Judy's Workshops
BER Seminars • Winners! • Books Kids Will Sit Still For • Selecting Books for Children • Literature and Library Skills • Booktalking & Reading Aloud • Multicultural Books • Once Upon a Time • Storytelling • Hi Ho Librario • Keynote Speeches • Parent Programs • Musical Booktalk •
The 28th ANNUAL WINNERS! WORKSHOP:

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE YEAR'S 100 BEST BOOKS FOR CHILDREN  
   GRADES PRE-K - 6

A FULL-DAY WORKSHOP (8:30 A.M.-3:15 P.M.)

PRESENTED BY JUDY FREEMAN

SPONSORED BY JUDY FREEMAN'S WORKSHOPS, LLC

Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The Mansion on Main Street
3000 Main St., Voorhees, NJ
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Pines Manor
2085 Lincoln Highway (Rte 27 S), Edison, NJ 
Friday, April 27, 2012
Parsippany Holiday Inn & Suites 
707 Rte 46, Parsippany, NJ
CLICK HERE FOR YOUR REGISTRATION FORM.
We're back! Hooray! Judy Freeman's wildly popular book and idea-packed full-day workshop, has been presented every spring in New Jersey since 1984. Judy's WINNERS! Workshop offers innovative and practical ways to use the best of the year's children's books for curricular connections, thematic tie-ins, resource-based learning, and just plain fun. It's a field day for K-6 classroom teachers, school and public librarians, library aides, reading specialists, curriculum coordinators, administrators, parents, and other children's literature-lovers.

For the best professional day of the year, here's what you'll find at WINNERS!:
  • An interactive, book-packed wow of a day, with lively, concise, honest evaluations of 100+ new and exemplary children's books -- a wide-ranging treasure trove of picture books, easy readers, fiction, nonfiction, biographies, and poetry books of 2011-- chosen by Judy Freeman, major professional journals, and awards committees as the year's "best."

  • Demonstrations of read-alouds, booktalks, storytelling, creative dramatics, Reader's Theater, poetry, songs, and a host of literature-based extension activities to make books come alive for your kids.

  • Practical strategies to fire up even your most reluctant readers and writers and get them reading with comprehension, expression, fluency, and joy. We will even put on a play!

  • Scores of successful kid-tested reading, writing, and discussion prompts to use immediately in school and library programs, booktalks, and lessons across the school curriculum and connect with the Core Curriculum Standards.

  • Impressive and inspiring samples of student work, puppets, props, and many other tie-ins to foster creativity, improve comprehension, develop higher level thinking skills, and deepen children's response to literature.

  • Irresistible new field-tested titles perfect for read-alouds, read-alones,and book discussion groups.

  • The new, comprehensive The WINNERS! Handbook -- free with your registration-- with a thoroughly annotated and indexed list of the year's best children's books, plus a huge array of ideas, lesson plans, teacher's guides, stories, songs, and a valuable Internet resource list of exemplary websites.

  • A chance to personally examine all titles discussed, plus the opportunity to buy a variety of the best new titles at our convenient conference bookstore presented by Sandy and Joe Levy of Owl Books.

  • A day to laugh, connect, share, and celebrate the latest literature titles and trends with leading teachers, librarians, and other children's book hounds.

  • Unlimited reasons to fall in love with children's literature all over again.

 

   RUBY SAYS, "COME TO THE WINNERS! WORKSHOP! 

   JUDY PROMISES THERE WILL BE BOOKS ABOUT KITTIES!"

2012 "WINNERS!" SCHEDULE:
8:00 - 8:30                   REGISTRATION AND CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

8:30 - 10:15                 LANGUAGE ARTS (Reading & Writing)

10:15 - 10:30               BREAK (& BOOK LOOK)

10:30 - 12:00               MORE LANGUAGE ARTS (Writing & Reading)

12:00 - 1:00                 LUNCH (& BOOK LOOK)

1:00 - 2:20                   BOOKS ACROSS THE CURRICULUM (Special Areas/ Math / Science / Social Studies)

2:20 - 2:30                   BREAK (& BOOK LOOK)

2:10- 3:15                    FOLK AND FAIRY TALES AND THE YEAR'S BEST FOLKLORE-BASED FANTASY
CHOOSE A DATE AND LOCATION
Wednesday, April 25, 2012:
The Mansion on Main Street
3000 Main St., Voorhees, NJ
Thursday, April 26, 2012:
The Pines Manor
2085 Lincoln Highway (Rt 27S), Edison, NJ
Friday, April 27, 2012:
Parsippany Holiday Inn & Suites
707 Rt 46, Parsippany, NJ

CLICK HERE FOR DIRECTIONS.

REGISTRATION:
Your registration fee of $179 includes conference registration, continental breakfast, lunch, a copy of The WINNERS! Handbook, and a certificate of participation (5 professional development contact hours). Judy Freeman is a registered NJ Department of Education Continuing Education Provider, #2097.
To register, please print out and fill in the registration form (CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION FORM.) and mail with your check, money order, or purchase order, payable to Judy Freeman's Workshops, LLC, to Peggy Beck Haines at the address below:
***Email Peggy Beck Haines at JudyFreemansWorkshops.com if you need a copy of Judy's W-9 and/or her NJ Business Registration Certificate number.
TO PURCHASE ADDITIONAL WINNERS! HANDBOOKS:

     If you are unable to attend and/or would like to order additional copies of The WINNERS! Handbook: A Closer Look at Judy Freeman's Top-Rated Children's Books of 2011 from this workshop, we will have them available the last week of April 2012. Information will be forthcoming on how/when/where.  Prior copies of The WINNERS! Handbook, published yearly from 2006-2011, are available at www.LU.com, from Follett, Baker & Taylor, and on Amazon. 

TO FIND JUDY'S FREE BOOKLISTS:
Want to see Judy's complete booklists for her Winners! Workshops each year? If you have an account at Follett's Titlewave.com , for which all teachers and librarians can register for free, log in. Click on "ESSENTIALS" at the top of the page. Scroll down to "EXPERT PICKS" and click on "Judy Freeman." At the top of the page, click on the name "Judy Freeman" again and you'll see links to the booklists for her past and present programs.
TO BRING JUDY'S PROGRAMS TO YOU:
 If you are interested in having Judy bring her Winners! Workshop or other programs to your school, library, or conference, e-mail her at judyfreemansworkshops@gmail.com. Have book, will travel!

 
A MESSAGE FROM YOUR WINNERS! WORKSHOP LEADER,    

                            JUDY FREEMAN 
 
Dear Children's Book Lover,
      Until recently, we didn’t know if the Winners! Workshops would be back this spring. Many of you know that Libraries Unlimited, which sponsored the past seven years of the program, decided it wasn’t desirable to do so again this year. No question, we were bummed out at the prospect of Winners’ demise after 27 fabulous years in New Jersey.
     With the economic downturn that has hit so many teachers and librarians with devastating cutbacks and layoffs, we were concerned that many people wouldn’t be allowed the time or the funding to attend any professional development workshops this year. I sent out an e-mail in December, 2011 to the folks on our Winners! mailing list to see if they were still interested in/able to attend and was blown away by their responses. “WE WANT WINNERS!” was the message that came through loud and clear.
      By an overwhelming margin, people were passionate and vociferous in their support for Winners!, our own one-day spa sabbatical book vacation (chocolate not included). I decided I wasn’t ready to hang up my dancing shoes just yet, either. So maybe we’re crazy, but here we go again (as Bud Caldwell said in Bud, Not Buddy). We have decided to take on the challenge and run the whole shebang ourselves!
      Our new team is small but dedicated, consisting of: me, Judy Freeman, your Winners! presenter; my wonderful husband, Izzy Feldman; and our dear friend and colleague, Peggy Beck Haines, former school librarian from Cherry Hill, who will be handling your registrations.
HERE’S OUR 5-STEP PLAN :
1. WE ARE PLANNING THREE GLORIOUS DAYS OF THE WINNERS! WORKSHOP IN SOUTH, CENTRAL, AND NORTH JERSEY.
     Our schedule is as follows:
     a. Wednesday, April 25: The Mansion on Main Street, Voorhees. NJ
     b. Thursday, April 26: The Pines, Edison, NJ
     c. Friday, April 27: Holiday Inn, Parsippany, NJ
2. WE ARE GOING TO KEEP THE PRICE AT $179.00, THE SAME AS IT HAS BEEN SINCE 2008.
     Did you know The Winners! Workshop will cost you a full $50 less than comparable major national seminars that provide only coffee, tea, and a muffin? It’s true! And we still intend to feed you. In order not to raise prices, we have decided to accept checks, money orders, or purchase orders, but not credit cards (because the handling fees are very steep). We hope this won’t be too inconvenient for you.
3. OUR PROGRAM WILL INCLUDE CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST AND LUNCH.
     People who answered our survey indicated that they would bring a pb&j sandwich if they needed to. However, we’ve decided it’s just too difficult to expect all of our attendees to go out and scrounge up their own lunches. On top of that, our venues will charge exorbitant rates for our ballrooms if we do not order food. We’ve scaled down the menu some, and that will help us hold the line on costs, we hope. (OK, this year’s lunches won’t be quite as opulent as they’ve been in the past, but they will still be perfectly fine. You didn’t really need all of those extra pastas and desserts, did you?)
4. WE ARE BUILDING A MAILING LIST.
Our new mailing list is woefully incomplete—it only goes back a few years, and many of the e-mails I sent in December bounced back, rejected by your schools’ spam filters. If you received an e-mail from me directly, back in December (from BKWSSF@aol.com), assume that we have you on our list. If not, assume that we don’t. You can send us your contact info, and we’ll be thrilled to add you and all your buddies. (Send to Peggy Haines—at JudyFreemansWorkshops@gmail.com—your name, work address, home and work phone number, and both your work and your home e-mail addresses.)  Do add us to your address book so our e-mails don’t get snagged in your spam folder!
5. YOU CAN HELP KEEP THE WINNERS! WORKSHOP ALIVE!
People have been e-mailing, saying. “What can I do to help?” We desperately need your help to keep this program going! First of all, if you don’t come, Winners will cease to exist. Next, we need to be able to reach as many new people as possible, those who may be new to the field or somehow have never heard about the program before. We will be ridiculously grateful if you would forward the link to this flyer to scores of your colleagues and friends and ask them to do the same.  
I want to know that children’s book-loving folks from public and private schools and libraries in NJ, NY, PA, MD, DE, and maybe even Timbuktu are aware about our special day. If we don’t get attendees, then we won’t be able to afford to continue Winners and it will disappear, and that would be a terrible thing, don’t you think? Do you believe in Winners!? Don’t let it die, friends! It’s all in your hands!

This has been a huge learning curve for the three of us, figuring out all of the logistics behind contacting and registering everyone, writing and producing our fabulous handbook, and attending to the never-ending details of running a conference, so please bear with us. I’m on the road every other week, which can slow things down a tad. If you e-mail or call us, you have my permission to nag if you don’t get a quick response. Nagging is good. And if you have any pithy or practical suggestions, don’t hesitate to offer us your best advice.

I hope you will be able to join us in April for Year Number 28! There are so many fabulous new books this year, and I can’t wait to share them with you.
Much love and gratitude for your continued support—
Your old friend and book-lover,
Judy
Judy Freeman
www.JudyReadsBooks.com
judyfreemansworkshops@gmail.com

JUDY’S CAT, PERCY, HELPS ORGANIZE THE BOOKS!  

           

ABOUT YOUR WINNERS! INSTRUCTOR:

JUDY FREEMAN (www.JudyReadsBooks.com) is a well-known speaker, consultant, and writer on all aspects of children's literature, storytelling, booktalking, and school librarianship. She is a visiting lecturer in the School of Information and Library Science at Pratt Institute in New York City, where she teaches courses in children's literature and storytelling. A former school librarian, Judy gives conferences, workshops, speeches, and performances throughout the U.S. and the world for teachers, librarians, parents, and children, and is a national seminar presenter for BER (Bureau of Education and Research, www.ber.org). Judy served as a member of the 2000 Newbery Committee and the 2008 Sibert Informational Book Award Committee.

JUDY FREEMAN'S book, Once Upon a Time: Using Storytelling, Creative Drama, and Reader's Theater with Children in Grades PreK-6 (Libraries Unlimited, 2007), won the 2009 Anne Izard Storyteller's Choice Award. Her mega-books, Books Kids Will Sit Still For 3 (2006) and its popular companions Books Kids Will Sit Still For: The Complete Read-Aloud Guide, (1990), and More Books Kids Will Sit Still For (1995) are indispensable resources for literature-based classrooms. Judy also writes the yearly The Winners Handbook, based on her Winners Workshops, reviewing her top 100 children's books of the past year. (To order Judy's past books call 1-800-225-5800 or see www.lu.com). To order copies of this year's  The Winners Handbook: A Closer Look at Judy Freeman's Top-Rated Children's Books of 2011, contact JudyFreemansWorkshops@gmail.com after May 1st, 2012. 

Judy's online book review columns include "Desperate Librarians" for the online database NoveList and "What's New?" for School Library Journal's Curriculum Connections. Judy has contributed hundreds of children's book reviews, plus articles, annotated booklists, and other content to author James Patterson's spectacular website for parents, teachers, librarians, and kids--www.ReadKiddoRead.com--which was named one of  ALA's Great Web Sites for Kids from the National Book Foundation in 2009.