12 life lessons you can learn from Jane Austen

How much fun is this???!!!

Find the whole slideshow here.  It's from Bill Deresiewicz at the Huffington Post.  Share it with your English teachers!

Cheers

Ruth

A beginner's guide to steampunk (+ a tentacle)

Abebooks.com, a large online second-hand bookselling site, has a useful beginner's guide to steampunk literature.

I recognised some of the titles highlighted on the page, and found others to follow up, for the school library and for me. (The image above is a screenshot - click on this link to go to the page and see it in readable detail).

The Wikipedia article on Steampunk is another place to start - not only the content, but also the links.  One of the footnotes, for example, takes you to this article from How Stuff Works, canvassing the genre and steampunk art/craft works/creations.

Searching the handmade craft site (beautiful beautiful things!) Etsy.com with the keyword 'steampunk' yields over 70,000 pieces of jewellery, clothing and more reflecting the steampunk aesthetic (as this screenshot demonstrates - what you see will vary constantly as items are sold and new items listed).

Cheers

Ruth

PS. If you narrow your Etsy search on steampunk to the most expensive items in the 'geekery - weird' category, you get some corkers.

I think the wall tentacle is my favourite.  Wouldn't that be a talking point in a school library??? (hmmm, would need to be on a high wall so it didn't put a student's eye out...!!)

Elizabeth Bennet's email inbox

You didn't know she had email?

Think again!

Apart from the fact that it's highly amusing, it's also got fabulous potential as an English exercise.

Find it here, and the site has more famous inboxes from literature (Dickens, Harry Potter, etc) and elsewhere.

Found via Twitter.

Cheers

Ruth

Sense and Sensibility and Sea-Monsters. Really.

After Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, comes Sense and Sensibility and Sea-Monsters. 

What, you don't believe me? (PPZ has been haunting the best seller lists...)

Look.

And here I've been making jokes about how there may be the bonking line in vampire fiction (dividing what's possible for a school library and what's less possible), but hey, nobody's writing books about giant squid that give the bonking line the least tremor.  Hoist by my own petard.

But wait, there's more:




Source of the image, info and video: http://shelf-life.ew.com/2009/07/14/new-pride-and-prejudice-zombies-book/

YouTube link for the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO-eXSvEJoc

Cheers (I think)

Ruth

DailyLit (and Sherlock Holmes)

So if you've got kidlets paying attention, they may have twigged to the arrival at the end of 2009 of a new film version of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law (as Watson) and larded with explosions, smart dialogue, mystery, intrigue and other stuff likely to be enjoyable Boxing Day cinematic fare.
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And do you have a copy of the book in your library?  A nice copy?  And even then, is it too big or offputting for a Young Person to enjoy?
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Fear not, because you can offer them the chance to read it in bite sized pieces.  Delivered free, direct to their email, in 131 instalments.  Really.  It's what DailyLit does.  They're building their library of copyright material, and will charge you for that, but they also have a bunch of public domain material too (Pride and Prejudice? Romeo and Juliet? Yes, and yes again).  Five minutes a day, or less.  Achievable.  Amusing? Fun? Different? Worth trying?
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I think so.
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Thanks to Wonderbooks for alerting me to DailyLit (and for the lovely entry mentioning how a Skerricks idea had been useful, too!)
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Cheers, Ruth
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PS. I will be going to see the Sherlock Holmes film for assorted reasons, one idionsyncratic one being that it includes the actor William Hope.  Who?  He and Laurel Lefkow are the readers on the unabridged audio version of Audrey Niffenegger's novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, one of my favourite books ever ever ever (on the wrong side of the bonking line for a school library, though) and probably my favourite audio book.  The best audiobook readers may well be those who you don't know so well, so you don't get distracted by your preconceptions of them from elsewhere.  But Hope and Lefkow do the most brilliant job with TTTW as Claire and Henry.  I don't know how I'm going to cope when later this year the film of TTTW comes out, and Eric Bana becomes Henry (and, curiously, Rachel McAdams who is in the Sherlock Holmes film, is Claire in TTTW film).   If you want to listen to TTTW unabridged audio (note the unabridged, there is an abridged version with different readers), it's obtainable on CD from Amazon etc, or to download from audible.com - even in Australia, which is not always the case.
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But enough about me.  Try DailyLit.  Let your students know about it.

Australian Children's Laureate and Australian Children's Literature Alliance

A CHILDREN'S laureate to champion reading among kids will be appointed from next year under a program established by an alliance of authors, teachers, librarians, publishers, booksellers and arts administrators.

The newly formed Australian Children's Literature Alliance hopes the initiative will promote Australian children's and youth literature, as well as convince schoolkids of the importance and pleasure of reading.

Read more: Kids' lit seeks its laureate, by Justine Ferrari in the Australian 16/2/09. 
Australian Government/Australia Council press release here.

Poetica - podcasts of Australian poets

To quote from the ABC email about this:

A Pod of Poets is a unique partnership between ABC Radio National's Poetica http://abc.net.au/rn/poetica program and the Australia Council for the Arts that brought eleven
Australian poets to the microphone to read and talk about their writing.

The project was inspired by Poetica's audience who consistently request podcasts of programs, a difficult request to fulfil because of copyright restrictions. Each of the forty-minute Pod of Poets episodes is read by the author and features only rights-free music, enabling the podcasts to be created.


"The Poetica podcast series A Pod of Poets will extend the connection between poetry lovers, students and some of Australia's leading contemporary poets," said Poetica presenter Mike Ladd.


"The intimacy of hearing the poets read and discuss their works is enhanced by images and sounds and transcripts of poems and interviews. This is a way of engaging with poetry in the 21st century and the series brings good poetry to the ipod generation."


The eleven podcasts recorded and produced by Poetica, include established and emerging poets: Robert Adamson, Les Murray, Joanne Burns, John Kinsella, Josephine Rowe, Craig Billingham, L.K. Holt, Aidan Coleman, Jayne Fenton Keane, Martin Harrison, Sam Wagan Watson, Kathryn Lomer, Esther Ottaway, John Clarke and Jordie Albiston.


The A Pod of Poets website (abc.net.au/rn/poetica) includes all podcasts, transcripts, photographs and biographical information about each of the poets.


This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the  Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

In reponse to the first comment: storing these: I'd suggest getting your English teachers to download these into iTunes.  I don't currently store podcasts at school, but it's certainly something to look at.

Fiction Friday: 1000 novels everyone must read

According to the Guardian, that is.

Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel – they appear here for the first time in a single list.

Agree, disagree, make new discoveries and remember old friends: find the single list here.

Book Week 2008 - CBCA winners

Just announced today, the winners of the Children's Book Council of Australia Awards in 2008 are here if you'd like a printable version including publishers AND LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS.

And here, below.  (With fewer capital letters.)

Older Readers Book of the Year 2008

NOTE: Some of these books may be for mature readers

Winner: Sonya Hartnett, The Ghost's Child
Honour: John Heffernan, Marty's Shadow
Honour: David Metzenthen, Black Water

Younger Readers Book of the Year 2008

Winner: Carole Wilkinson, Dragon Moon
Honour: Sherryl Clarke (author) and Elissa Christian (ill.) Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!)
Honour: Odo Hirsch, Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp

Early Childhood Book of the Year 2008

Winner: Aaron Blabey, Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley
Honour: Mike Dumbleton (author) and Craig Smith (ill.) Cat
Honour: Margaret Wild (author) and Lucy James (ill.) Lucy Goosey

Picture Book of the Year 2008
NOTE: Some of these books may be for mature readers

Winner: Matt Ottley, Requiem for a Beast
Honour: Anne Spudvilas (ill. ) and Li Cunxin (text), The Peasant Prince
Honour: Colin Thompson and 13 other illustrators, Dust

Eve Pownall Book of the Year 2008
NOTE: Some of these books may be for mature readers

Winner: Frances Watts (author) and David Legge (ill.) Parsley Rabbit's Book About Books
Honour: Kaz Cooke, Girl Stuff: your full-on guide to the teen years
Honour: Macinnis, Peter, Kokoda Track: 101 Days

The full shortlist is here, and the 2008 Notable Books list here.

And what's an awards list without a variant opinion: I'm boggled that Armin Greder's The Island wasn't recognised.  It's a brilliant book.  It was shortlisted, but deserved more recognition.  Ah well.  I'm not on the judging panel.

Literature opens the door

Let us give thanks to librarians. When I was young and knuckleheaded, fighting against being poor, against being brown, against being an immigrant, against being rejected by my father, it was a librarian assigned to a tiny precinct in Central New Jersey who took the time out of her work and with care and arid enthusiasm introduced me to the wonder of books and in the process, I would argue, saved my life.

And

Literature is in my estimation best understood as a record of our human selves: of our frailties, of our follies, of our errors, of our limitations, of our fears, of our delusions, of our evasions and of our vulnerabilities. Literature when done right moves us beyond our myths of mastery and invulnerability and reminds us with inescapable force that all we are and all we shall ever be is human. Literature, in other words, bears witness to what it is to be human. Bearing witness to our humanity not only punctures myths and acts as an antidote to those who would dehumanise us through war, deception, the logic of capital and the daily quotidian practice of cruelty and indifference, it also helps to make us more human. And it is in this human-making that literature, like all art, excels.

Are from Literature opens the door to compassion in our brief lives by Junot Diaz, in the Sydney Morning Herald 26 May 2008

Link to article

Tinyurl for this article

I learned about this via the excellent nswtl list.

Engaging with literature: sharing Gatsby's dreams

Interesting article about The Great Gatsby, from the New York Times, about how students from varied backgrounds - to whom the 1920s world of Gatsby might appear to be long ago, far away and also obscure - engage with the book's ideas and characters and find it relevant/meaningful to them.

The article precis says: Urban students see glimmers of their own evolving identities and dreams in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel.

Books can connect in all sorts of ways: we are hardwired for stories. While this article focuses on a book taught as a classroom text, it also argues to me the case for the fiction section in the library being a cornucopia, offering choices and possibilities, because you cannot predict what will connect with this student, or that one. But you can offer them choice, not just supporting the classroom, but a wider choice than the time/space constraints of the class.

You may have to do a once-only register to see the NYT article - I've been registered for a while, and never had any problems with spam or anything else. And there's lots of good info there, together with excellent archives.