When I was in fourth grade, our teacher assigned an author’s study. We chose an author, read several books, and researched details about the author’s life. As the culmination of the project, we composed a letter to our chosen author, asking questions, and offering opinions about the author’s books.
I remember Miss Porter helping each one of us locate the publisher’s information on the copyright page of our books and using a phone book-sized directory of publishers, find the address. I carefully composed my letter to Marguerite Henry (I was in my horse phase at the time), asking her about horses and sharing my secret wish to attend the annual Pony Penning roundup on Chincoteague Island, just like the Beebe children in MISTY OF CHINCOTEAGUE. I waited expectantly through the spring for my letter from Ms. Henry to arrive, but it never did. Crestfallen, I decided that authors probably never saw the hundreds of letters they received from the readers who love their books.
Thirty years later, authors and the details of their lives and work still intrigue me. Gone are the days, though, of sending off letters to a publisher and hoping for a personal reply from my favorite writer. Many published authors host their own websites and blogs, and fans have greater access to authors than we dreamed possible.
For the past few years, when I stumbled onto a blogsite by an admired author or reviewer, I usually tagged it or signed up for an RSS feed so that I didn’t miss a post. Not one for moderation, as far as reading goes, my RSS feeds ballooned to an unmanageable amount—more posts than I could reasonably read. What I needed was an efficient way to track reviews and author’s blogs without overloading my e-mail inbox or spending hours reading blogs.
So, after noticing that many of the writers whose blogs I read post to
Twitter, I jumped into the Twitterverse three years ago. My tweet ID is
@donalynbooks.
Twitter, the free social networking and micro-blogging service, allows its users to send and receive messages, known as tweets. Tweets are messages of up to 140 characters that appear on the user’s profile page and the user’s friends, known as followers.
In addition to writing tweets, users resend (retweet, or “RT”) posts they enjoy, or send direct messages to each other. Users’ names, beginning with an @ symbol, appear in front of their posts. Users search for tweets about topics grouped under hashtags like #NWP and #IRA12. Users access Twitter through its website, Short Messaging Service (SMS), or cell phone applications like Tweetdeck.
While Twitter became popular due to the Twitterati, celebrity Tweeters like
Ashton Kutcher and
Demi Moore, the service has moved beyond the navel-gazing posts of the rich and famous. During the corrupt Iranian Presidential elections, protestors used Twitter after the government shut down other modes of communication. Word of Osama Bin Laden’s death flooded Twitter before President Obama formally announced it. Astronaut
Michael Massimino sent tweets about repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope from space. There is still a lot of narcissism on Twitter, but the site’s role as a communication force is without question.
Instant access via Twitter to book reviews, author appearances, and links offers teachers and librarians opportunities for finding books, resources, and like-minded colleagues beyond the walls of our schools, and streamlines the unwieldy process of following blogs and bookmarking review and author websites. I discovered that Neil Gaiman (
@neilhimself) raises honeybees and followed the announcement of his Hugo Award win live from his tweets. I scored an advanced reader copy of Kate Messner’s (
@KateMessner) book, THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z, when she offered copies to her followers.
Want to know about Libba Bray’s (
@libbabray) next book, the newest Reading Is Fundamental initiative (
@RIFWEB), or read reviews of new titles (
@sljournal)? Just like the social networking sites Facebook and Goodreads, begin by following a favorite or two and then add other people you notice through your friends’ tweets.
And yes, if you want the inside scoop on our favorite celebrities, children’s and young adults’ writers, you can do that, too. Follow the hilarious exchanges between Eoin Colfer (
@eoincolfer) and Mo Willems (
@The_Pigeon), laugh out loud when YA author Maureen Johnson (
@maureenjohnson) mistakenly eats the Styrofoam packaging in a box of German wafer cookies, or celebrate when John Green’s (
@realjohngreen) A FAULT IN OUR STARS hits THE NEW YORK TIMES (
@nytimes). Peering into authors’ mundane moments reveals how magical their writing is when it springs from people whose lives are as ordinary as our own.
In addition to the people mentioned already, add these outstanding literacy tweeps and children’s authors to your must-follow list:
Donalyn Miller is a sixth grade language arts teacher in Keller, Texas. In her popular book, THE BOOK WHISPERER: AWAKENING THE INNER READER IN EVERY CHILD, Donalyn reflects on her journey to become a reading teacher and describes how she inspires and motivates her middle school students to read 40 or more books a year. Donalyn currently writes a blog, The Book Whisperer, for EDUCATION WEEK TEACHER and a monthly column for Scholastic Book Fairs’ PRINCIPAL TO PRINCIPAL e-newsletter. She co-hosts the monthly Twitter chat, #titletalk, and facilitates the biannual #bookaday event. © 2012 Donalyn Miller. Please do not reproduce in any form, electronic or otherwise.