Publisher Guidelines on Fair Use for Online Storytimes & Read-Alouds during COVID-19

Many teachers & librarians are reaching out to authors and illustrators to ask about permissions for sharing online read-alouds, either live or recorded, for students who are currently learning at home. While we may be able to say “Sure, that’s fine with me,” we actually can’t give you legal permission. That has to come from publishers, and many have begun to issue statements and guidelines to help out. Please note that some are sharing policies publicly, while others are asking teachers & librarians to request those guidelines via email. You can either email the publisher or the author of the book you’d like to read, as many of us have those guidelines and have been told it’s fine to share them with you via email.  Here’s what I have so far. Publishers, authors, & illustrators – please email me if you have more official updates, and I’ll add as soon as I can.

From Penguin Random House 

Penguin Random House has extended its open license for online story time and classroom read alouds and live events, through December 31, 2020.  Details are here. This covers my History Smashers series.

From Chronicle Books:

Chronicle Books will be updating their guidelines soon to extend story time permissions through March 31, 2021. I’ll post specific guidelines soon, but you can plan on being able to use these books through early Spring.

Chronicle’s policy covers nearly all of my picture books, so read away!

   

From Scholastic:

Scholastic has also extended its guidelines for online read-alouds through December 31, 2020. Details are here.

This policy covers my Marty McGuire series, my Ranger in Time historical adventure chapter book series, and my Silver Jaguar Society mysteries.

Cover of Marty McGuire Has Too Many Pets 

From Bloomsbury Kids:

Bloomsbury Kids has extended permissions through December 31, 2020, allowing both live-streaming (not recorded) and password-protected, private read-alouds of entire works, as well as publicly shared read-alouds of excerpts (no more than 20%), all through the end of the school year. Bloomsbury is asking that you contact the publisher or the author of the work for more information on those guidelines. Note: Bloomsbury is working on an updated policy to allow read-alouds through the fall – stay tuned!

This policy applies to most of my stand-alone novels, including these frequent classroom read-alouds!

There’s a wonderful and extensive teaching & discussion guide for CHIRP that you can download here. Thanks to educator/writer Melissa Guerrette for creating it!

From Candlewick:

The Candlewick guidelines above refer to my Fergus and Zeke easy readers.

From Lerner Books:

Lerner Books has extended online read-aloud permissions through March 31, 2021. Details are here. This covers my book TRACKING PYTHONS: THE QUEST TO CATCH AN INVASIVE PREDATOR AND SAVE AN ECOSYSTEM.

More fair use guidelines from publishers:

Little Brown Books for Young Readers has published this book sharing permission statement for educators. 

Here is the current Penguin Random House Open License for Online Storytime, Classroom Read-Alouds, and Live Events.

Boyds Mills & Kane released this list of guidelines for Online Reading During the Coronavirus.  

Lee & Low has shared these temporary guidelines for online read-alouds.

Simon & Schuster has extended its Online Book Reading Guidelines through December 31, 2020.

Here are MacMillan’s Content Use Guidelines for Teachers, Librarians, and Parents. 

And here is a temporary permissions statement from Abrams Children’s Books. 

HarperCollins has shared these guidelines for authors, illustrators, and educators regarding online read-alouds. 

Sourcebooks has shared these guidelines.

Here are guidelines from Charlesbridge, which is requesting that people email for permissions.

The Quarto Group’s guidelines for online read-alouds are here.

From Barefoot Books: Thank you for your permission request. We are happy to extend gratis permission for the [name of organization] to do virtual story times with any of our books, so long as you credit the author, illustrator and Barefoot Books as the publisher. We also ask that you provide a link to our website, www.barefootbooks.com, in any posts or captions along with the story time. This permission extends through December 31, 2020.

That’s the information I have for right now, but I’ll keep updating this page as I learn more. If any other publishers or authors have additional permissions statements or updates, please reach out via the contact form on my website to share, and I’ll be happy to add.

Teachers & librarians – Thank you so much for all of the work you’re doing to make learning and reading accessible for all during this time. You’re such heroes for our kids and families right now. We see you. And we appreciate you so much.