It isn't just a good idea or luck, it's you.

     Today, on St. Patrick's Day, we wish to thank everyone in our growing teacher community for your help as we work to establish greater awareness of KBN’s free books for children, as well as the availablity of KBN’s new classroom teaching advantages like bookcasting.™
      Luck has nothing to do with it. We simply couldn’t be getting the KBN concept of innovation out there so quickly without your strong support.
      With your help, thousands of teachers across the country today can now use the KBN website to show children the meaning of America’s cultural diversity – and the new classroom power of bookcasting – by projecting and reading Why We Wear Green On St. Patrick’s Day, as well as teaching with the book’s special lesson plan.

      This plan not only reviews Irish history, it provides a practical method for every child, from every cultural and ethnic experience, to gain a new understanding of their own personal values and special cultural heritage – and “to be proud of who they are.”
      Of course it doesn’t really matter exactly who we are on March 17, we all still have to wear our green socks.
      As our KBN teacher community continues to help us reach out to more of their colleagues in education, as well as to more families and children at home, and as they in turn help reach out to others, we at KBN will soon be able to give more time once again to our primary objective – the rapid expansion of our exciting KBN book library.
      We have many fresh, surprising new books for KBN readers now on the way.
      We thought it would be much easier to create a swift awareness of KBN in the halls of education. To the nation’s school districts, at a time of severe budgetary stress, certainly the KBN project is now being received as very welcome news. Through the latest computer technologies, here comes an expanding library of original children’s books, both printable and viewable directly on computer or even by projection, and all for free.
      But getting the word out has not been quite as simple as we all might like.
      The reality is that we still need everyone’s strong and active support – teachers, educational administrators, parents, parent organizations, community organizations, political leaders and children themselves – to tell everyone else that KBN is here.
      With the promise of free books and new ideas for every child in the world.

Why do we all wear green on St. Patrick's Day? An explanation at last.

      Here's some early good news for March.
      Why do we all wear green socks on St. Patrick's Day, even when we're from anywhere and everywhere else on the planet?
      Now teachers can read Why Wear Green On St. Patrick's Day with their class and find out.

      You can read the story to your students from a classic KBN on-paper book, which of course you can download and print for free for your entire class. Or you can read it all together up on your classroom wall, directly from your computer and a projector, in our new KBN flashbook reading format.
      A complete standards-based lesson plan – you'll find it on the Why Wear Green book page – comes with this timely picture book as well, and together they make a very special learning experience for children of all ages.  
      What more can we say at a moment like this? Erin go bragh! 

Let's face it. There's nothing more fun than reading a story you wrote yourself.

      The whimsical new KBN book The Metal Detector, by Amsterdam illustrator Linda Lee, is an exceptional literary project by any measure.
      First because it tells a story that doesn't need any words, almost like a classic silent movie.
      But then because there are no words in the book – the artist's dog, apparently, ate the original story – the KBN reader is invited to develop the story on his or her own, then write their personal word version of the story directly into the book.
      Each book and story becomes unique, and young readers can learn to be better writers by working together in reading groups to share their story ideas.

      The best way to begin, and to introduce this book and story to the class, is probably with a new KBN flashbook reading, projected on a whiteboard wall or projection screen directly from our KBN site shown on a classroom computer. You can show the KBN flashbook to the entire class at once, read it all together, and discuss what's happening in the cinematic flow of Linda Lee's delightful images, and even model as you read some of what your students might later want to write about.
      A small line of metatext on each page is there to help, by suggesting to the reader some elements of the story they might need to explain. In your class discussion you can come up with more ideas and questions together as well, and then write them all on a chalkboard. Classifying the questions is another good way to help young readers understand the essentials of story and character development, establishing motivations, and arriving at logical outcomes, in a way they can use in their independent writing later.
       Finally, after some class discussion, your students can print out and form compact, on-paper minibook copies of  The Metal Detector, one for each student, and let each reader/writer compose their own final version of the story and write it directly into their own personal copy of the book.
      Whether you're reading the story without words or writing a story with your own new words, The Metal Detector adds a wonderful new work to the KBN library of free books for every child in the world.

Thanksgiving in November. Dickens in December.

    December marks the publication of our second literary classic after The Wizard of Oz. And it marks as well our first cooperative publication with one of America's leading academic libraries.
    The classic A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was first published in a British newspaper, in a serialized format, in 1843. Republished here just in time for Christmas – again in a "serialized," five-part format – our special edition of of the story was carefully prepared by scholars at the University of Virginia Library and has been made available to KBN with their kind permission.
   Teachers not familiar with A Christmas Carol may wonder if a work with such a religious-oriented title is appropriate for the public classroom. The simple answer is yes, and with its vivid dialog it's a wonderful work to bring to the classroom and share in the form of "readers theater."
    It might come as something of a surprise, but the work is completely focused on the personal moral behaviors of the characters during a traditional holiday season of goodwill, and except for the title does not actually mention anything about religion except, perhaps, the universal principle of charity and caring shared by all of humanity.

   As 2009 moves to a close, more and more registered users are coming to the KBN website as more and more parents, kids, teachers and other educators learn about KBN. And they're giving us some very helpful feedback and new ideas, too.
    For example, beginning in January teachers – and everyone else – will also be able to download many of our books in a convenient powerpoint show format for dramatic classroom projection, so a whole class can enjoy reading together at the same time. The teacher can pace the "page-turning" to the next page just like any on-paper book, to match the readiness of her class to move forward to the next idea in the story.
    And finally, we're beginning to see more and more institutional support as teachers themselves are telling other teachers about our website, and the new opportunities for enhancing literacy and learning in the classroom using the completely free books and materials on the Kids' Book Network.
    Every teacher and educator who has visited and discovered KBN seems to be as excited as we are about our mission – to bring free books to every child in the world.
    And at this special moment of Thanksgiving we wish to thank you all. Thank you for your enthusiasm, ideas and continuing encouragement.

October is National Vileburgers Month and the fun comes with complete lesson plans!

October is always scary if you're a teacher but if you're worried about something really exciting for your class to read you can stop screaming right now.

     According to Kirkus our new KBN action novel The Vileburgers is something like "City Slickers meets Ghostbusters" with an outcome that's "enjoyably ridiculous."

      Bookwire, on the other hand, describes this heartwarming story of incompetent ghouls as "replete with elements of magic, humor and wit," and categorizes it as a "new Halloween classic ... imaginative adventure ... hilarious cast." We of course appreciate their enthusiasm.

     But there's more – because the movie-style criticism from these reviewers is not entirely accidental. Vileburgers was deliberately written by the author in "scenes" rather than traditional book "chapters," and was written as well in the present tense to add additional immediacy and a certain live quality to the story – just like the experience of sitting in a "movie."

     That also makes it the perfect novel for teachers to use with the literacy development practice known as Readers Theater. So when you locate and download The Vileburgers from its location in the KBN Action Books category you'll also find a very complete series of lesson plans featuring Readers Theater, plus a Bloom's Taxonomy-based book report project and what can only be termed some incalculable fun with Vilemathematics.

     Published by KBN here in three episodes, we hope The Vileburgers adds extra fun to your October!

Would life in a totalitarian state really be so bad?

Would a totalitarian state really be all that bad? Here's an interesting teaching idea for Constitution Week.
     Just download our analysis of this issue from the study in our KBN library of free books which explores the possibly underconsidered advantages of some totalitarian states under the title What If Dogs Ran The World? You'll find it in the picture book section.
     First, let your students read this book and enjoy some of its doggone interesting ideas.

    Next invite your class to look more closely at each proposition in the book – such as that all children with freckles would be named Spot – and ask them to identify which article in the U.S. Constitution might prohibit such a harsh mandate, and why.
     They'll probably learn a lot more about the Constitution and its principles than any other way and have a lot more reading fun, too!

You know, once the new bulletin boards are up the rest looks almost possible.

With the new bulletin boards up, the books back out of their wrapping and boxes and neatly organized by categories in their easily-browsed baskets – science, exploration, art, history, – some favorite posters back up, and the special chair stenciled with the title Author's Chair in its place of honor, Mrs. Uncle Henry's classroom now looks almost ready to take on a new class of 35 students.

      How's it going with you?
      While many teachers are in administrative and planning meetings this week as schools prepare to open their doors after Labor Day, KBN is prepping, too. We're looking for any problem that our site subscribers might encounter with our website, based on the wide diversity of computer platforms and search engines they might be using.
      One problem we've found seems to be registering on the KBN site if you've got a spamblocker on your e-mail. A spamblocker may not let your registration confirmation note from KBN to reach your mailbox.
      To solve that problem just tell your spamblocker to admit any e-mail from hello@read4free.net. Then try your registration again.
      You'll be a KBN registered user, with full access to the free KBN books library, in minutes.
      Problem solved.
      As far as getting those new bulletin boards up, sorry. We'd like to help you there, too, but you're on your own.