Sunday, January 20, 2008

My Mission Statement and Review Policy

Review Policy

As a librarian, I love to read and review books of all types.
I will make a sincere effort to read and review all books sent to me, but, due to time constraints, this is not always possible. I also can't guarantee how quickly I'll be able to get to your book, though I will try to get to it in a timely manner. (This excludes books read for blog tours and/or other publicity events - if I make a commitment I will keep it!) Every book I finish will get at least a small review on my LibraryThing and Good Reads.


I will accept:

- Middle grade and YA fiction and nonfiction
- Nonfiction picture books
- Select graphic novels (I do enjoy some graphic novels, but I am pretty picky)

I am partial to:
- Realistic or historical YA and middle grade novels [recent favorites include Marcelo in the Real World, After Ever After
, Along for the Ride, Ten Cents a Dance, After, The Squad: Perfect Cover and Love You, Hate You, Miss You]

- YA science fiction & fantasy (particularly dystopian lit, paranormal romance, and steam punk) [recent favorites include As You Wish, Leviathan, Wake, and The Hunger Games]

- Nonfiction about science [recent favorites include Just the Right Size, Lucy Long Ago, and Mission Control, This is Apollo]

- Biographies (picture book and chapter book) [recent favorites include The Day-Glo Brothers, I, Matthew Henson, and Charles and Emma]

I do not review and therefore will not accept:

- Fiction picture books or easy readers
- Adult books
- Self-published or vanity press books


See my site stats here



Of course, I can't guarantee a positive review. I am more interested in posting about great books that I can recommend to others, so I may be more likely to post a review of a book that I like or that I think kids will like.

Sometimes I will decline offers of review copies if I have too much on my plate or if it doesn't sound like a book that fits my tastes. I'm not paid for this blog; it is a labor of love. No one wants to spend time reading books they don't like, and I reserve the right to put down a book I'm not connecting with.

I'm happy to accept review copies and galleys. I will definitely consider author interviews, participating in blog tours, and holding giveaways. If you are interested in sending me a book, please email me! In the case of ARCs, I know some publishers prefer that reviews be posted close to the pub date, while some like to create early buzz. If you have a preference, please let me know and I'll be happy to honor that as best I can.

Mission Statement


To be honest, I started this blog because of so many other Kidlit blogs I admired. I tried to recall exactly how I found out about the Kidlitosphere and as far as I can figure, it must have been something on PUBYAC (which I only knew about because of a grad school class on children's programming). You know how it goes. You find one awesome blog about children's books and then you start checking out their blogroll and pretty soon you have a plethora of sites to check out every day.

I kept meaning to start a librarian blog... and then one day... I did. I started it as a way to join this great community of kid-lit loving librarians, teachers, authors, students, parents, etc. But now that I've been blogging for a couple of months, I really wanted to sit down and think about what this blog means to me and what I want to do with it.

First and foremost, I started this blog for me. I want it to be:

- a record of excellent books I've read. I want to get better at writing about books and reviewing them.

- a record of great storytime books so that the next time a preschool teacher asks me to do a storytime about giant squids, I can look back to see what books have been good readalouds.

- a record of successful programs I've done or programs that somehow went wrong or weren't well attended. I want to keep track of the things that go well and the things that don't so I can figure out how to make them better.

So, yes. First and foremost, this blog is a record and a professional development tool for me.

But once I started to put these thoughts out there, I began to realize that this blog could also be utilized by other new librarians, by library students, maybe even by some veteran librarians. I like to think that maybe librarians looking for storytime books about winter might be helped by one of my posts. Librarians putting in a book order or parents looking for books for their kids might be helped by reading a review of a book I read. I think all librarians can benefit by sharing programming ideas, so I'm trying to put successful ideas out there for the world to see. I'd also like to encourage other librarians, teachers, parents, and kids to share their ideas in the comments. Just as you might learn from my blog posts, I learn from reading your comments and your blog posts!

I like to think that maybe some people are finding or will find this blog useful... but I
know that it's useful to me. Plus, it's just really fun to be part of such a vibrant community of book lovers.

And that, ladies and gents, is my mission statement. My blog's raison d'etre.


Updated: December 30, 2009