Have You Heard?
Grammy nominations: Five children’s music albums were nominated for a 2013 Grammy Award by the Academy of Recording Arts on December 6. The top contenders in the Children’s Album category are Can You Canoe (RedEye Dist.), performed by the Okee Dokee Brothers (childhood friends Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing); Bill Harley’s High Dive and Other Things That Could Have Happened (Round River); the JumpinJazz Kids’s A Swinging Jungle Tale (JumpinJazzKids), narrated by James Murray and featuring Dee Dee Bridgewater, Al Jarreau, Hubert Laws, and various artists; Little Seed: Songs for Children by Woody Guthrie (Smithsonian Folkways), re-imagined renditions of classic Guthrie favorites by Elizabeth Mitchell; and the Pop Ups’s (Brooklyn-based music duo Jason Rabinowitz and Jacob Stein) Radio Jungle (CDBaby.com). The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on February 10.
Early Childhood Education
A learning initiative: What role should libraries and museums play in early learning? On December 5 leaders from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Campaign for Grade Level Reading hosted the first in a series of activities that will become the basis for a policy report that “will lay the foundation for decision makers at the local, state, and federal levels to fully use the capacity of libraries and museums in their early learning efforts.” The report is expected to be released in April 2013.
The meeting included representatives from the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Education, the National League of Cities, the National Governors Association, libraries, museums, public and private funders, and others. The topics under discussion included how libraries and museums are expanding early childhood learning in their communities, strategies to engage museums and libraries in early learning decision making, and ways to establish relationships with civic leaders, policy makers, and others to influence libraries and museums to help meet our nation’s early learning challenges.
Libraries and museums reach millions of children each year, and it is exciting to bring that capacity into focus,” said IMLS director Susan Hildreth. “I am delighted that we will be able to tap expertise nationwide so that libraries and museums can more effectively engage in early learning strategies at the community, state, and national level.”
The Campaign for Grade Level Reading is “a collaborative effort by foundations, nonprofit partners, states and communities across the nation to ensure that more children in low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career, and active citizenship. The Campaign focuses on the most important predictor of school success and high school graduation—grade-level reading by the end of third grade.”