Join Simmons University professor and author, Megan Dowd Lambert, to learn how to shake up storytime in ways that that will affirm and empower children. We will be offering this program as a webinar but Mid York Library System will also be hosting a viewing party at their office!

If you are participating in the webinar only please register via Zoom using the button below. If you plan to attend the viewing party you do not need to register via Zoom but you do need to RSVP below the map on this page.

If you have any questions please email Rebecca Kluberdanz at rkluberdanz@clrc.org.

Webinar Description:

Megan will begin with an introduction to the Whole Book Approach, a co-constructive (interactive) storytime model focused on the art and design of the picture book, which she developed in association with The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Drawing on her book, Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking About What They See (Charlesbridge 2015), Megan will provide attendees with tips and tools to create dynamic, engaging shared reading experiences that put children and their responses to art, text, and design at the heart of storytime.

The next part of the session will address how the Whole Book Approach can support kids’ critical engagement with picture book representations of race, class, gender, and other aspects of identity. Participants will gain insight into how to guide children to picture books with positive representations of diverse characters, while also supporting them in resisting or reading against problematic, biased content.

About the Presenter:

Megan Dowd Lambert (www.megandowdlambert.com), Senior Lecturer in Children’s Literature at Simmons University, is the author of Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking About What They See (Charlesbridge 2015), which introduces the Whole Book Approach to storytime that she developed in association with The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. She writes and reviews for Kirkus and the Horn Book, and she received a 2016 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Honor for her first picture book, A Crow of His Own (Charlesbridge 2015, illustrated by David Hyde Costello). Megan’s second title for young readers, Real Sisters Pretend (Tilbury House 2016, illustrated by Nicole Tadgell), was named a 2017 Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People and a Must Read title by the 17^th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards, and she is hard at work on several forthcoming titles for young readers. Megan’s life as the mother of seven children ages 1-21 in a multiracial, queer, adoptive, blended family, informs all of her work in Children’s Literature, including her consultancies with groups such as OurShelves, MERGE for Equality, and Embrace Race.

Register Via Zoom