Booklist’s Quick Tips for Schools and Libraries – a new & improved monthly e-newsletter – debuts today with great ideas for teachers, librarians, parents, and caregivers. Sign up for your FREE connection to reviews of the newest & best in children’s and YA literature, as well as exclusive content such this month’s columns on mystery read-alouds and children’s books about unemployment and job loss.

Audiobooks: That All May Learn is the title of my article in this month’s Quick Tips about audio formats for special-needs students, with links to resources that provide FREE audiobooks and NO COST audio versions of ANY textbook or novel assigned to students with disabilities that limit print use. Feel free to print out the column, forward to your special education staff, email to colleagues, or post in your parent newsletter. Add the resources from these organizations to your educational toolkit and increase your students’ access to audiobooks at no charge!

The general feeling of the session participants was that blog readers are commenting less these days, not so much from lack of interest but because of the ever-increasing flood of information. But there are times when comments create results. Here’s an example for Audiobooker readers: AppSessions responds to your concerns posted as comments to this post on text-synchronized audiobooks. If you’ve experienced problems with iClassix, here’s what to do:

Hello everyone. I am the managing partner at appSessions. I am so sorry to hear about the scroll issue. We are in the process of completely revamping our software. I assure all of you that once these updates are complete, you will all be pleased with the result. You will all get an upgrade of the current book you have on the iPhone. Secondly, because of the inconvenience, I would like to offer all of you on the this board who have had issues to please email me once the update is complete and I will offer you a complementry title of your choice. We are here to provide you with the best reading experience and once these updates are complete, I am sure you will agree with me on this notion. I am sorry about the problems, but rest assure, these will be resolved in a few weeks time. Please email me with any questions and or concerns.

Thank you.

Amirreza Vaziri

vaziri.amirreza@gmail.com

I had the pleasure of serving as a judge for the Audies‘ Distinguished Achievement in Production award, with the wonderful requirement of critically listening to outstanding audiobooks. Here’s the official press release on the nominees from the Audio Publishers Association:

The Audio Publishers Association (APA) has announced three Audie nominees for the prestigious Audiobook of the Year Award and five nominees for the newly created Distinguished Achievement in Production category. The winners will be announced at the Audies Gala awards ceremony on May 29, 2009, at the New-York Historical Society in New York City.

The three titles that have been selected for Audiobook of the Year contention are: Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, read by Gerard Doyle, published by Listening Library; The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, read by the author, published by HarperAudio; and A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs, read by the author, published by Macmillan Audio. All three titles are distinguished by excellence in production as well as by their ability to create new interest in the audiobook format through creative and innovative marketing.

The five titles that have been selected to compete for the inaugural Distinguished Achievement in Production award are: Curse of the Blue Tattoo by L.A. Meyer, read by Katherine Kellgren, published by Listen & Live Audio; Fairest, by Gail Carson Levine, read by Sarah Naughton and a full cast, published by Full Cast Audio; Many Things Invisible by Carrington MacDuffie, read by the author, published by Blackstone Audio; The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer by various authors, read by Stacy Keach and a full cast, published by Blackstone Audio; and Louis Vuitton Soundwalk: Shanghai read by Joan Chen, published by Soundwalk.

The Audies, the only awards program in the United States devoted entirely to honoring spoken word entertainment, drew in a record 1,000 entries from audio publishers this year, reflecting the health of the audio industry. In recognition of the diversity and excellence achieved by a wide range of audiobook publishers, the APA created the Distinguished Achievement in Production award this year to recognize a production that represents the best the format has to offer in listening excellence. Audiobook of the Year recognizes the audiobook that, through quality, innovation, marketing and sales, has had the most significant impact on the industry.

Welcome to Day 5 of the Share a Story, Shape a Future blog tour – be sure to visit all of the sites focusing on literacy this week. Today’s focus is “Technology and Reading – What the Future Holds” and is hosted by Elizabeth O. Dulemba. Visit Elizabeth’s blog for the complete post with information on audiobooks from Bruce Coville , E-books from Harold Underdow & Sheila Ruth, podcasts with Andrea Ross & Cheryl Rainfield, and more. Elizabeth will also have a complete interview with me on her blog on Monday, March 16th. Here’s a recap of the pointers to information from Audiobooker that I shared with Elizabeth:

Find out lots of interesting facts about audiobook listeners in the Audio Publishers Association’s annual survey

Here’s a link to more on family listening from my audiobook column “Voices in My Head” in the American Library Association’s Book Links magazine:

If you’d like an extensive list of both print and online research and resources on the benefits of audiobooks, here’s a link to my blog post

Here’s an MP3 shopping suggestion list

If you’d like to supply yourself with the lingo that describes the variations in audiobook production and narration, take a look at the Audiobook Lexicon I created

Find out more, including great download suggestions from ALA’s recommended audiobook lists, here

Learn more about the Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production

I have a huge list of favorites just from last year – so many the list is in three parts! Take a look

Day 1: Raising Readers
hosted by Terry Doherty at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, the Reading Tub blog

• Finding Time at Home – Tricia Stohr-Hunt @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
• Making Time in the Classroom – Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone
• Helping a Reader in Need (remedial readers) – Sandra Stiles guest post on Scrub-a-Dub-Tub
• It’s Bigger than the Book: Building Strong Readers at any Age with a Daily Dose of Read Aloud – Cathy Miller interview on the Share a Story – Shape a Future blog
• Keeping Gifted Readers Engaged – Donalyn Miller @ The Book Whisperer

Day 2: Selecting Reading Material
hosted by Sarah Mulhern at The Reading Zone

• The ABCs of Reading: Infants, Toddlers & Preschoolers – Valerie Baartz on The Almost Librarian
• How to Help Emerging Readers – Anastasia Suen @ Easy to Read blog
• Helping Middle Grade Readers – Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone
• Booklists and Read Alikes – Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone
• Using Non-fiction - Mary Lee Hahn of A Year of Reading, hosted by the Stenhouse blog

Day 3: Reading Aloud – It’s Fun, It’s Easy
hosted by Susan Stephenson at the Book Chook blog

• Ten Terrific Tips from Read-aloud Queen, Mem Fox – on the Book Chook blog
• Conquering Stage Fright – Interview with Sarah Mulhern/The Reading Zone @ the Book Chook
• Reading Aloud With Kids: A Dad’s Perspective – hosted by Steven and Brian at Book Dads: Fathers that Read
• Using Technology for Read Alouds – Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone
• What to Do When the Reading is Done – Aimee Buckner, hosted by the Stenhouse blog
• Reading Aloud with Independent Readers – Donalyn Miller @ The Book Whisperer

Day 5: Technology and Reading – What the Future Holds
is hosted by Elizabeth O. Dulemba at Dulemba.com

• Audiobooks with Bruce Coville of Full Cast Audio and Mary Burkey of Audiobooker
• E-books with Harold Underdown of The Purple Crayon and Sheila Ruth of Hornbook
• Podcasts with Andrea Ross of Just One More Book! and Cheryl Rainfield of cherylrainfield.com
• A resource of links to audiobooks, e-books, podcasts and webcasts @ Dulemba.com.

Here’s another great audiobook blog to explore – this time from Recorded Books: http://recordedbooks.wordpress.com/ Especially useful for educators & school librarians, the RB blog has frequent posts that have free downloads, classroom resources, research on audioboooks, author interviews, and lots more. They even had a batch of audiobook valentines for printing. Recorded Books is also Twittering & podcasting. Stop by their blog and download some freebies today!

There’s a new audiobook blog: Just Press Play, from Playaway’s Senior Manager for Content Strategy David Perrotta. Stop by to see which titles from the ALA Media Awards are available on Playaway. And Perrotta isn’t afraid to delve into librarian-talk, such as his post on MARC: Is Playaway a Sound Recording or an Electronic Resource? I’d love to feature other outstanding audiobook blogs – if you have one to share, please leave a comment!