These one-hour Web seminars provide continuing education courses for public and school librarians. They can also be adapted for teacher groups upon request.

Each includes a 45-minute program given by an author who is expert in a particular topic area and specifically designed to aid in planning children's and family programming. Topics have included science-based activities, theater arts, rhythm and rhyme storytelling, activities that involve the fantasy genre. Presenters also answer questions provided by seminar participants.

The hosts are Jeanette Larson, former Youth Services Manager at Austin Public Library and a library consultant for publishers and Susan Raab, President of Raab Associates Inc. Joan Honig, formerly of ProAct Technologies, is technical consultant.

While some kids find textbook science boring, most kids love a good mystery. They're fascinated by searching for clues and cracking codes and cases. Young people may not realize that the work of many real scientists is to solve mysteries by gathering and weighing clues. Recently scientists have cracked cases such as: The Case of the Missing Gas; The Mystery of the Monkeys that Fell from Trees; and The Hunt for the 10th Planet.

Elizabeth Rusch, author of Will It Blow: Become a Volcano Detective at Mount St. Helens and The Planet Hunter: The Story Behind What Happened to Pluto, will show you how to link science and sleuthing through activities, games, events, books, magazines, videos, and websites that will draw kids to your library and intrigue them with the mysteries of science.

In Elizabeth Rusch's nonfiction book Will It Blow? Become a Volcano Detective at Mount St. Helens, kids are challenged to solve the mysteries surrounding Mount St. Helens' latest eruption, which started in 2004. Readers become detectives on the cutting edge of science as they try to predict whether a deadly mudflow or red-hot explosion is imminent. In her picture book biography, The Planet Hunter: The Story Behind What Happened To Pluto, readers follow astronomer Mike Brown on his quest to answer the question: Are there more planets hiding in our solar system? Mike's surprising findings changed the face of astronomy and showed that our solar system is more mysterious than we ever imagined.

A former managing editor of Teacher magazine and contributing editor to Child and Fit Pregnancy, Rusch has published more than 100 articles in such national magazines as Muse, Read, American Girl, Harper's, Mother Jones, Parenting, and Backpacker. She is the recipient of a Kay Snow Literary Award, a Maggie Award, and an Oregon Literary Fellowship.

Elizabeth Rusch is also the author of A Day Without Crayons and Generation Fix: Young Ideas for a Better World. She has led workshops and given lectures and presentations at schools such as the Merlo School and Maimonides in Portland; colleges such as Portland State University, Duke University, and University of California at Berkeley; and conferences such as the Willamette Writers Conference, Chalk It Up for Literacy, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in Portland and Denver and the National Service Learning Conference in Minneapolis.

Past programs have featured guest authors Jennifer Armstrong, Robie Harris, Emma Walton Hamilton, Roxie Munro, Vicki Cobb, Jean Marzollo, Wendy Lichtman and Nina Hess. If you're interested in sponsoring a custom program (for 50 or more participants) for a library system or school district with one of these authors, or if you have topic suggestions, please contact us.