I kept waking up to thunder last night and was so happy to see that it had actually rained here! In this drought, we’ve too often gotten thunder and lightning that signified nothing. Icing on the cake will be the 70 degree temps tomorrow! Maybe we shouldn’t have 70 days in August, but we shouldn’t be hotter than New Mexico, either!

So, I’m between having finished and getting started and in a pause that I filled with doing a little reading and needing to do a little posting!

Congratulations to Debbie Reese on receiving the 2012 Blog Award for her blog American Indians in Children’s Literature from WordCraft! Wordcraft Circle is a Native organization founded in 1992 to help aspiring Native writers. Congratulations also to Tim Tingle for winning WorldCraft’s Children Literature award for SaltyPie: A Choctaw journey from darkness to light.

States are beginning to post their nominees for state awards. Indiana’s will be announced in November. It’s important to nominate books to these lists because teachers and librarians use them when purchasing books. From the list of nominees, students across the state will read the books and vote for the best books on the list. Typically, children’s books are separate from YA. What Can’t Wait has just been named one of 20 Georgia Peach Book Award nominees for 2012-2013 .

A book that certainly  needs to be on state reading lists today is Neesha Meminger’s Shine Coconut Moon. From my review

Sam‘s Uncle suddenly comes to visit. He is her mom’s only brother, the brother she walked away from when she left her family to marry the love of her life. Sam‘s mom resented the Indian culture that she felt was stifling her, so she left it behind and never looked back. She raised her daughter to be an all American girl. Sam dressed, talked and acted just like her white friends.

And then her Uncle Sandeep appears. Her turban wearing Sikh uncle in post 9/11 America.

“Bryan Thao Worra, Lao-American writer, poet, and a member of the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA), was selected to represent Lao poets in Poetry Parnassus, a weeklong poetry festival held in conjunction with the 2012 Olympics”. source: ALA Direct Congratulations, Bryan!

“Have you registered for JCLC yet? The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) will convene an “All Things Digital” panel at the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color, Sept. 19-23, 2012, in Kansas City, Mo”. source

Whatever weather comes your way, I hope your day is a good one!