Tag Archives: librarians

World Read Aloud Day

February 16th is World Read Aloud Day. I will be celebrating this day by reading aloud via Skype to as many classrooms as I can. Last year I read to 15 schools on 3 continents over 24 hours. I’d love to include your school in this year’s celebration. If you are a teacher of students between 3rd and 8th grade and you’d like to share some reading excitement with your class please get in touch as soon as possible so I can fit you into my schedule.

My newest novel The Turn of the Tide will come out in paperback on Valentines Day and in honor of that I’ll be giving away one of my paperbacks to the first ten teachers who schedule a free Skype visit for World Read Aloud Day.

You can use the contact me feature on the website or email me at rosanne@rosanneparry.com

World Read Aloud Day is sponsored by Lit World and they have a pretty impressive slogan:

Read aloud. Change the World.

World Read Aloud Day motivates children, teens, and adults worldwide to celebrate the power of words and creates a community of readers taking action to show the world that the right to literacy belongs to all people. World Read Aloud Day is celebrated by millions of people in more than 100 countries thanks to people like you who participate and spread the word across the globe!

If you are not a teacher I hope you will honor the day by choosing a book or poem you love and reading it to somebody you care about. My mother read poetry aloud to me her whole life long and those are some of the memories of her that I treasure the most.

Irony

This past weekend I was at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Trade Show in Portland. (PNBA) While there I did a workshop on using social media as an author, bookseller or publisher. I had every intention of live tweeting the event and even began with a picture and tweet about Amber Keyser and her new novel The Way Back from Broken.

And then a funny thing happened. I went to some sessions that really expanded my thinking about the book world, including one with a very detailed explanation about exactly how books earn money and why some of them don’t. I sat in on a conversation about how the PNBA book award is chosen. I fell into one interesting conversation after another. I found booksellers and shared ideas for promoting my upcoming novel. I met publishers and talked about the kind of author who is the best fit for an event at Annie Blooms Bookstore. I found books that I wanted to immediately put in the hands of librarians from my school district.

And I completely forgot to tweet. Didn’t post a single thing on Facebook. I know. Missed opportunity.

Here’s what I didn’t miss. The joy of seeing a friend who is passionate about books absolutely in her element and making her dreams of becoming a publisher come true. Dozens of short conversations with publishers about the books they are passionate about. A long leisurely conversation over dinner with a new author friend, and a rather raucous late night conversation with a table full of booksellers. Not a single one of those experiences would have been enhanced by pausing to tweet, post, pin, or snap.

So thank you to the PNBA for an amazing weekend. I’m enriched. I’m exhausted. I’m going to spend every possible minute in the next week reading the amazing books and ARCs I brought home. And thank you to my northwest bookselling community for the mentoring and the inspiration.