The CLA Blog: A Look at Where We've Been and Where We're Headed

By Liz Thackeray Nelson, Emmaline Ellis, Jennifer Slagus, Sara Sterner, and Megan Van Deventer

Lauren Aimonette Liang and Xenia Hadjioannou started the CLA Blog in the Spring of 2020. The world had just shut down due to COVID, and Lauren and Xenia wanted to find a way that CLA could support educators in continuing to use children’s literature as they shifted to online learning. The blog offered exceptional resources such as a collection of digital read alouds, a tutorial on using EPIC!, and using picturebooks to talk about anxiety resulting from the COVID pandemic. 

Since then the blog has continued to offer resources for educators by highlighting posts about CLA’s Notable Books, collaborating with the Biography Clearinghouse to offer resources in using biographies in the classroom, and highlighting other books and ideas for sharing books with students. The blog has also served as a way to highlight the important work of CLA by featuring award and grant opportunities, highlighting NCTE breakfast speakers, and sharing the exciting learning opportunities of the annual Expert Class at NCTE.
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We would like to acknowledge and thank Lauren and Xenia for their vision, time, energy, and efforts in developing and sustaining the CLA Blog for the past 5 years. We would also like to take the opportunity to introduce ourselves as the new CLA Blog editorial team and introduce our vision for the blog. 

Liz Thackeray Nelson joined the CLA Blog editorial team in the 2021-2022 academic year. Currently an assistant professor at Utah Valley University, Orem, Utah,  in English Education, Liz is delighted to continue to work on the CLA blog. She’s also a member on the CLA Board and the current CLA Membership Committee Chair.

Emmaline Ellis has been involved with CLA since 2020, and is excited to join the Blog editorial team. She is an assistant professor at West Chester University of PA, where she teaches preservice early childhood and elementary teachers. Emmaline is also a Vice-Chair of the CLA Membership Committee (with Liz!) and Chair of the CLA Research Award.

Jennifer Slagus is happy to be a part of the Blog team! They joined CLA in 2021 and are a new member of the CLA Board of Directors. Jennifer is a neurodivergent academic librarian at University of South Florida Libraries and a PhD Candidate who specializes in neurodivergent representation in twenty-first century middle grade literature.

Sara K. Sterner is excited to be a new member of the blog team having been involved with CLA since 2019.  She is associate professor at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt (formerly Humboldt State University) in the School of Education, working with elementary level undergraduate preservice educators and post-baccalaureate credential candidates.

Megan Van Deventer is an associate professor of English Education at Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, where she works with preservice elementary and secondary teachers at the undergraduate and graduate level. Megan serves as the CLA Communications Chair, and has been a CLA board member since 2019. She is honored to join the CLA Blog editorial team.

Our vision for the blog stems from the continued need to support educators in integrating children’s literature into their teaching contexts, whether that be K-12 or university levels. Beginning in August 2025, we will feature two types of posts on the CLA Blog: 

Read This/Teach This
Read This/Teach This posts center on a recently published work of children’s literature. The posts provide a comprehensive review of the book as well as some ideas for integrating the text in a classroom setting. We hope that these posts will highlight books and teaching ideas that can be easily implemented in the classroom. 

Research Resource
Research Resource posts center on the practical applications of research in children’s literature. These posts will briefly present the findings of a research study and then present a specific teaching strategy or idea for implementing the research into practice. 

In upcoming weeks we will publish an example of each of these posts and invite you to consider submitting a post for publication during the 2025-2026 academic year. If you are interested in submitting one of these types of posts to the CLA blog, please contact us at: [email protected] ​