Why Share a Story?

Welcome to the home of our annual blog tour for literacy. Share a Story ~ Shape a Future is, as the name suggests, an opportunity to share ideas, encourage each other, and spread the word about children's literacy. For 5 days in March, we harness the power of the Worldwide web to share ideas about ways to engage kids as readers. You won't find statistics, academic analysis, or judgments that tell you why you should read. You'll hear about favorite books, but you won't see any self-promotion or pitches. This is not an author or book tour. Share a Story-Shape a Future aims to build a community of readers, one person at a time.

Our History 

Within the kidlitosphere, the children's literature bloggers comprise and reach a very broad audience. One of the group's greatest assets is its collective, community-minded approach to sharing information and ideas. Through events like blog tours, authors and illustrators have had wonderful opportunities to share their story and their craft. Given the success of tours for "producers," we thought 2009 was the year to create an event for and by the people who create and engage their readers: teachers, librarians, parents, and people passionate about literacy!

Voila! Welcome to our literacy blog tour. This is an ensemble effort not only to celebrate reading among those of us who already love books, but to encourage each other to reach beyond ourselves and do it in a way that we are neither judging nor instructing others. This is a venue for communicating practical, usable, everyday ideas.

It is a one-week (M-F) event that launches the second full week of March. There are five literacy and/or reading themes for the week. Each day one blogger hosts the theme. Moms, dads, librarians, teachers, reading specialists, literacy advocates, anyone with a (noncommercial) interest in reading and kids share their ideas about that topic.

If you are interested in participating in the blog, either as a host or guest. Please let us know. You can send us an email at thereadingtub [at] gmail [dot] com.

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