too quickly,” she says. “Additionally, teachers sometimes feel pressure to be entertaining and fresh at the expense of reviewing material thoroughly enough. It’s OK for students to be a little bored sometimes if that means they’ve truly mastered your teaching point.”
Combating the second motivation for cheating (stemming from disrespect for the assignment) is more difficult. Zemach recommends being clear about the reasons for learning the material and stressing the intrinsic value of learning it more than the punishments for cutting corners.
There is a third reason for cheating that most students don’t think of: as an act of rebellion. “It’s like a challenge to The System, which – because it is set up to be authoritarian and controlling – almost begs some clever students to circumvent it,” says Zemach. Her own experience in high-school German might fall into this category. She advises teachers not to be too trusting – lock your classroom and supervise students closely during tests!

“That’s Cheating!” by Dorothy Zemach in Essential Teacher, September 2008 (Vol. 5, #3, p. 13-14), no e-link available; the author can be reached at zemach@comcast.net.
 

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7. A Curriculum Unit Treating a High-Stakes State Test as a Genre

In this thoughtful article in The Reading Teacher, literacy specialist Michelle Hornof describes a unit of study on standardized reading tests that she designed for her below-grade-level third graders (the first time they were taking the Washington state test). “Just as I taught students how to read other genres throughout the year,” she says, “– like informational texts, poems, and mysteries – I could teach the specific features of a test genre. We could take two weeks before a mandated test to study this genre with its unique purpose, audience, structure, and vocabulary.” Here are the steps she followed:
• Analyze the test. Hornof actually took a sample state test herself, noting the techniques she used – the order in which she read questions, which parts she re-read, when she skimmed, and where she underlined and marked the test, trying to anticipate where students might use ineffective strategies. She scored her own test using the state rubrics, and was startled to find that she had over-answered the item on summarizing a story (the rubric called for only three events taken directly from the text). She also noticed that the test used some terms differently than she did in class; for example, summary on the test was used the way she used re-telling in class. All this helped her align her instruction more closely to the demands of the test.
• Demystify the test. Hornof kicked off the unit by asking students what they knew about the state test. They had lots of misconceptions – that it was really hard, that there was a time limit, that if they didn’t pass they would be retained in third grade, and that if they weren’t “smart enough” they would have to take a different test. She passed out a sample copy and walked them through it, giving them a chance to ask the kinds of question that they wouldn’t be able to ask during the actual test.
• Define test-specific vocabulary. Looking through the test, Hornof’s students discovered a number of unfamiliar terms, and she was able to define them: selection (were they supposed to select what they read?), passage, multiple-choice questions, and most confusing, No. 2 pencil (did this mean they could not use pencils?). She made a chart defining the most important terms, including:
- Selection = story (or poem or non-fiction text)
- Reading passage = ditto
- No. 2 pencil = a pencil with the #2 on it
- Author’s purpose = Why did the author write the story?
- Summarize or summary = What the whole story is about
- Main events = Big (ideas) things that happen
- As a result of = because of

• Score actual tests. Hornof spent the next several days having students score previous student papers using the state rubric. Students had to justify their scores, and they processed disagreements in whole-class discussions. Students picked up valuable test-taking strategies, for example, that if the test item asked them to list three events in order, they should not rely on their memories but go back, find the passage, and underline and number the items. Students started to say things like, “This is easy” and “Can we try taking the test now?”
• Model effective test-taking strategies. Next, Hornof distributed sample tests, modeled test-taking strategies to the whole class, and then let students practice them independently. She sat beside students watching their strategies and trying to understand their thought processes, and got insights about what she needed to teach in whole-class lessons. “Helping students name these strategies developed their metacognitive skills and taught them to self-monitor their reading process in a new genre,” says Hornof. She also made a chart:
- You can have as much time as you need.
- If a question is hard, you can skip it and go back.
- You should (can) look back at the stories to answer the questions.
- The answers always come from the text – never just from your head.
- After reading the first few paragraphs, make sure you have a “movie in your mind” when you read – if not, go back and fix it (re-read).
- Read the question carefully (again and again until it makes sense).
- It’s smart to make predictions as you read, but be ready to “change your thinking” if your prediction doesn’t happen.

• Teach strategies to increase stamina. Hornof built students’ endurance throughout the year, gradually increasing the amount of time they read independently. In the second week of the test-genre unit, she lengthened the time they worked independently on test items. “I never gave students practice tests just for the sake of building stamina,” she says, “because this ingrains ineffective test-taking habits.” She also taught specific strategies for dealing with test fatigue: resting their eyes after finishing a section, taking a quick break after each passage to clear their heads, taking a drink of water, stretching, and taking deep breaths.
• Debrief after the test. After students took the real thing, Hornof questioned them about what they noticed and what advice they would give next year’s third graders as they prepared for the test. Students repeated many of the things they had learned in the unit, but had new insights that helped Hornof tweak the unit for the next year.
Hornof feels strongly that a test-genre unit should be short and sweet. Taking more than two weeks, she says, would backfire, boring and frustrating students. And indeed, on the tenth day of this unit, students rebelled, pulling out their independent reading books and chanting in unison, “Just let us read!” Hornof concludes, “This unit… is just one small part of a rich yearlong curriculum and can only be successful if the rest of my literacy instruction is effective… I used to resent the time these tests took away from my ‘real’ teaching. I now look (cautiously) forward to two weeks in the school year when I can empower students to adapt their thinking skills to master the genre of testing.”

“Reading Tests As a Genre Study” by Michelle Hornof in The Reading Teacher, September 2008 (Vol. 62, #1, p. 69-73), no e-link available; the author is at mhornof@bham.wdnet.edu.
 

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8. A System for Explicitly Teaching Reading Comprehension

Many teachers say their students read but don’t comprehend, says University of Central Florida researcher Tabatha Dobson Scharlach in this Reading Teacher article. Yet studies show that there is very little explicit instruction in reading comprehension in many classrooms.
To help teachers teach comprehension, Scharlach created START (Students and Teachers Actively Reading Text), a system designed to hone eight comprehension strategies during the read-aloud and independent reading segments of the daily literacy block. START is based on the idea that comprehension strategies are best taught while students are immersed in reading, not as a separate activity. Scharlach conducted a study in which control groups had conventional reading classes and the START group got the following:
• During the daily read-aloud time, START teachers explicitly taught, modeled, and scaffolded each of the eight comprehension strategies, adding a new one each day, with a quick review of the skills taught previously:
Before reading:
- Predicting/inferring (In this chapter, I think…)
During reading:
- Visualizing (In my mind I see…)
- Making connections (This reminds me of…)
- Questioning (I wonder…)
After reading:
- Determining main idea (I think the most important thing…)
- Summarizing (In ten words or less…)
- Checking predictions (My original prediction was…)
- Making judgments (My favorite part…)
Teachers used sticky notes to jot down each prediction, visualization, connection, etc. and put them in the book being read aloud.
• During independent reading time, students completed an ART of Comprehension recording sheet to scaffold the transfer of strategies (teachers had modeled the use of the sheet during read-aloud). The two-page ART sheet mirrored the eight questions above, with space under each one for students to write or draw their answers. A wall chart in the classroom prompted students to think about each strategy while reading.
Sharlach’s study showed that the START group had significantly better reading comprehension on Gates-MacGinitie reading tests than the control groups. “It is imperative that we provide reading comprehension instruction to all students each and every day to improve comprehension for all students regardless of achievement level,” she concludes. “Direct instruction in comprehension strategies includes teacher modeling of strategies and explaining when and how to use them, repeated opportunities for guided practice, and extended independent reading.”

“START Comprehending: Students and Teachers Actively Reading Text” by Tabatha Dobson Scharlach in The Reading Teacher, September 2008 (Vol. 62, #1, p. 20-31), no e-link available; the author can be reached at tscharla@mail.ucf.edu.
 

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9. Using Pictures to Understand the S-T-O-R-Y

In this article in The Reading Teacher, Illinois educator Victoria Naughton shares a three-part strategy she used with students of all ages to improve their comprehension of stories. First, she presented students with an acronym to help them remember the parts of a story:
S – Setting
T – Talking characters
O – Oops, a problem!
R – Attempts to Resolve the problem
Y – Yes, the problem is solved
Second, she had students make the five letters into visuals to help remember them (for example, drawing a light bulb over the R to show an idea for a resolution).
Third, she had students draw pictures of what they saw in their mind’s eye in different parts of the story.
Naughton found that this process helped students master the components of a story, think more deeply about the story line, and use vocabulary to capture details and express their reactions. It also gave her feedback on students’ comprehension. “The strategy creates a snapshot of readers’ comprehension or lack thereof,” she concludes. “In addition, this strategy can promote discussion among readers and enhance memory and recall of the story and its vocabulary. The finished product truly answers the question, Did they get the picture?”

“Picture It!” by Victoria Naughton in The Reading Teacher, September 2008 (Vol. 62, #1, p. 65-68), no e-link available; the author is available at v.naughton@comcast.net.
 

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10. Children’s Books With Characters Who Write

In this article in The Reading Teacher, professors Linda Parsons and Lesley Colabucci share a helpful list of recent children’s books in which lead characters write – and writing is a salient theme. “These characters may serve as powerful models and even catalysts for students to name themselves as writers and make connections between the characters’ writing and their own,” say Parsons and Colabucci. “…While the characters are united through their writing, authenticity also unites them. Regardless of their reasons for writing, each character exhibits an authentic-sounding voice and the sincere desire to document, create, or seek personal truth… The ways to bring these characters into the classroom are varied: as teacher read-alouds, as choices in the classroom library, as literature-circle options, and as purposefully excerpted passages for writing craft lessons.”
Here is their collection, focused on grades 4-6, with authors, publication dates, publishers, and the kind of writing the protagonist does:
- Becoming Naomi Leon (Ryan, 2004, Scholastic) – Lists
- The Boy Who Saved Baseball (Ritter, 2003, Philomel) – Journals
- Buttermilk Hill (White, 2004, Farrar, Straus & Giroux) – Poetry
- The Color of My Words (Joseph, 2000, Joanna Cotler) – Fiction, poetry, editorials
- Counting on Grace (Winthrop, 2006, Wendy Lamb) – Letters
- Each Little Bird Sings (Wiles, 2005, Gulliver) – Nonfiction, letters
- Heartbeat (Creech, 2004, Joanna Cotler) – Journals
- How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive (Lisle, 2002, Philomel) – Fiction
- Keeper of the Doves (Dyars, 2002, Viking) – Poetry
- The Landry News (Clements, 1999, Simon & Schuster) – Newspaper editorials
- Locomotion (Woodson, 2003, Putnam) – Poetry
- Love, Ruby Lavender (Wiles, 2001, Harcourt) – Letters
- Love That Dog (Creech, 2001, Joanna Cotler) – Poetry
- Notes From a Liar and Her Dog (Choldenko, 2001, Putnam) – Journals, letters
- Olive’s Ocean (Henkes, 2003, Greenwillow) – Fiction
- One True Friend (Hensen, 2001, Clarion) – Letters
- The Penderwicks (Birdsall, 2005, Knopf) – Fiction
- Ruby Electric (Nelson, 2003, Atheneum Books for Young Readers) – Screenplay
- Sahara Special (Codell, 203, Hyperion) – Journals, letters
- The School Story (Clements, 2001, Simon & Schuster) – Fiction
- The Silver Spoon of Solomon Snow (Umansky, 2005, Candlewick) – Fiction
- Totally Joe (Howe, 2005, Atheneum Books for Young Readers) – Journals
- A True and Faithful Narrative (Sturtevant, 2006, Farrar, Straus & Giroux) – Biography
- Water Street (Giff, 2006, Wendy Lamb) – Fiction
- When My Name Was Keoko (Park, 2002, Clarion) – Journals, poetry

“Be a Writer: Representations of Writers in Recent Children’s Novels” by Linda Parsons and Lesley Colabucci in The Reading Teacher, September 2008 (Vol. 62, #1, p. 44-52), no e-link available; the authors are at parsons.135@osu.edu and lesley.colabucci@millersville.edu.
 

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