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​So who am I and why am I qualified to write about this stuff?

When I teach my students about how to evaluate websites as resources for research, one of the first criteria we talk about is "Authority."  Who wrote the pages and why is he or she an expert? Can you find out more about this person?

So, who and why? I am a library media specialist working in an elementary school district in the metropolitan Chicago area with a Master's in Library and Information Science from Dominican University and nine years of teaching experience. I am a parent of two daughters who has spent countless hours at the public library and in bookstores scouring the shelves for books that picky readers actually want to crack open. And I have been a voracious reader since I first picked up Watty Piper's The Little Engine That Could many years ago and took an amazing journey with a smallish train with a big, can-do spirit.

My motto and my mission? To borrow from S.R. Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science: There is a reader for every book and a book for every reader. My goal is to help children, their parents and their teachers find the books that sets them on their journey to becoming a lifelong reader or keeps them traveling down that path.

I recently completed professional development through Chicago's Shedd Aquarium and earned my Great Lakes Science Certified badges.