I absolutely detest mornings! I really have no problem getting up relatively early in the morning, but this 6 a.m., when it is still pitch black outside is for the birds! Can't you tell I have been teaching afternoon and evening graduate level courses for many years? My internal clock has changed and though 7 a.m. is do-able, but 6 a.m. ARGH!!! And why can't they cut a precut bagel truly in half? Why do we have to get one side thin that toasts too much and the other too thick and doesn't toast enough? Okay - I will quit whining now. Just had to get that out of my system before I go to Montessori.

Picked up the information on the new Scholastic online ordering product for librarians while at Midwinter. URL: www.scholastic.com/librarypublishing. One of the reasons I was interested in this is because Scholastic has Grolier, Children's Press, and Franklin Watts - some of the major publishers of NF for schools. You can view covers as well as tables of content and indexes. Now that is a neat option when looking for specific subject areas within a larger subject. I have just spent a few minutes with this so far, but it looks like an online product that will be useful to librarians. You can order directly online - free shipping. Printing out a list of titles from here to check against Titlewave or B&T would be a good way to check to see if this is a viable ordering option. My one big reservation about this product is that librarians might order exclusively from here, limiting themselves tremendously by publisher. I had my students at UHCL evaluate the titles in a specific Dewey area and they found that many of the librarians had a strong preference for one NF publisher and their books dominated the collection. Schools that have Scholastic book fairs often have a collection very heavy in Scholastic books, due the free book options.

Sorry this wasn't a specific book discussion this a.m. - I am still trying to wake up.