Pirate flag drawn by wesd440 – https://openclipart.org/detail/220801/pirate-flag
Arggghhh, YALit maties, it’s finally International Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Find your own Pirate Name here, outfit your true Pirate self in style using this, choose what your fine piratical ship should be called using this site, and even translate your Twitter and/or Facebook posts into Piratese here.
All in fun and on a Saturday, too!
Searching the seven seas for new YA books with pirates… any sightings?
**kmm
Fireworks by rduris via https://openclipart.org/detail/167949/firework-ns
If you are reading this, that means that I conquered the Blogathon2015 challenge and posted every day in June! [cue the fireworks!]
And it means that I’m smackdab in the middle of the International Association of School Librarianship‘s annual conference. This year IASL2015 is in lovely Maastricht, Netherlands (near the borders of Belgium and Germany), so I hope to post pictures here soon.
It also means that I am leading a workshop today on IASL’s GiggleIT Project for global student writing through school libraries. If you know/are a librarian or teacher, check out this fun and free way for your students to share their personal knowledge and sense of humor with the world: GiggleIT Project.
See y’all soon, and thanks for enjoying Blogathon2015 along with me!
**kmm
I did it!
Blogathon2015 ends today!
Thirty posts in thirty days, despite technology problems (happens during every blog challenge), being away from home for half the month, and all the just plain crazy things that get in the way when there’s a deadline looming.
Thanks to the folks at Freelance Success for shepherding me and my blogging buddies through June!
And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming – but with a break, so I can enjoy the IASL2015 conference in Maastricht, Netherlands!
Thanks for visiting BooksYALove – grab a great book and read, read, read!
**kmm
Large or small,
New or old,
A bookstore or library can take you anywhere.
Greetings from the Dominicaen Bookstore in Maastricht, Netherlands – named one of the world’s loveliest bookstores by Architectural Digest!
What’s your favorite bookshop?
**kmm
A favorite Blogathon activity is creating a wordcloud based on your blog.
The more often that a word appears in your chosen text, the larger it appears in your wordcloud.
I’ve used Wordle and other tools, but have the most fun with the shapes and ‘spin color’ options on Tagxedo.
Here’s how Tagxedo “sees” BooksYALove posts over the past few weeks:
Have you wordclouded lately?
**kmm
One of my reading resolutions for 2015 was to tackle the Reading Diversity Challenge posted here.
With the year nearly half gone, let’s see how I’ve done with the first 6 categories.
1. A book written by an author of color: several, including Gabi, a Girl in Pieces, by Isabel Quinteros, recommended recently.
2. A book with a person of color on the cover: look at Girl in Reverse, by Barbara Stuber here.
3. Â A book about coming out: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli captured Simon’s conflict about going public so well.
4. A book in which the main character or strong supporting character has a disability: in graphic novel of the same name, Nimona is sidekick to a guy gone bad because he lost an arm.
5. A book containing bullying: look again at The Disappearance of Emily H. by Barrie Summy.
6. Nonfiction or biography about a person of color: beyond the @AudioSYNC free audiobooks that I’ve recommended this summer, none. Â I don’t hit biography much on BooksYALove..
All in all, not too bad. In some categories, I’ve read many.
How would you score yourself on this half of the challenge?
wandering around diverse Amsterdam,
**kmm
Gaze out?
Peer inward?
Focus on something unseen?
Art, music, and books can help us do all these things.
But please don’t let preference for favorites keep you from trying new genres and types of books!
Grab a graphic novel like Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks and Canaan White to go into WWI trenches with underappreciated African American heroes – these aren’t “just comic books” for sure.
Read books aimed at younger readers that can bring important issues and hard truths to light. Like Water on Stone by Dana Walrath gives voice to victims of the Armenian Holocaust.
If you think all novels about death are depressing, reconsider with funny yet realistic Finding Mr. Brightside by Jay Clark.
So, about my photo here: I visited Rembrandthuis to see how the great artist lived and worked, others were there for his paintings up close, a few were obviously dragged there by art-loving companions.
Standing in his recreated studio was decidedly worth climbing all the narrow, twisting stairways. But I was most pleased by seeing how the same etching looked when printed on different papers – the same story, with a slightly changed look.
How have you experienced different stories lately?
Staying off the tourist track in Amsterdam and meeting booklovers from all over (hi, Izzie and Mom and Dad!),
**kmm
If all is going according to plan, I’ve made it to the Netherlands (with my luggage), found my B&B and the tour company office, and am headed for canal tour, foodie walking tour of the Jordaan district, and will be seeing windmills, wooden clogs, and cheese a-plenty this week…
If not, y’all really don’t want to hear from me!
Pictures if I get onto internet as planned – otherwise, you get this pre-arranged post.
Blogathonning from the Netherlands – I hope!
**kmm
Three cheers for theme days!
Hooray for Haiku Day!
Yes, we Blogathonners love playing with that 5-7-5 syllabic pattern, especially when a poem gets us that much closer to our goal of blogging every single day of June!
Again, a blank page.
Desperation? Reflection?
Poetry saves us.
My Blogathon haikus from past years are here and here and here and even here.
Do you haiku?
**kmm
“Eye Can See the World” by cam morris https://openclipart.org/detail/65845/eye-can-see-the-world
Interesting – check.
Timely – yes.
Understandable to everyone – maybe?
As a blogger or website owner, whether you just dash off a quick daily note or craft a series of longer posts, do you ever think about
…readers with visual impairments being able “see” your images?
…people with color-blindness easily navigating your blog?
To help you reduce potential barriers for your readership, check out some free assessment tools and adopt simple practices for your blog.
For every image, photo, or video on your page, include an alt-text description. This allows screen readers to say aloud what it is. For instance, I use book covers from publishers in almost every BooksYALove post, so I always include alt-text like “book cover of Cool Book by Great Author published by Fancy Publisher” – which also gets picked up by search engines.
Be sure to bookmark and refer to the checklists on the Website Accessibility Project’s site so that you can institute the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommended changes one at a time (and monitor how they affect your site for viewers). The very first one is providing text descriptions for non-text elements.
Read a brief background on color-blindness and web design here, then use some of the free online tools listed by Sitepoint here to check your site. Good color contrast when a website is greyscaled also helps older readers better distinguish things there.
Free and easy ways to help more people read what you’ve worked so hard to write!
What accessibility tips do you recommend?
**kmm