Library Blog

Every 4th grader had an author visit with Mike Graf last week, who shared tips about writing realistic fiction while illustrating his points with virtual visits to many of our National Parks. Graf’s Adventures with the Parkers series is a great introduction to the “Every Kid in a Park” initiative of the Obama administration and the Department of the Interior, which is granting every 4th grade student and their family a FREE PASS to all National Parks for the entire year! For more information about this amazing project, see the Every Kid in a Park website.

The Falcon Guides featured on the left show the covers of Mike Graf’s Adventures with the Parkers series. He had the manuscript of the 13th title in his backpack as he was giving his author talk!

Many thanks to the Berkeley Public Schools Fund for supporting this author visit for all our 4th grade students, and what a great launch of Every Kid in a Park. 

Did you know that you can look up your school’s library books from any computer, at home or at school? Just click on the Library Catalog button on your school library webpage. You can look up a book by its title, author, subject or general keyword. Make note of its Call Number if you want to be able to head directly to the shelves to find it yourself, or ask your library staff for help – that’s what we’re here for!

We have a small collection of ebooks that can be read online, too. Once you’re in the Catalog, click on Follett Shelf in the left menu bar. When you’re reading our ebooks at school you don’t need a password, but from home you will. For the “featured ebooks” the username is truebusd, password student; for the “interactive ebooks” the username is your school’s name, password shelf. Sorry for the double duty in the password department! We’re aiming to streamline it.

We are excited to have audiobooks at our fingertips for all elementary students this year! Listening to stories is a great way to build reading skills, whether those stories are read by siblings, parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians… or professional readers, as is the case with Tales2Go audiobooks.

Tales2Go is a streaming audiobook service – kind of like a Netflix of the audiobook world – and BUSD now has this service for every elementary student. For more information about how to access your child’s account from home, go to your school library website at library.berkeleyschools.net and click on the Tales2Go button at the bottom of the screen. 

As always, if you have any questions, please contact your school library staff or Becca Todd, District Library Coordinator. Happy listening!