Apply Now for 
Social Justice Award
Sponsored by Penguin Random House, the Miss Honey Social Justice Award seeks to recognize school librarians who have worked with teachers to execute a project, event, or program to further social justice using resources in the school library. The award acknowledges teaching by school librarians and the use of school library resources to convey a child’s sense of justice in the spirit of Miss Honey, a nurturing educator who supports the title character, a gifted young girl in an unkind home, from Roahl’s classic middle grade novel,Matilda.
The prize? Up to $2,000 to the librarian, and $1,000 in reimbursement towards travel and housing to attend the AASL awards presentation at the ALA Annual Conference. The sweetness? A $5,000 book donation by Penguin Random House.
For complete criteria used in the selection process, visit the Miss Honey Award website; application deadline is February 1, 2015. FYI: The school librarian must be a personal member of AASL to qualify.
A Howling Good Offer!
Though penned for adults, Dorothy Hearst’s “Wolf Chronicles” is perfect for animal-loving teen patrons. The series begins 14,000 years ago with Promise of the Wolves (S. & S., 2008), an engaging novel told from the point of view of lovable Kaala, an outcast young wolf. The final book in the series, Spirit of the Wolves publishes this week.
Five lucky winners will receive all three Wolf Chronicles books for their collections. To enter, send an email with your name, shipping address, and email address. Email entries must be received by midnight (PDT) on December 17. Winners will be selected in a random drawing and notified via email. One entry per person, please; prizes will only be shipped to U.S. addresses. Free CCSS aligned discussion questions for all three novels at are available at Hearst’s website.
2015 Teen Tech Week Grants Now Available
Through generous funding provided by Best Buy, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) will distribute 20 grants of $1,000 each to support digital literacy programming. To be eligible, the activity must be organized through the library and be open to all teens in your community, and the applicant must be a personal member of YALSA.
The application deadline is January 1, 2015, and grant recipients will be announced on or around January 26. To explore other funding opportunities, check out YALSA’s grants page on the YALSA wiki.