Recent Build Your Stack® Virtual Events:
Join authors, educators, and members of the committee for Build Your Stack®: Border Stories on April 15 at 7 p.m. ET. As part of Build Your Stack’s regular webinar series, this event will share many books that tell diverse stories featuring border experiences. What are borders? What do they mean to us and to our world? What effects do they have on human experiences? You’ll leave with a robust curated list of titles to share with your students or to edify your own reading.
See the list below for information about the presenters.
Registration is open to the public.
RSVP today!
FEATURED PANELISTS
Sneed B. Collard III has written more than ninety books for young people, including his newest picture books: Border Crossings (which won the 2024 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award®), Like No Other: Earth’s Coolest One-of-a-Kind Creatures, and Waiting for a Warbler. Before beginning his writing career, Sneed graduated with honors in marine biology from the University of California, Berkeley and earned a master’s in scientific instrumentation from UC Santa Barbara. To research and write his nonfiction books, he has traveled the world, including the deep-sea floor. Sneed has written several middle-grade and YA novels and is a regular contributor to adult nature and science magazines. His third book for adults, Birding for Boomers, was released this fall. Learn more about Sneed at his website and at the birding, writing, and photography blog he writes with his son, Braden.
David Bowles, a Mexican American author and translator from south Texas, has written several award-winning titles, most notably They Call Me Güero and My Two Border Towns. His work has also been published in multiple anthologies as well as venues such as the New York Times, School Library Journal, Strange Horizons, English Journal, Rattle, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children’s Literature. Bowles presently serves as vice president of the Texas Institute of Letters. His first collaboration with award-winning author Guadalupe García McCall, Secret of the Moon Conch, was a 2024 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award finalist and appeared on New York Public Library’s Best Books for Teens 2023 list. Coming in spring 2024 is the companion book, Hearts of Fire and Snow, a second collaboration with McCall.
Photo credit: Loba
Clare Donovan Scane has been working with literacy communities as a teacher, school administrator, and instructional coach for over twenty years. She launched CDS Literacies to collaborate with those interested in cultivating antiracist, culturally sustaining literacy practices focused on student empowerment and joy. Connect with Scane and her work at cdsliteracies.com, on Twitter @clare_dscane, and Instagram: cdsliteracies
Guadalupe García McCall was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, and raised in Eagle Pass, Texas. McCall is the award-winning author of several young adult novels and many children’s poems. Guadalupe has received the prestigious Pura Belpre Award, a Westchester Young Adult Fiction Award, the Tomás Rivera Mexican-American Children’s Book Award, and was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, among many other accolades. As an educator, author, poet, and speaker, McCall is an advocate for literacy, diverse books, and Own Voices. Guadalupe’s first collaboration with award-winning author David Bowles, Secret of the Moon Conch, was a 2024 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award finalist and appeared on New York Public Library’s Best Books for Teens 2023 list. Coming in spring 2024 is the companion book, Hearts of Fire and Snow. She is now a full-time author/part-time educator and lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband, Jim.
Photo credit: Michael Mercado Smith
Jodi-Beth Hazel has been an English language arts and reading (ELAR) teacher for seventeen years in districts across the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas. She is currently an ELAR curriculum manager for a school system that operates across Texas and resides in San Antonio with her two daughters and German shepherd. She’s a Harry Potter fan, a card-carrying member of the Backstreet Army, an avid reader, and a fan of all passionate educators and authors. She is a current member of the Build Your Stack Committee.
Minh Lê is the author of several children’s books including Drawn Together, which won the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and Lift which was an Eisner Award Nominee. His other books include Let Me Finish!, The Perfect Seat, and The Blur. Minh has written for the New York Times, the Horn Book, and the Huffington Post. He currently lives in San Diego, California with his wife and kids. Visit him online at minhlebooks.com or on Instagram and Twitter @bottomshelfbks.
Previous Build Your Stack® Virtual Events:
(Click on the dates below to watch videos of some of our previous events.)
March 4, 2024
Build Your Stack® Time to Laugh
Many of the books shared by the presenters can be found on this list. *
October 18, 2023
Build Your Stack® with Middle Grade Texts
Many of the books shared by the presenters can be found on this list. *
June 13, 2023
Build Your Stack®: The Best Books of the 2022-2023 School Year
Many of the books shared by the presenters can be found on this list.*
April 27, 2023
Build Your Stack®: Poetic Possibilities
Many of the books shared by the presenters can be found on this list.*
NCTE members and presenters Kefah Ayesh and Darius Phelps wrote blog posts that tie in to this event’s theme and we encourage you to read them.
February 27, 2023
Build Your Stack® with Nonfiction Texts
Many of the books shared by the presenters can be found on this list.*
*NCTE and local bookstores receive a small commission when you purchase through these links.
June 15, 2022
Build Your Stack® Best Books of the 2021-2022 School Year
Many of the books shared by the presenters can be found on this list.*
Author Meg Grehan also wrote a blog post specifically for this event that was posted on June 14, 2022.
April 25, 2022
Build Your Stack® A Rainbow of Pride Books
Books shared by the presenters can be found on this list.*
June 15, 2021
Build Your Stack® with the Best Books of the 2020-2021 School Year
Books shared by the presenters can be found on this list.*
May 3, 2021
Build Your Stack® with Award-Winning Authors
Books from these authors can be found on this list.*
April 15, 2021
Build Your Stack® with Multilingual Texts
To see a list of most of the books discussed, to browse or to purchase, please click through to our Bookshop page for this event.*
June 30, 2020
Elementary and Middle Grade Focus
To see a list of most of the books discussed, to browse or to purchase, please click through to our Bookshop page for this event.* A. B. Majmudar’s book, The Torchbearers, is currently available here. You may also contact her directly for more information about how to purchase copies at ami.majmudar@gmail.com.
August 10, 2020
Secondary Focus
To see a list of most of the books discussed, to browse or to purchase, please click through to our Bookshop page for this event.*
*NCTE and local bookstores receive a small commission when you purchase through these links.
TEACHER EXPERTISE + BOOK KNOWLEDGE
We’re building NCTE into the place where you go to meet authors of significance, paving the way for knowledge and relationships that transform students and schools.
Our members’ knowledge of books should be celebrated and recognized, and this initiative offers just the right platform.
But, you might say, there are so many books out there, and I have so little time to explore them all. We know! Build Your Stack® will reduce the guesswork that goes into building a classroom library by creating a trusted connection to the best books, recommended by colleagues with deep expertise.
WHAT IS BUILD YOUR STACK®?
1. See our current Build Your Stack® Committee roster.
2. A set of dozens of unique sessions in the Exhibit Hall at the NCTE Annual Convention. Each 20-minute session will feature authors and educators talking about their favorite books and how to use them in the classroom.
3. Booklists and recommendations all year long, curated by NCTE members and shared via our member communications.
4. Periodic professional learning experiences in sites across the country and virtually that bring NCTE members together with authors and dynamic educators.
5. Blog posts from fellow educators with information about diverse books for you and for your classroom.
WE’D LOVE TO HEAR YOUR BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS! SHARE WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA USING #BUILDYOURSTACK.
Build Your Stack
Blog Posts
Check out the most recent #BuildYourStack posts featuring book recommendations curated by NCTE members and submit your own recommendations today.
Read Now Submit a Blog PostWHAT KINDS OF BUILD YOUR STACK SESSIONS CAN I EXPECT AT NCTE’S ANNUAL CONVENTION?
Join us each year at the Annual Convention for more than 30 sessions, taking place on the Build Your Stack® stage in the exhibit hall. We were proud to host many amazing educator and author sessions in Columbus, Ohio in 2023. We look forward to the 2024 Annual Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. If you are interested in learning more about presenting, please email us at buildyourstack@ncte.org.
To get a taste of some of the sessions from our 2020 Virtual Annual Convention, please click through to the videos linked below:
- “Unapologetically Me – Picture Books and Early Chapter Books/MG” with Jillian Heise and Aliza Riley Werner
- “HER-story, not History: Books that feature “Black and Brown” Females as Main Characters with Laura and Mary Haney
- “Imagining A Better World Through Stories of Love, Support, and Coming Together” with Kristine Schutz and Jen Vincent
- “Undaunted Voices: BIPOC Novels-in-Verse” with David Bowles
- “Using Poetry to Explore Our Intersectionality” with Gary Gray Jr. and Clare Landrigan
“Ever since I joined NCTE in 1991, the many ways in which our organization has connected me with books and authors have shaped me as a teacher. My knowledge of the content of our discipline is deeply intertwined with the powerful learning experiences NCTE has provided and this has had a huge impact on my students. This project serves to take those experiences and connections to a whole new level. Teachers who are readers have students who are readers.”
— FRANKI SIBBERSON
NCTE Past President and 2018 Program Chair