UCM’s Graduate Student Achievement Award

I am the appreciative recipient of a Graduate Student Achievement Award, as selected for 2025-2026 at the University of Central Missouri. With this video, I want to express my gratitude.
https://youtu.be/X_OvPf08_98

Book-Talk: Wish I Was a Baller by Amar Shah

I’d recommend this graphic-format memoir to a variety of young readers: especially kids who love sports, who aspire to careers in journalism, maybe even to kids who combine both interests.
https://youtu.be/7fSr8qYfONg

H.R. 7661: Truly disturbing and frightening!

As a follow-up to the essay I posted earlier, here is a brief video I uploaded today about H.R. 7661. Introduced in late February by U.S. Rep. Mary E. Miller, H.R. 7661 defines “sexually oriented material” to include any material that involves “gender dysphoria or transgenderism.” It’s truly disturbing and, in the words of Sam Helmick, current president of the American Library Association: “H.R. 7661 isn’t fundamentally about protecting kids. It’s about giving politicians broad authority to restrict whose stories are allowed on our shelves.”
https://youtu.be/UbDjU8uh7Jk

West Coast’s ‘largest book club’ to feature ‘They Called Us Enemy’

One Book, One Coast is a shared community reading program among more than 194 library systems in California, Oregon, and Washington that will read and discuss George Takei’s graphic-format memoir “They Called Us Enemy” this spring. Contact your local library system and encourage it to join in if you don’t see it listed among participating systems.

Scholastic Book Fair at SRCSA

Scholastic Book Fair took place this past week at Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts, bringing with it a fresh infusion of new books for the school library. ’Tis now my happy task to prepare these awesome books for use. Appreciation to the many volunteers who made Scholastic Book Fair possible!