The story of a Twitter hashtag: #YAsaves (in defence of young adult literature)

So yesterday I'm pootling through my Twitter stream, as you do, and read this:

Just now reading this @wsj piece on YA books. Awful. http://t.co/w485J0I Glad @neilhimself has joined the rebuttal.

(note: for the sake of brevity I've edited the tweets quoted here so they're just the tweet without the tweeter or time/date stamp; you can find the original tweets on Twitter, all but one at #YAsaves).  Tweets are in red. (there are a LOT of links in this post, and I was having trouble with the html on one (couldn't work out which one among so many). I 've reformatted this blog post so for now you'll have to cut and paste the links within the tweets rather than clicking through. Figured I'd rather have this published and readable and useful than have it saved as a draft while I finetoothcomb the html, which I ain't got time to do right now! You have got the article and hashtag link hyperlinked.)


What? I wonder. WSJ is the Wall St Journal (in which I've read a bunch of interesting articles before). @neilhimself is the Twitter username of author Neil Gaiman, who you might remember weighed in on the side of the angels in the recent interrogations of teacher librarians in Los Angeles. If he's rebutting this article... and there's a link to follow, so I follow it.

The article is "Darkness Too Visible : Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?" by Meghan Cox Gurdon. Here is an extract:

How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.


Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail. Profanity that would get a song or movie branded with a parental warning is, in young-adult novels, so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

Now, whether you care if adolescents spend their time immersed in ugliness probably depends on your philosophical outlook. Reading about homicide doesn't turn a man into a murderer; reading about cheating on exams won't make a kid break the honor code. But the calculus that many parents make is less crude than that: It has to do with a child's happiness, moral development and tenderness of heart. Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it.



If you think it matters what is inside a young person's mind, surely it is of consequence what he reads. This is an old dialectic—purity vs. despoliation, virtue vs. smut—but for families with teenagers, it is also everlastingly new. Adolescence is brief; it comes to each of us only once, so whether the debate has raged for eons doesn't, on a personal level, really signify.

It didn't take long for this discussion to take off on Twitter, and the hashtag which emerged to tag tweets about this was #YAsaves. If you're a teacher librarian reading this (or a librarian), then you'll know what a subject heading is. If you're a library user, you've used them. On Twitter, hashtags help you follow conversations and discussions and topics. Some examples: #austl for tweets of interest to Australian teacher librarians; #YAlit for young adult literature; #tlchat for teacher librarian topics generally, and also scheduled teacher librarian chat sessions on Twitter. And so on. Anyone can invent a hashtag, and sometimes people use them for fun (#sorightnowihavehadenuf).


OK, back to our controversial article. Within minutes, this was in my Twitter stream:

follow #YAsaves for some amazing stories about how books change kids' lives, in response to a negative @wsj article about teen fiction.

There's the hashtag, to facilitate the discussion. @YAsaves.

The tweets started coming thick and fast (and while every tweet tagged with #YAsaves would be findable with that tag, remember that all I get in my Twitter stream are tweets from people I follow and tweets they have retweeted, which are signified by RT or via).

As the discussion matured, it travelled from initial reaction to analysis:

RT @NovelNovice: Staffer Steph responds to @WSJ attack on YA: RT @Steph_Lawton: A dissection of the latest att… (cont) http://deck.ly/~YS59J

And the Wall St Journal was paying attention, as any business using social media should; interactive, dynamic communication is what it's about. I was dipping in and out of Twitter during the day, so while I do follow @WSJ, I find out about their response from a RT (their tweet was retweeted by someone else I follow):

RT @WSJ: We hear your tweets about this YA review: http://on.wsj.com/mD7f7Y Comments welcome on Facebook, too: http://fb.me/wsj cc

A lot of tweets were individuals commenting on how important particular YA books were to them, how important it was/is to them to have books of all sorts and topics and themes to read. The discussion was a blend of personal stories, perspectives on censorship and more. Authors were weighing in to the discussion:

If you haven't seen them all together, here are @libbabray's (awesome) tweets defending YA fiction: http://bit.ly/krRKfG

How big was this discussion getting? From another tweet:

Guess what? #YAsaves is now the third highest trending topic in the US. That took all of about 20 minutes. Get it, @wsj? Book banners?

That tweet was twelve minutes after the very first tweet I quoted at the start of this blog entry. Shows how fast the impact of a topic can be on Twitter, and also how many people are passionate about young adult literature.

Author Holly Black wrote this:

Honestly, @wsj, do you think we just make this stuff up? The darkest parts of many of my books came directly from my teenage life. #yasaves

From author Scott Westerfeld:

You guys on #YAsaves are all so awesome. Seriously, I can't imagine a better bunch of people to work for.

and from author Justine Larbalestier:

#yasaves is trending world wide. @libbabray; @maureenjohnson started something incredible @wsj claims 2 be listening. Wow.

The Wall St Journal was indeed still paying attention - this is a mere 64 minutes after that first tweet I quoted:

What young-adult fiction means to you: a selection of touching #YAsaves tweets http://bit.ly/myZFgt (Scroll with arrow keys.)

This opinion made me chuckle. I know kids who'd agree!

And sometimes teens just need a freakin' awesome vampire/demon/werewolf/fallen angel/ghost/love story/dystopian. OKAY??? #YAsaves @wsj

And here's a quote I'll have to save for future use in other situations...(as well as another link to follow related to this #YAsaves discussion):

"Books are, at their heart, dangerous." by @wsj (featuring @libbabray) http://t.co/AVoxOtZ

The discussion goes on: I had lots of other things to do yesterday, so was only dipping into Twitter from time to time.

If you go to look at the #YAsaves discussion on Twitter, be aware that the downside of a trending (popular) topic is that the bots and spammers and rubbishfolk get onto it. If some of the tweets listed under this hashtag look like gobbledegook, ignore them - they are rubbish - and scroll down through the list to the relevant ones.

I'm sure this discussion isn't over. It will flow on into blog entries (for example, like the one you're reading now, and I'm sure many many more) and other commentary. The tweets I've used here were written over less than two hours, and demonstrate the dynamic and exciting possibilities of microblogging (140 characters max per tweet? Plenty!) and its immediacy. I didn't contribute to the discussion (then: guess I am now!), just watched and read and followed links and considered the issues, all relevant and important to teacher librarians.

Cheers

Ruth

Have I persuaded you yet of the educational value of Twitter for teachers' professional development? Yes? No? Stay tuned....

Later this tweet came through:

Excellent slideshow compilation of #YAsaves tweets. Powerful. http://t.co/RLZvVBG

and these:

I should be reading. Instead, I just blogged my response to the @wsj article http://goo.gl/J5Gpf #YAsaves


Persnickety Snark: YA Saves: WSJ thoughts... http://t.co/FaAqrG8 - - - so I dusted off the blog...


RT @maureenjohnson: The @wsj has about 20 comments. Here are our 15,000+. http://dft.ba/ /-yasavestweets #YAsaves


RT @melissa_marr: RT @lbschool: "And here is an awesome response to the @WSJ article. Preach it! http://fb.me/CnxI0XGW " oh, YES #YASaves!


The beauty of YA is that it’s filled with books & authors who are not afraid to tell the truth to teens #YAsaves - http://wp.me/pIc5A-5lr

http://on.wsj.com/kctOKS Here is a link wherein you can see the comments to the @wsj article. Thanks, @ColleenLindsay! #YASaves

Death. Loss. Pain. Anguish. Joy. Love. Sex. Freedom. Growth. Wonder. Sorrow. Bliss... disguised as "kids' stuff." #YAsaves

(To find the originals, go to the #YAsaves hashtag on Twitter).

"The kids' books are all right"

While au fait literary types around town await the buzzed-about new novels from Jonathan Franzen and Nicole Krauss, other former English majors have spent the summer trying to get hold of “Mockingjay,” the third book in Suzanne Collins’s dystopian trilogy, so intensely under wraps that not even reviewers have been allowed a glimpse before its airtight Aug. 24 release. What fate will befall our heroine, Katniss Everdeen? My fellow book club members and I are desperate to know. When will the Capitol fall? And how can Collins possibly top the first two installments, “The Hunger Games” and “Catching Fire”?



Oh, did I mention? “Mockingjay” is for teenagers. I am well into my 30s.

But I am not embarrassed by my, shall we say, immature taste in literature. And I wasn’t much concerned when, barreling through “The Hunger Games” at the hospital after giving birth to my third child, I hardly noticed whether he ate or slept. When will the rebellion begin, I wanted to know. Which suitor will Katniss choose?

The kids' books are all right, writes Pamela Paul in the New York Times.

Yup, they are.  The link above also gives you access to the NYT books podcast in which Pamela talks about her enthusiasm for the genre.  The article goes on to say:

...the erosion of age-­determined book categories, initiated by Harry Potter, has been hastened along by an influx of crossover authors like Stephenie Meyer and interlopers like Sherman Alexie, James Patterson, Francine Prose, Carl Hiaasen and John Grisham, to name just a few stars from across the spectrum of adult fiction who have turned to writing Y.A. According to surveys by the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry, 47 percent of 18- to 24-year-old women and 24 percent of same-aged men say most of the books they buy are classified as young adult. The percentage of female Y.A. fans between the ages of 25 and 44 has nearly doubled in the past four years. Today, nearly one in five 35- to 44-year-olds say they most frequently buy Y.A. books. For themselves.

Cheers

Ruth

The creepiest children's books ever

The Huffington Post slideshow does include some authentically creepy items:

although I find myself disagreeing on a couple of choices.  I discussed the fabulous picture book, Where Willy Went, in this GIFSL* 30 entry, concerning naughty books about sex:

...and it's still a winner, finding friends most lunchtimes who read and chuckle (and maybe learn something too).

Cheers

Ruth

Scott Westerfeld

If I wanted to prepare the pretty-much-ultimate-and-authoritative blog entry on Scott Westerfeld.  You know, Uglies,

Peeps

Leviathan.

You know, don't you?  Yup.

Well, I wouldn't bother writing it, because the fabulous folk at CMIS have done it.  Their Tuesday Spotlight on Scott Westerfeld is all you need. 

I'm off to scull a Diet Coke and read the newspaper.  My work here is done.

Cheers

Ruth

image source: www.bookdepository.com    

More of Book 1...

We've had increased business this year (yay!) - in particular, a lot of junior classes in the fiction area.  After the first busy week, when lots of kids borrowed, I found myself (not unexpectedly) a tad short in the Book 1 department in favourite series. 

Lots of kids like to read a series (der! - but stay with me, I'm not going to stick with the bleeding obvious).  They like (as do adults, as it would be polite to admit) to know that if they enjoyed this book, this lot of characters, this style of writing, this world, this story - well, there's another one to go on to, more fun to be had.  And why not?  If someone has written something so engaging, it's comfortable and welcoming and pleasurable to revisit and journey on.  We humans are creatures of habit, and you see this pattern not only in reading.

So enthusiastic teacher librarian hand-sells Book 1 of a series to kid A, and then, after a week of junior classes borrowing furiously, finds a certain shortage of Book 1 in several popular series.  And, with most YA series, the novels are sequential, so you need to read them in order and you need to read Book 1.  I do do reserves in this situation, but that's not always good enough.  If it's a sequential series, kids generally (and unsurprisingly) want to read it in order.  I don't enjoy seeing books 2 onwards languishing on the shelves while one student has Book 1 (esp. when as sometimes happens it's in the hands of a student who forgets they have it, forgets to bring it back, renews it three times...)

So I've been gradually adding a second copy of Book 1 in popular series.  My wonderful local independent bookshop recently had Artemis Fowl for only $6.95 (I bought two).  Other series with doubles include Temeraire, Ranger's Apprentice, Pendragon, Percy Jackson, Twilight, Tomorrow When the War Began and, oh, if you've been a teacher librarian for more than five minutes I'm sure you could compose your own list - there are many more.

Part of my logic is that not every kid will stick with every series, nor read at the same pace of course.  But if they get Book 1, and it hooks them, then they can tag-team through the rest if they are not the only current enthusiast.  It's a way of encouraging more readers to read the whole series, to ensure later books find friends too.  Not every kid who reads Book 1 will go on to read the rest; but the more who read Book 1, the greater the percentage who will.

For a few series (Tomorrow When... would be the classic example) I have at least two copies of each book in the series.  With that one, some kids read it all the way through in one go, others read a couple then come back to read a couple more, and in my ten or so years at this library I've bought the whole lot at least once, as some copies were loved to death and fell to bits.

Cheers

Ruth

Temeraire book 6: Tongues of Serpents (+ extra links)

image from amazon.com

Here's the US Del Rey hardback cover for Temeraire book 6, Tongues of Serpents, by Naomi Novik.  Release date is July 2010.  I haven't yet found an image of the UK cover online (I will admit a sneaking preference for the mainly black/white UK covers, for their graphic impact and woodcutty charm).

It's not just me; I've infected (ha!) a goodly number of our readers with Temeraire enthusiasm, so there will be a queue for this one when it comes out.

The HarperCollins UK website summary at present doesn't add much to what is already known - Laurence and Temeraire are found guilty of treason and deported to Australia to start a new life and have many new adventures.  If you look at the official Temeraire website, however, you can find an extract from the book here.  I'm always a bit conflicted about reading extracts before publication - sometimes I do, sometimes I regret it, sometimes I just steer clear and wait to have the whole book.

If you try the search term "temeraire" on my blog (use the search window top left) you'll find other entries about the books and the film (now slated for 2011, but it looks to be early days in production terms, so I wouldn't hold my breath...).

There is a fan-maintained Temeraire Wiki.

If you'd like to entertain yourself (or your kids) with a live webchat between two excellent authors, Suvudu has Naomi Novik and Scott Westerfeld conversing here.

See? There's Skerricks for you - not just the basic poop, but a couple of extras too!!

Cheers

Ruth

Skulduggery Pleasant book 4: Dark Days (+film news)

Here's the answer to a question I know I'll be asked week one: it's called Dark Days, it's out on 1 April 2010 and it's got a purple cover (as opposed to orange, lime and aqua).  It's Skulduggery Pleasant book 4.  And I've had a waiting list for this since April 2009, when Skulduggery Pleasant book 3 came out.  I will be requiring several copies (and have been advised so by young persons at school.  Repeatedly.)

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Here is the blurb from the publisher's Australian site (which seems to have the wrong release date on it, methinks):

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What can we say, without giving too much away?

Not much, is the answer.

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But what we CAN say is that this book is hilarious, it′s tense, and it′s packed with all the eye-popping action, crackling one liners and imaginative set pieces you′ve come to expect. There′s a new threat to our plucky heroine, of course. But that′s not all. There′s also the little fact of the Big Bad, the uber-baddy who′s going to come along and really, really destroy the world. (Really.) And what we learn about that villain in this book will literally make your jaw fall off and your hair go white with shock. (Not really.)

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Will Skulduggery make it out of the Faceless Ones′ dimension? Who knows. The problem is, he may not have much to come back to...

Ah, there's a useful bit of information with which to start the new school year in 2010!

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Cheers

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Ruth

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PS If you've not heard the audio book versions by Rupert Degas, you've missed a treat.  And not just for the lovely Irish accents. Download from audible.com or buy on CD from bookdepository.com.

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PPS. According to IMDB, there is a film of Skulduggery Pleasant in the works.  Current listed release date is 2010, but I wouldn't hold my breath - seems like there isn't much info yet.
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PPPS. There are several interviews with Derek Landy on YouTube, like this:


PPPPS, or however many P's are right... Hey, welcome to a new school year!  I was at the Australia Day celebrations at Katoomba yesterday and saw the Bushwackers play - great stuff!

My Place (TV series) tonight on ABC3

My Place, the picture book, is brilliant.

(Image from www.bookdepository.co.uk. )

Fingers crossed for the TV version.  Series 1 starts tonight on ABC3, 13 parts covering half the book (success will likely translate to the second half being filmed, one gathers).

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Read more about the TV series here in an article by Greg Hassall from the Sydney Morning Herald (also the source of the image above).

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Cheers

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Ruth

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PS I won't mention that it clashes with Collectors on the ABC, because that's why we have DVD recorders and programs with repeats...

ADDED LATER: If you couldn't find ABC3 on your DVD player, you might need to run the setup program that finds channels again - since ABC3 is new, it wasn't there if you ran the setup months/longer ago when you acquired the DVD player.    You might even find other channels launched since you ran the setup.  Bonus! (And you can guess exactly why I mention this.  Yup, I'm going through the DVD player's channel guide and wondering where ABC3 might be found... - it's the set-top box/digital receiver, not the telly).

Advance look at Catching Fire (sequel to The Hunger Games)

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I've had a waiting list for this for months - lots of readers of The Hunger Games wanting to find out what happens next... (I did a blog entry about The Hunger Games here.)

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It's out soon, but if you want to read or listen to a chapter of Suzanne Collins' next book in the trilogy, in advance, NPR in the US has Chapter Two here. (which was also the source of the picture above).

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Cheers

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Ruth

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Where the Wild Things Are: news and links

Ah, the book that became a film that became a different book.  I've had links on this blog to the teaser trailer and longer trailer of the upcoming Spike Jonze film of Maurice Sendak's book.  Given that the book is a picture book, of limited words, it's hardly surprising that a feature film includes a few more words.  And that therefore, the book that became a film becomes a novelisation, Wild Things, loosely based on the picture book.

This is limited faux-fur edition - there will be an unfuzzy one too.  I learned about this at EW's book blog, Shelf Life here (also the source of the image).  They also have a link to an excerpt from Dave Eggers' novelisation, published by the New Yorker (read it Max At Sea here or click here for all eight pages on a single web page.).  One tiny excerpt:

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So he had a choice. Would he stay behind the curtain and think about things, marinate in his own confusion, or would he put on his white fur suit and howl and scratch and make it known who was boss of this house and of all the world known and unknown?

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I'm looking forward to this film! - and so are many of the kids.

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Read an interview with Dave Eggers in the New Yorker here.

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Here's the film's official site at Warner Bros, where you can find the trailers and this poster:

The film's director, Spike Jonze, has also established a website/blog related to the film, called We Love You So.

Find it here.

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Cheers

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Ruth

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The happy life of teacher librarians: Pollyanna

It's a long time since I read Pollyanna, but when I was thinking about this blog entry, it came to mind.  In particular, her 'glad game'.  Do you remember her glad game?  Faced with a grim life in a grim aunt's house, she looked for the sunny side in everything.  Not a bad half-full glass philosophy, but even as a kid, when I reached the bit where she was fraffly cheerful that she was given crutches in a charity bundle, cheerful/glad because she DIDN'T need them, I think I did twitch and feel momentarily queasy....

Anyway, during the recent holidays, when we were absent, the library appears to have had some visitors.  Four legged.  Judging by the size of their mementoes, they're either extremely uncomfortable mice or rather small possums.  So we think a rat or two, maybe.  Given that the school's in a semi-rural area, mostly surrounded by paddocks, wildlife can happen.  But it's not what we like.  So some baits were laid.

The school was built in the 1970s, when the Department of Education laid durable mid green lino and durable mid green carpet.  And here's the glad game, coming at you....

...when Templeton (actually no, I wouldn't want to be killing off Templeton, because he did help Wilbur and Charlotte) - when Monsieur Rat went scuttling about in our lino-floored tea area, he found the baits.  They're green, too.  So hey, on the downside, we've got a rat (until the baits work), but oh glad oh happy, the baits are greenish....so those mementoes, reflecting the scientific principle that what goes in must come out, are also greenish, and blend in with the lino....!! 

The glass is half full! (and will stay that way, unless Monsieur Rat, who's probably feeling rather unwell round about now, crawls into a wall cavity before expiring.  If he does that, his memory won't be green, but it will be With Us for some time, at least until the corpse has disintegrated sufficiently...) (it's happened before, and it takes longer than you would wish).

Ah, the happy life of teacher librarians.  You don't have to notice the rat poo unless you choose to do so!  Green is good!

Cheers

Ruth

Childhood favourites

What did you read, when you were a school student, either in primary school or secondary school?  Shane Symonds over at his TL blog had an interesting entry about what kids are reading now, and what he remembers reading when he was a kid: I remember reading Willard Price, Biggles, the Hardy Boys and the Three Investigators, he wrote.  One point he made was about the amazing amount of choice kids have now.

Set me to thinking about what I read when I was a child.  I hope you'll add your input in the comments - I'd like this entry and its comments to be a collective venture, representing more memories than just my own.

Although I've been a reader/bookworm from a very young age, my reading memories probably start in primary school.  I know we had many Ladybird books, and some of the pictures are with me still.  I remember authors, and series, and Puffins, which seemed to be the publishing house producing lots of what I read then.  They published the editions I read of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods series, for example.  I read my mother's copies of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series, and gradually accumulated my own; it was probably her copy of Daddy Long Legs I read, and its sequel, Dear Enemy.  C.S. Lewis' Narnia series was another I read all through, and more Enid Blytons than I can count or remember.  I never quite got into Alice in Wonderland, but had all four books in the Little Women series, and tracked down Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom, rather less well-known Louisa M. Alcott books.  Mary Poppins and The Borrowers, all of them.  At one stage I was at a school that had lots of the colour fairy books by Andrew Lang - the Green Fairy Book and Blue Fairy Book and I think he got into some rather more obscure colours after he'd used up the obvious ones (?Aqua ?Chartreuse - not chartreuse!).  One local library near us had all, or nearly all the Wizard of Oz series by L. Frank Baum - not just the well known first, but also Ozma of Oz and The Patchwork Girl of Oz and others.  Read those.  My sister and I read Noel Streatfeild books, particularly the Gemma series but also the others; and all the Chalet School books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer.  Elizabeth Enright's books gave me a view of life in America.  Winnie the Pooh is a given, and The Wind in the Willows.  The entire series of Swallows and Amazons.  Leon Garfield's versions of the past, and Joan Aiken's historical fantasy books.

There were single titles too, lest I sound series-obsessed.  Children of the Oregon Trail.  The Silver Sword.  The Endless Steppe, in which the privations were terribly real.  The Diary of Anne Frank, although I didn't find it all that interesting and much preferred The Footsteps of Anne Frank for its biographical account, to her first person voice.  Elizabeth Goudge's children's books, and on into her adult titles.  The Swish of the Curtain  by Brown.  The Far-Distant Oxus  by Hull and Whitlock.

Longtime Passing and Pastures of the Blue Crane by Hesba Brinsmead were from my high school years, as were Mary Stolz books, particularly The Seagulls Woke Me and The Organdy Cupcakes.  In both primary and high school I read the excellent historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece and Cynthia Hartnett, and D.K. Broster's Jacobite trilogy beginning with The Flight of the Heron. Sometime in high school my mother started me on Georgette Heyer with These Old Shades, and Arabella, and they remain favourites.  The teenage girls of Fifteen and Seventeeth Summer seemed so real (I discovered recently that sometimes you can't go back, when I tried rereading one of those). 

My memories start blending into what I read later and still keep on my shelves, at home or school or both.  Robin McKinley is a teacher librarian's discovery in the 1980s, since I was an adult when it was published, and I'm not sure if I read The Dark is Rising books first as adult or child.  Likewise The Wizard of Earthsea. 

I'll admit to scooting over to the children's lit bookshelves at home to add to this list; and yet what's there is a fraction of what this voracious reader worked her way through at the school library and local library in my childhood and adolescence.  There were so many more books than I can remember or recall.  I note my enthusiasm for reading through authors/series, and that this is still popular with kids, even if the preferred authors/series have changed (maybe now they're also easier to remember than single books).  I note how few of the books I have at school, or lend, are ones I read as a child.  A lot of the above could be characterised as 'girls' books', too.

And thinking of my own work at school now as a teacher librarian, I wonder how many of the loans we do will be books that 'stick'?  I don't know that this is the most important thing.  Some will, because they do, for their individual impact on a specific child or because (eg. Harry Potter or Twilight) they have become social phenomena of unforgettable size.  But many won't; and yet isn't the most important thing the fact that we are encouraging them to read, to voyage in stories and take from them what they will for entertainment and to inform their lives in ways we may never know?

Try this: whether or not you choose to leave it as a comment, write down ten authors/books you remember reading as a child; give each a brief comment on what you liked/why you liked them.

Cheers

Ruth

PS for another view, here's NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's recent  list of the best children's books ever.  He got over 2,000 comments (read them here) and wrote a response to that here.  All of which gives you a bunch of ideas from many people on what are the best children's books.  In their opinion/s, many and varied.  In a reader's comment on his reponse, one person wrote: It would be magical to regain the joy I found in books when I was ten years old. But you really can’t go home again.  Not always, as a grown-up.  But sometimes, yourself.  And sometimes when reading/sharing books with kids.

Anthony Browne: UK Children's Laureate

Illustrator Anthony Browne is the new Children's Laureate in the UK.  Read all about it in the Guardian newspaper here.  There is a gallery of his work to see if you click here.
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I love the AHA! moment when kids are looking at one of his picture books, and realise that you darn well better pay attention, because there is STUFF going on in the pictures and if you don't pay attention, you'll miss it.
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Cheers, Ruth
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Create Readers: NZ book blog

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Read more here.  It's also in my bloglist on the sidebar, so you can see the latest entry there.

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Cheers, Ruth

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My Place: the TV series

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From this ABC-TV press release:
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28/04/2009

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MY PLACE, ABC TV’s new 13-part, half hour children’s drama series, started shooting yesterday in Sydney.
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Joining the line up of child actors in MY PLACE is a stellar cast that includes: Susie Porter (East of Everything and Little Fish), Dan Wyllie (Love My Way and Underbelly), Sacha Horler (Love My Way and Grass Roots), Dan Spielman (Mary Bryant and Tom White), Russell Dykstra (Clubland and Romulus, My Father), Leon Ford (All Saints and Changi) and Hayley McElhinney (Blue Heelers and Young Lions.)
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MY PLACE, based on the award-winning book by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins, is a captivating series telling the story of one house in South Sydney as told by the children who have lived there for over 130 years. The series is being produced by the award-winning Australian filmmaker, Penny Chapman (Blue Murder, The Track and Brides of Christ.)
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Read more here, including info about the planned interactive website.
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If you don't know the book, it's brilliant.  I've always had at least one copy in every high school library I've run.
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Cheers, Ruth
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Image source

President Obama reads Where the Wild Things Are

A new term!  Lots more new things to try, books to read, adventures to have.  A couple of people have commented about going out to buy one of those trees themselves - I'm glad to have shared, and given others the opportunity.  If you know of an opportunity TLs may like to be aware of, do leave a comment (note if you don't want the comment published, just the idea, and with/without your name) and I'll blog about it so others know too.
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Here's a lovely way to start the new term.
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At this year's public White House Easter celebrations, President Obama read Where the Wild Things Are to a large audience of enthusiastic children.
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It's YouTube, which you may not be able to get through your firewall.  The link is supplied below.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo_YB9ODqrw
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Found via Alien Onion.

Cheers, Ruth
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CBCA Shortlist 2009

The Children's Book Council of Australia 2009 shortlist has just been published.

Book of the Year: Older Readers (These books are for mature readers):

D.M. Cornish: Monster Blood Tattoo Book Two: Lamplighter
Anthony Eaton: Into White Silence
Jackie French: A Rose for the Anzac Boys
Melina Marchetta: Finnikin of the Rock
James Mononey: Kill the Possum
Shaun Tan: Tales from Outer Suburbia
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Which have I loved best, by far? (not that I have any influence).
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Read the list in full here.   And the (longer) Notables list for older readers is here.
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I read it first on the Read Alert blog here (see, it pays to refresh your own blogroll!)
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NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2009

The NSW Premier's Literary Awards include two categories of particular interest to teacher librarians.
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Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature:
2009 shortlisted writers are...

• Dianne Bates: Crossing the Line
• Michelle Cooper: A Brief History of Montmaray
• D.M Cornish: Monster Blood Tattoo Book Two: Lamplighter
• Alison Goodman: The Two Pearls of Wisdom
• Nette Hilton: Sprite Downberry
• Joanne Horniman: My Candlelight Novel

Read more about this shortlist here.
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Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature:
2009 shortlisted writers are...

• Urusla Dubosarsky & Tohby Riddle (Illustrator): The Word Spy
• Bob Graham: How to Heal a Broken Wing
• Sonya Hartnett and Ann James (Illustrator): Sadie and Ratz
• Glenda Millard and Stephen Michael King (Illustrator): Perry Angel's Suitcase
• Tohby Riddle: Nobody Owns the Moon
• Shaun Tan: Tales from Outer Suburbia

Read more about this shortlist here.
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Trailer: Where the Wild Things Are

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I hope this trailer will work; it's from trailerspy.com, and their trailers have before been fine to work within school/DET portal firewalls etc. 

url: http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/3117/Where-the-Wild-Things-Are-Trailer-HD

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The word is that this film is not pitched at little kids, even though inspired by a picture book.  Not sure of its rating in Australia yet, but worth checking before you plan your excursion, if you're in a primary school.

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Australian release date is 10 December 2009, according to IMDB.

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These are screenshots from the trailer.

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Found via Alien Onion (a lovely publisher blog), which has a link to Apple's trailerpark of options.
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Google/Carle

The very hungry caterpillar made a guest appearance on google.com.au today, to mark the first day of autumn.

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