Barb Langridge Speaking
Speaker and TV show host Barb Langridge offers a variety of workshops and conferences that enrich, delight, and inspire.

Work With Me!

Planning a conference at a national, state or local level? Designing staff development? Invite Barb to be part of your next conference!

Choose from the following workshops/presentations or we can customize something to meet your individual needs:

50 books in 50 Minutes …..Barb’s Book Talks

Here’s a great way to know what’s new that you could recommend to your students and fellow educators.

Feel like you’ve been teaching the same books for years and need a change? Or maybe you are happy with the books you are teaching but would like to have a better list of books to recommend to your students, high and low. Maybe you just love books and want to know what’s new. Would you like your staff to know more of the books recently published for their student population?

The Future of Libraries

Your skin cream is personalized to your skin typelets personalize your book list to your reading type. But what is your reader type?

Librarians stand a 64.9% chance of having their job automated. Smartphones can work a lot of magic in the book world but they will never replace the magic that a librarian can wield on that all-important personal level. Librarians know books. Now they need to know people. When we put the two together we will have a product to offer the readers of the future for generations to come. There is limitless potential to having a place in the community where you can go to discover stories that entertain you, inform you and define you at the most personal level. Librarians have the key to that very essential and explosively powerful place.

What Makes a GoodBook?

Let’s put some 21st Century power in your Reader’s Advisory. We all know a good book when we see it. There’s a chemistry that holds a power we love. It hits the sweet spot. We give awards to books that meet high literary standards and we need those books and those measures. But, we dont all want to read the same book, do we?

So, what makes a good book? What are the elements that make a book work for one person and not work for someone else? How do we work with a student or a library customer and figure out what this person really wants and needs in a book? Let’s redefine what “good” means to folks at the personal level. This presentation will give you tools to use in every reader’s advisory transaction to empower you and your student/customer to achieve success.

In Search of Wonder

It’s time to feel the force again. It’s time to get back in touch with the spirit that lives within and keeps our motor revved up. Its time to get the fun back. Its time to get the excitement back.

Let’s take a look at where we are right now with the media messages, the cultural changes and the lure of technology and let’s see what we bring to the table every day.

This is an inspirational presentation that will lift you back to the place where you know you matter, you have the power and you are the key.

Librarians Make the Difference

What you do everyday makes a huge difference in the lives of your students. Come to be re-inspired, re-awakened to your purpose and learn to see your students as individuals with different learning styles and different reading preferences.

Using the four reading personality preferences, each participant will take the Reading Assessment Tool to discover his or her reading personality type. Conversation can then take place sharing what books match those various types and what literary elements make those books resonate so well with the individuals.

Reading Is Personal

The challenge for many educators and parents is to open the door to reading by finding that one book that will invite their young reader to discover that reading really is right for them.

We have looked at the different types of books and assessed which elements make them work for the different readers. These factors go beyond genre into a place of pacing, setting, characters, emotional connection, tone, and more. What works for one child doesn’t work for another even though the book may be an award winner. We have created a system to match the child to the book by asking the all-important question, “Who is the reader?” Publishers deliver 5,000 books for children every year. The good books are on the shelf. The trick to getting our young people to read is understanding what they look for in a book and then connecting the two. ABookandaHug.com is designed to make that match.

Let’s Do This

Interested in seeing what Barb can do for you? Contact her today using the form below:

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