Last week I saw on Twitter that a new book had been released titled Lead With Literacy: A Pirate Leader's Guide to Developing a Culture of Readers by Mandy Ellis. Since I am a library media specialist and have had the conversation with more than one administrator, LMS, and teacher in the recent weeks, I did not hesitate to hop on Amazon and purchase it. It was delivered to my house today. I was a bit upset at first because I knew I was going to have to wait a few hours to get started on it. Since I am an educator and we do all of our yearly checkups during the summer, I had gone to the optometrist this morning and they, being a little old school, dilated my eyes. If you have never had your eyes dilated, there is no pain involved, but it makes it nearly impossible to read anything for a few hours afterward. By the time my vision cleared up to where I could read, it was time to go to the dentist. I finally got done with appointments, home, and curled up in the recliner with the book and some pizza...and I read it all. Let me start by saying this book is real. It is not full of a bunch of extremely time consuming ideas or ones that will suck even more out of your already slim bank account. The ideas mentioned can pretty much be done for free or with donations (and people will donate books or to causes such as literacy). It is not full of ideas that sound great but are not easily implementable or feasible. It is not full of a bunch of ideas that someone put down on paper for the sake of publishing a book. Mandy Ellis has implemented what she has written about at the school at which she is an administrator, and attests to their success. They are tried and true ideas that will help you create a culture of readers at your school. Some of them you may already be doing, but I promise there are some you are not. They are ideas that she believes in. They are ideas that other educators believe in. They are ideas that I believe in. And, they are ideas that students believe in. They are ideas that need to become realities and the way of life in schools everywhere. Reading is so very important. It is my personal belief that there is a reader inside everyone. Some just haven't had the right help to find that our yet. I believe that the content presented in this book will help with that. I know, I know. Most of us hear "professional text" and we cringe. I promise that you will LOVE this book. I am very happy that I have added this to my collection of professional texts. In fact, I am so happy that I ordered a couple of copies this evening and had them shipped to some of the ones I had mentioned having earlier conversations with about this very subject. I also know that this is not the only time I will read this book, and it will be the last time it looks "new". I am fixing to make all kinds of notes and marks on these pages! Here is some of what I shared on Twitter:
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