The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary An award-winning, big-hearted time capsule of one class’s poems during a transformative school year. “Entertaining . . . Shovan skillfully employs different poetic forms and styles…Characters… will inspire readers as they find the courage to save their school and make their voices heard, both as a united front […]
THE LAST FIFTH GRADE OF EMERSON ELEMENTARY
Tuesday, 21 July 2020
Thursday, 19 September 2019
Happy Poetry Friday everyone! Thanks to the fabulous Linda Baie at Teacher Dance for hosting this week’s Poetry Friday link-up. (Look for a cameo from Linda a bit later in this post!) This Friday and next, I am celebrating Read a Poem to a Child Day. I wrote about this annual initiative a few weeks […]
Friday, 20 July 2018
Going to ILA 2018 in Austin this weekend? I’ll see you there! This is where you’ll find me. Sunday, 7/22, 12 pm — Autograph session at the Random House Children’s Books booth. Sunday, 7/22, 5 pm — Panel session, “A Sense of Place: Middle-grade Novels on Loss and Connection.” With author/educator Ruth Freeman, […]
Wednesday, 11 April 2018
Happy National Poetry Month, everyone! The paperback edition of The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary comes out this week. To celebrate, I’m doing a *big* giveaway: A class set of books for one lucky teacher or librarian! How do you enter? Simple. I want to hear — and share — how your students are […]
Wednesday, 19 April 2017
I recently recorded a podcast with my friend and neighbor Matthew Winner of All the Wonders. Matthew is a school librarian just a few miles up the road from me. Although his children are much younger than mine, Matthew and I talked about how we value the culturally, ethnically, and socio-economically diverse schools here in […]
Thursday, 2 February 2017
Happy February, everyone. This week, we kicked off my annual poem project, which has moved over to Facebook. This year’s theme is #10FoundWords. We have a daily news story, speech, or current event selected by a project member. That person chooses 10 words from the news source, which makes up our word bank for the […]
Monday, 14 November 2016
Heading to NCTE this weekend? So am I. My first job after graduate school was teaching high school English. I was a member of the New Jersey Council of Teachers of English, but I never got to a national conference. Educator friends have told me how good it feels to be surrounded by people who […]
Tuesday, 1 November 2016
Hello from Klamath Falls, Oregon! In real life, I’m on the West Coast to do some school and library visits with my good friend Janet Sumner Johnson, author of THE LAST GREAT ADVENTURE OF THE PB&J SOCIETY. But online, I’m guest-blogging this week at poet and children’s author Jacqueline Jules’s blog, Pencil Tips: Writing Workshop […]
Thursday, 2 June 2016
POST UPDATE: Thanks to Charles at StartSleeping.Org for reaching out to me. I’m happy to share information about the organization. Charles writes: I work with a passionate team at StartSleeping.org that strives to provide the best resources possible to help those in need get a good night’s sleep. With winter fast approaching we like to turn […]
Monday, 11 April 2016
Happy launch day to the Emerson Elementary School fifth graders! Today, Ms. Hill’s student poets finally graduate from work-in-progress to published book. I’ve got something special planned for you, my friends. Welcome to my Launch Day Challenge. It involves poetry, of course — this is National Poetry Month. It also involves hamsters. (I’ll explain that in a […]
Laura Shovan is the author of the award-winning middle grade novel, The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary. Her second book, Takedown, is a Junior Library Guild and PJ Our Way selection. Look for A Place at the Table, co-written with Saadia Faruqi, in 2020. Laura is a poet-in-the-schools Maryland.
