Day Two, Sunday
We set up our Weekly Reader booth here at the International Reading Association (IRA) conference. It took pretty much all day and was more or less uneventful until, near the end of the day, one of our walls came crashing down. To make a short story shorter, we got a new wall. Yah!

Day Three, Today
The day started out slowly. The hotel coffee was wretched, and the ride to the convention center was filled with trying to cope with the fact that the coffee was wretched. But as soon as we got to our booth, happy faces were genuinely turned on as we greeted teachers who came from all across North America.

Many of them were very familiar with READ and Writing magazines and they were ecstatic to learn about our brand new electronic issue! Wait, this deserves a whole new section here....

CHECK IT OUT!!
The first annual Student Writing Showcase is here! Get on the phone! Tell all your friends! Sing it loud and clear! What is it? We will have a future blog dedicated to that. But for now, see for yourself! Click the link above or go to www.weeklyreader.com/showcase. And start thinking about what you want to submit for next year's Showcase. Because, oh yes, we'll be doin' it again! Count on it.

Day Three, Today (cont.)
When I wasn't "working the booth" and showing off our magazines, I also got a chance to see Lisa Klein, author of Ophelia, speak about writing, reading, and teaching Shakespeare. Ophelia was the love interest of Hamlet. In Shakespeare's play, Ophelia goes mad (crazy) and drowns herself in a river. In Klein's book, she takes the character and rewrites her part. Ophelia does not actually die in this daring, innovative new novel, but rather, she actually fakes her own death and escapes from the kingdom of Elsinore to live a new life. This is fantastic stuff! It's so cool when new authors can take old works and re-write them in ways that readers of the past had only contemplated, don't you think?

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," Klein said in her speech. "I often ask myself, 'What would Shakespeare do?'" Ha! Who hasn't? :)

If you haven't read this book, you have to check it out. But if it slips your mind or you just have too many things going on now (what with prom, summer vaca being almost here, cracking down for finals, etc.), fear not! READ magazine is going to attempt to do something very cool with this book in the coming year. Details to come...

I also met Jane Yolen today. She is the author of many books including Pay The Piper:A Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tale. We have collaborated with her on a number of projects over the years and most recently, she read a fairy tale written by a student writer on none other than (you guessed it!) Student Writing Showcase!

And if that weren't enough to fill a whole week (let alone one day!), I also met with the hip cats over at Flocabulary! And yes, I understand that saying "hip cats" makes me sound like a complete poser, all apologies. But these guys are great! You absolutely have to check out their web site! Shakespeare as Hip-Hop?!? Shut up! Awesome!

And speaking of fantastic web sites, I also met a guy from Teaching Matters. I have so much to say about this organization that I will have to wait until a later date to get into an in-depth discussion here, but for now, giver their site a well-deserved gander!

There's just so much cool stuff goin' on at IRA this year but unfortunately, I have to get some sleep now so I can be fresh again in the morning.

Until then,
WORD!