Continuing this month’s focus on books about digital citizenship, we bring you But I Read It on the Internet! by Toni Buzzeo and illustrated by Sachiko Yoshikawa. In this book, readers get to know Mr. Dickinson’s 4th grade class and learn with them how to conduct research. Some students in the class favor books from the school library; others believe that everything they read on the Internet is true. Their clever librarian, Mrs. Skorupski, helps them sort out their differing perspectives. She guides the students and the reader through a fact-finding mission by teaching them how to evaluate and cite sources, use research tools (which will be familiar to many elementary school readers), and learn how to verify a story. Readers may be surprised to discover that Mrs. Skorupski wants her students to use only Internet sources and no books! But in the end, they discover a new set of skills they can use to check and see if what the internet says is true. This is a playful and whimsical story that moves swiftly yet still allows the reader to dig into real life situations and issues.  Follow up this read with a look at Kathleen Fox and Lisa Downey’s The Pirates of Plagiarism (Upstart, 2010) to keep the conversation going. 

Ages 8-11, Grade 3-5

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