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ix Where was Kristy Hill when I was teaching elementary school? How I would have cherished all the information in Teaching Elementary Students Real-Life Inquiry Skills. How I would have followed her ideas, her “Action Steps.” How my students would have benefited. But alas! Like most teachers, I taught “research” the way I was taught “research.” Patching this and that from here and there, sewing it together with a few stock phrases, ironing out the misplaced punctuation, and folding the pages into some semblance of a paper readied for the red pen of my teacher. How did I hate it? Tedious, dull, mundane in the writing colorless, lifeless, insipid in the reading. But Kristy Hill’s book changes all that. Imagine a first grader’s excitement on discovering his peers are also interested in Samurai warriors. Imagine combing books and databases, saving the information to his school’s digital drive. Imagine accessing articles from any device to be revisited later. Imagine creating a slideshow for the class. This is totus: this is simultaneous liter- acy and true inquiry in action, in first grade. RESEARCH REIMAGINED Imagine writing—not just copying—in the library’s makerspace. Imagine publishing in the library’s writing lab. Imagine seeing your thoughts transcribed into words and then into print. Imagine keeping a library journal (a traditional notebook or a con- temporary digital one)—Hill admits the journal was a “game changer.” Then imagine extending the keeping into using that journal as a resource. Imagine collaborating in the library. Imagine research as a mode of learning. Imagine formulating a “guiding question.” (Now she’s got me wondering: what DO African elephants eat?) Imagine, just imagine, discussing your findings with peers. This is totus in elementary school. Stressing “meaning,” Hill says, “Finding information is easy. Knowing what to do with it is the challenging part.” She maintains, and I concur, “Teaching students to deci- pher what they find is a skill that will serve them their entire lives.” But imagine no longer because all this and more is in this wonderfully cogent and authentically written book. Gone from your classes will be the uninspiring topics, the unreadable prose, the flat, bland essays. With Teaching Elementary Students Real-Life Foreword