LREI’s Rock Star Librarians

LREI
Jennifer, Stacy, Karyn and Jesse are writers, teachers, leaders
The four professionals who keep watch over LREI students as they discover the wonders and enjoyment of reading are literary rock stars.
 
Jennifer Hubert Swan, Stacy Dillon, Karyn Silverman and Jesse Karp ’87 form the dynamic librarian quartet who employ “embedded librarianship,” a philosophy which liberates librarians from their desks in the interest of forming strong working relationships with people who need their expertise – namely, LREI’s students and teachers. To students, Jennifer is a grade advisor; Karyn supervises Senior Project, the trimester-long experiential and interdisciplinary culminating project for the 12th grade; Stacy participates in grade level meetings; and Jesse is a lower school “buddy” for kindergarten and co-facilitator of the middle school comic book club, in addition to being an alumnus of LREI. To teachers, the four are respected as research and literary experts.
 
The foursome’s accomplishments are abundant, almost unbelievable, and regrettably too lengthy to list here. Just to give you a flavor:
 
Jennifer has been writing a blog since 1997, now a website called “Reading Rants” (readingrants.org), an out of the ordinary site for teen booklists. “There is no librarian that doesn’t know ‘Reading Rants’,” exclaims Karyn. She teaches Young Adult Literature and Youth Library Programming at Pratt Institute's Graduate School of Information. Jennifer also reviews Young Adult literature for The New York Times. Read her latest book review for the Times (a teen nonfiction book about the Lizzie Borden murders), which was published on February 14 in the Sunday Book Review.
 
Stacy was recently elected to the prestigious Caldecott 2017 and served on the Newbery 2012, both committees of the American Library Association (ALA). She serves on the We The People Bookshelf Grant Committee and also hosts her own blog “Welcome to my Tweendom.”
 
Karyn is the founder and writes for the School Library Journal award speculation blog "Someday My Printz Will Come" and is a co-chair of the Hudson Valley Library Association Literary Committee. She also reviews regularly for Kirkus, the "most trusted voice in book discovery." Karyn regularly speaks at local and national conferences about education and libraries.
 
Jesse has written two young adult novels and one graphic novel. He speaks regularly at various educator, librarian and publishing events and has spoken at Comicon, the international fan convention dedicated to comics, graphic novels and related media. He served on the ALA committees Great Graphic Novels for Teens and the Eisner Committee for Graphic Novels. His blog is "Beyond Where You Stand." 
 
Collectively, they bring fifty-six years of experience to the LREI community. Jesse is astonished when reflecting on this group.  “We help students unlock the playground of the imagination.  We teach a foundational skill that sparks a better understanding of the world, a deeper experience of the world, an expansive outer life.”
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