JISD Library Services Newsletter

April 2021

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April is School Library Month

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JISD Library Services Programming

JISD Reads Together

JISD Reads Together

Celebrate school libraries and reading as a community with our inaugural year of JISD Reads Together! Our title for this year is Pablo Cartaya's The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora. You may find the book at your school library, in Sora in both e-Book and audiobook formats, and you may purchase it from The Twig Bookstore.

Find activities, links, and lesson ideas in the choice board below.

We look forward to discussing this book with the community on Thursday, May 20th at 10:00 A.M. It will be recorded and shared in Canvas for anyone that can't make the live visit. Students and teachers may submit a question to ask the author by using Flip Grid.

Enjoy reading with your class and/or family now!

JISD Reads Together
JISD Reads Together

Battle of the Books Competition Starts This Saturday!

The individual virtual Battle of the Books competition begins this Saturday, April 10th. Any 5th-grade student that would like to participate may get the Kahoot! link from their campus librarian or librarian's assistant.


The challenge may be played on any device with an internet connection and the Kahoot! app, if you're using a tablet or phone.


Here is the schedule for the competition.

Round 1 - April 10-18

Round 2 - April 23-30 (starts on the Friday holiday, only first weekend)

Round 3 - May 3-9 (includes only the weekend following)

Award Ceremony - May 14th

Sora by Overdrive

Have you tried Sora yet? If not, now is the time! We have all of our Battle of the Books titles, book club titles, and more in our district collection. Our campuses have titles for their specific communities, and JISD has a partnership with the San Antonio Public Library that allows our users to access their collection WITHOUT a library card!


If you need directions, click HERE. Having trouble connecting? Please contact your school librarian or lead librarian Pamela Thompson @ parevalothompson@jusdonisd.org.


Need more reasons to use Sora?


Representation is critical for any school’s curricular and recreational reading library.


The Sora reading app is your school’s gateway to millions of diverse ebooks and audiobooks. These titles ensure students see themselves in their reading and can help you introduce new perspectives and initiate crucial conversations.

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April is Full of Celebrations!


Join Library Services in celebrating the diversity in our community! Find books to recommend to students and to use in your upcoming lessons. The choice boards offer lesson ideas, resources, links, notable people in the field, and more!


School Library Month S'more – Recommendations from your JISD Librarians!

School Library Month Choice Board

Poetry Month Choice Board

Poetry Month S'more – Book Recommendations

Autism Acceptance Month Choice Board

Month of the Military Child - Book Recommendations

Book Donation for our Elementary Libraries

Alpha Phi Alpha Donates Books

Alpha Phi Alpha Donates Books

The Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and the Pi Theta Lambda Educational Foundation have donated a copy of As Good As Anybody by Richard Michelson and Raul Colon to all of our JISD elementary libraries.

The bookplate states "To the Youth of San Antonio, march onward and upward, and remember the words of Brother Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: 'However young you are, you have a responsibility to seek to make your nation a better nation in which to live.'"

Thank you for your donation to the JISD elementary school libraries. We are excited to share this book with our students.

Alpha Phi Alpha Donates Books
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Gear-Up for Summer Reading!

Audio Sync - FREE Audiobooks for Teens

Audio Sync offers TWO FREE audiobooks each week from April 29 - August 4, 2021. Best of all, you get to KEEP the books on your device FOREVER!


To download your FREE books each week, follow these steps:

1. Register at https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/sync/

2. Sign-up to receive text messages or emails to remind you to download the books each week.

(Once they're gone, you won't have the opportunity to download them again.) Same link as above.

3. Download the Sora app from the appropriate app store for your device. If you need help with that, go HERE.

4. Download the books each week and enjoy when you're ready to listen!


Psssst: You don't have to be a teen to join, download, or enjoy these or any young adult books!

San Antonio Book Festival Goes Virtual

San Antonio Book Festival Goes Virtual

Continuing adding to your Summer reading list by finding new books and authors at the virtual San Antonio Book Festival taking place this upcoming weekend, April 9-11th. Register HERE.


Some of the authors include Nikki Grimes (Ordinary Hazards and Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope) Alan Gratz (author of one of our Battle of the Books titles, Refugee), Adib Khorram (Darius the Great is not Okay and Darius the Great Deserves Better- We had him in JISD in 2019), Naomi Shihab Nye (current Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation and San Antonio resident), Linda Sue Park (Author of Prairie Lotus and A Long Walk to Water, just to name a few.), Gary Paulsen (Hatchet, HELLO!), Adam Silvera (They Both Die in the End), Nic Stone (Dear, Martin and Dear Justyce), Renee Watson (Love is a Revolution), Nicola Yoon (The Sun is Also a Star and Everything, Everything) and MANY more!

San Antonio Book Festival Goes Virtual
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Programming @ YOUR JISD Libraries

JISD Reads Together @ Hopkins

March at Hopkins included a Giveaway of the book The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora to encourage all of our Hawk families to join in Judson ISD Reads Together.


All year we have been reading the Texas 2x2 books during our PreK-2nd grade library time and this month students have voted in the March Book Madness to choose Hopkins' very favorite book of the year. The winner is...Dandy by Ame Dyckman and illustrated by Charles Santoso.


Grades 3-5 celebrated Women's History Month with research on PebbleGo and reading about Malala Yousafzai in Malala's Magic Pencil.


Hopkins Library wrapped up the month with a celebration of National Crayon Day and the creation of broken crayon drawings.

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Matt De La Pena @ CVE

Our students at Coronado Village Elementary School learned so much from our virtual author visit in March with Matt de la Pena, winner of the Newbery Medal! Each PreK through second-grade student received an autographed copy of his newest picture book, Milo Imagines the World. We are grateful to the San Antonio Book Festival for providing this opportunity to our school!
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VMHS Prepares for School Library Month

The art students at VMHS are working on painting book ends with book covers that inspire them or have a reading theme. We look forward to sharing more pictures next month.
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Bookface Modeling @ WHMS

Woodlake Hills Middle School's Wildcat Book Club members often work hard in the library, but recently decided to have some fun with Bookface modeling! Students found a book to "model" and promote. WHMS Library plans to open this up to other students, but the inaugural models are Wildcat Book Club members. A slideshow is being created with some information on each book used.

Reading is Fun!

This One's Dedicated To

This One's Dedicated To

Do you read the dedications in books? If you enjoy them, you should check out authors Chris Barton's and Jennifer Zigler's YouTube show "This One's Dedicated To" series. The videos are 6-8 minutes long, and they talk to various authors about why they dedicated their book to the person, people, or group that they did. The stories are very sweet!
This One's Dedicated To

YALSA Best Fiction 2022 List Released!

If you're looking for a new young adult book to read, check out YALSA's (Young Adult Library Services Association) 2022 Best Fiction for YA nominees!

Click on the image below to read the synopsis for each of the titles.

JISD YA Book Club

JISD YA Book Club

The JISD YA Book Club met on March 4th, after having to reschedule due to Snowpocalypse, to discuss We Have the Right To: A High School Survivor's Story of Sexual Assault, Justice, and Hope, a non-fiction book by Chelsea Prout. We had great discussions, and everyone even made their own "I have the right to..." signs.

Join us for our next book club meeting next week on April 13th @ 4:30 to discuss our JISD Reads Together title, The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora by Pablo Cartaya. See your librarian for the Zoom code.

JISD YA Book Club
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Lead Librarian, Pamela Thompson

Lead Librarian, Pamela Thompson

Lead Librarian, Pamela Thompson
If you have questions, comments, or concerns, please contact Lead Librarian, Pamela Thompson.
7618 Evans Road, San Antonio, TX, USA parevalothompson@judsonisd.org 210-619-0220 judsonisd.org/Page/19063