Free Comic Book Day & Supanova

A heads-up to share with your students.  What is it?

Free Comic Book Day is a single day - the first Saturday in May each year - when participating comic book shops across North America and around the world give away comic books absolutely FREE* to anyone who comes into their stores. *Check with your local shop for their participation and rules.

The Free Comic Book Day website is here, with FAQs and a locator to enable your students to find the participating shops where they can acquire their freebies.

I found out about it thanks to my delightful coterie of manga/cosplay/comic book fiends.  Use your sources, I say! (They tell me that I should go to Supanova this year....)

What is Supanova? 

Supanova Pop Culture Expo is where the adoring public comes face to face with Supa-Star celebrities and the creative talent that inspire their imaginary worlds under one big roof.


Gathered from the wonderful worlds of science-fiction, pulp TV/movies, toys, console gaming, trading cards, animation/cartoons, fantasy, comic books, entertainment technology, books, internet sites and fan-clubs, the result is an amazing celebration in an atmosphere tailor made for expessing your inner geek and where getting into cosplay (cos-tume role-play) is the obvious thing to do!

(I think I'm flattered that they think I have an inner geek.)

Cheers

Ruth

Quirky Book Week: It's a Book

Today's book is a book (which I can also share with you via a video) about books.

Books remain wonderful bits of technology.  The day after I bought Press Here and All My Friends are Dead (Quirky Books blogged about earlier this week), was a Friday.  Staff morning tea at recess.  I brought them with me and slid them like contraband to this person and that.  Just try it.  Go on.  It's funny.  And they did.  PE teachers and Art teachers and History teachers and English teachers and more.  Not just people with a practical teaching need for a quirky fun picture book, but colleagues and friends who would enjoy the fun of them, their gift of laughter.  I didn't need a screen or a battery or a lead.  Just the books.  Which is kinda the point of Lane Smith's book.

Here's a book trailer that covers the whole book, pretty much, and will give you a good flavour of it.



And here's the link, if that doesn't work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4BK_2VULCU

For all the things books don't do, there is so much that they do so well.

One thing is share laughter, provide a shared experience.  That's what Quirky Books can offer, and how they can add value and fun to your library, as they do here.  I've already blogged about books with legs: http://skerricks.blogspot.com/2011/06/happy-life-of-teacher-librarians-books.html and they certainly qualify as Quirky Books too.

The wonderful local independent bookshop I mentioned yesterday was the one that got me onto this book, so props to them (after I bagged them yesterday!).

Hope you've enjoyed these five Quirky Books, and I hope to learn about more candidates from your comments - do leave one!

Cheers

Ruth

Quirky Book Week: Press Here

Today's Quirky Book is deceptively simple.  You will probably say, I could have thought of that.  But you didn't.  Nor (dangit!) did I.  But hurrah and hurray that Herve Tullet did.

But what happens when you open the book and press the yellow dot?

This, for starters:

What's not to like about a book that draws a crowd?

The Amazon.com page for this book has some pictures from inside.  It also has a link so you can create this minibook version (only a few of the many fun pages in the complete book, but enough to show you how it works). 

On one of the pages, the instruction is to clap to make something change in the book.  I can track the progress and location of this book around the library by the clapping...

Another one to make the library a fun place for happy discoveries.

My wonderful local independent bookshop and I disagree on this book.  I'm enormously amused (and so are the people at school, kids and teachers, with whom I share it).  The normally smart bookshop folk say, 'meh'.  So it's lovely and gorgeous to have people say to me, Where did you get it? and I can direct traffic to the wonderful local bookshop, adding that I hope the buyer will let the bookshop know that Ruth showed them this book.... 'meh' my Aunt Fanny!

I learned about this book from friends who had learned about it from the Children's Bookshop in Beecroft NSW: Paul McDonald from there always has good recommendations (as does my wonderful local independent bookshop; just on this book, they're wrong and I'm right!!).

Tomorrow, another favourite Quirky Book.  Have you enjoyed them this week?  Do leave a comment with your own favourite Quirky Books!

Cheers

Ruth

Quirky Book Week: Cherise the Niece

After yesterday's sweet little girl, today you can meet Cherise:

A sweet wee thing.  Well, kinda.  I was going to do a blog entry about books with n@ughty little girls, until I considered what search engines and their bots might do with that particular concept...

On the Amazon.com page for this book, you can take a look inside.  You can also buy a Kindle ebook edition, and download the first chapter free.  The product description on Amazon says:

The bloody footprints leading out of Cherise’s bedroom are the first clue that perhaps the little darling with the bow in her hair is not an angel. As Cherise is shuttled from one aunt’s home to another, her aunts vanish, meeting inventive and hysterical ends. With a killer punch line on its final page, Jim Benton’s Cherise the Niece will leave readers laughing.

I myself feel that it's important to let you know that there is a note at the beginning of the book advising that no aunts were harmed in its making...

Definitely black humour; if you're not in a high school, maybe one to read before adding to the collection. 

But fun?  Heck yes!  It's caused lots of chuckling in our library.

Tomorrow's Quirky Book is one of my favourites.

Cheers

Ruth

Image from www.bookdepository.com

Quirky Book Week: Constance and Tiny

Another Quirky Book for your delectation!

Meet Constance, and her adorably sweet cat, Tiny:

Absolute angels, they are.  Take a look inside the book with this preview from the Book Depository website.

There is an utter (and very recognisable) disparity between what Constance says (in the text of the book) and what Constance (and Tiny) do.  Could be exploitable for English.  My name is Constance.  I am locked up in an evil mansion...

But mostly, it's just gorgeous fun.

Picked this up from a sale table, but it's orderable from bookshops in Australia or overseas.  Not expensive.

What are your fave quirky books?  I have three more to share this week - enjoy!  Constance and Tiny have another adventure in Constance and the great escape.

Cheers

Ruth

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 happy life of teacher librarians: the books with legs

My school assistants and I have been having a lovely giggle in the last few weeks about a couple of books that seem to mysteriously grow legs every lunchtime.  They start off innocently enough - placidly sitting on the picture book display stand, usually.  But at the end of lunchtime, they're down the side of a sofa, under a comfy chair, shoved in a shelf somewhat haphazardly - anywhere but on that picture book stand, face-out.

Any guesses as to why?

See, what's really funny is that any of us can trot up to the fiction section upstairs on a given lunchtime and find the group - and it's pretty much always a group, sometimes huddled and reading together, sometimes with a designated read-alouder, a different assortment of kids pretty much every time - enjoying these picture books.  And they don't stop and pretend to be busy and important with something else when any of us appear.  They carry right on, with half an eye on us to see if we're going to react (I just grin!).  I've had some, smirking, tell me these are appalling and rude books, and shoudn't be in the library.  I say I'm appreciative of their input, and did they enjoy them?!

Actually, they're charming and fun and convey accurate information in a friendly and accessible format.  Mummy Laid an Egg is another one in this category.  I've written about them before, here: http://skerricks.blogspot.com/2009/06/gifsl-30-naughty-books-about-sex.html. 

I love having books with legs in the library!

We used to have one with the immensely promising title, Boys & Girls & Sex, which started lunchtime on the nonfiction shelf in the 613s and rarely if ever ended lunchtime there.  Another group read, although it was drier nonfiction, with some drawn illustrations (sadly added to so often that it was one of the reasons it had to be disposed of from the library).  Its thumped condition attested to its keen readership (and they could work the catalogue and library systems well enough to find it independently, because sex isn't the first topic a kid's going to enquire about from a teacher librarian.  Besides, it's a well-known fact - ask any teenager - that no teenager's parents have EVER had sex, because the thought is just too gross and embarrassing for their kids to contemplate.  Immaculate conceptions, pretty much every kid in high school.  Remarkable, really.) but it had rarely been borrowed.  By gum it got to travel around the library though! - we'd find it tucked into all sorts of unlikely shelf locations. And reshelve it in the 613s, and wonder where we'd find it next...

Ah, the happy life of teacher librarians, enjoying the books with legs!

Cheers

Ruth

2011 APA book cover design winners

Among the children and young adult book cover winners at the 2011 Australian Publishers' Association awards, you can find:

Best designed children's cover of the year

Best designed children's fiction book

Joint winners of the best-designed children's nonfiction book

Best designed children's picture book

Best designed children's series

Best designed young adult book

Best designed secondary education book

See all the awards, adult and children's, with the authors/designers and all on Fancy Goods, the Bookseller and Publisher magazine's blog here:

http://www.fancygoods.com.au/fancy-goods/2011/05/20/2011-apa-book-design-awards-winners/

It's interesting to see what gets industry awards like these; they're not always the ones the kids grab first. I'm sometimes hugely disappointed in book covers - the blurb sounds promising but the cover just ain't gonna grab the customers.  We get some great ones, but others (if I know that what's inside is worth the work) I'll do my best to hand-sell; but I can't hand-sell everything, and covers certainly matter.

One book I wish someone would re-issue with a modern, appealing cover is a teenage fiction book called, "A time to love, a time to mourn" by Paige Dixon (which I think was originally published with a title like, "Will you cross my golden river?".  It's a superb, well written family story, an unsentimental tearjerker - I still have a copy in the library, but it's a hard hard sell, so dated does the cover look.  Any publisher listening - ???

Congratulations to all those involved in the books above.

Cheers

Ruth

Free Comic Book Day + Supanova

And yes, the sharp-eyed amongst you will have noticed that this was last weekend.  But my comic book fiends at school only told me about it on Monday... So I thought I'd let you know about it now, and I'll mention it on this blog before the 2012 event.

Find out all about it on the Free Comic Book Day website here.  It happens across North America and around the world.

My comic book fiends went to King's Comics and Kinokuniya in Sydney.  The site has a FAQ page and a store locator so your comic book fiends can find out about any local stores that are participating and toddle along to acquire freebies.

Said one, "Miss, you should go to Supanova this year."

Supanova? 

Supanova Pop Culture Expo is where the adoring public comes face to face with Supa-Star celebrities and the creative talent that inspire their imaginary worlds under one big roof.


Gathered from the wonderful worlds of science-fiction, pulp TV/movies, toys, console gaming, trading cards, animation/cartoons, fantasy, comic books, entertainment technology, books, internet sites and fan-clubs, the result is an amazing celebration in an atmosphere tailor made for expessing your inner geek and where getting into cosplay (cos-tume role-play) is the obvious thing to do!


Cheers

Ruth (who thinks she is flattered to have been perceived as having an inner geek).

The secret life of libraries

(The Mitchell Library in Sydney:: photo used under Creative Commons license)

From various sources on my Twitter stream, I have been following the stories about library closures in the UK.  The Guardian has a thoughtful, thought-provoking and sometimes rather amusing article about the secret life of libraries; it's by Bella Bathurst.  They have always had a dusty image – and never more so than now – but libraries are at the heart of our communities. With the axe about to fall, Bella Bathurst reveals just what we're about to lose.

Some more quotes:

Discussing the types of books stolen in various parts of the country, she observes: among all communities and in all parts of Britain, our old passion for self-improvement remains vivid.
...
But the cuts also underscore a deeper confusion about what libraries are: what they do, who they serve, and – in an age where the notion of books itself seems mortally flawed – why we still need them. What's the point of buildings filled with print? Isn't all our wisdom electronic now? Shouldn't libraries die at their appointed time, like workhouses and temperance halls?
...
The great untold truth of libraries is that people need them not because they're about study and solitude, but because they're about connection.
...

(Seattle Public Library::photo used under Creative Commons license)

...reading seems to be becoming an increasingly alien concept for children. "The pace of life is different now, and people expect art to happen to them. Music and film do that, a CD will do that, but you have to make a book happen to you. It's between you and it. People can be changed by books, and that's scary. When I was working in the school library, I'd sometimes put a book in a kid's hands and I'd feel excited for them, because I knew that it might be the book that changed their life. And once in a while, you'd see that happen, you'd see a kind of light come on behind their eyes. Even if it's something like 0.4% of the population that that ever happens to, it's got to be worth it, hasn't it?"

The article concludes thus:
The libraries' most powerful asset is the conversation they provide – between books and readers, between children and parents, between individuals and the collective world. Take them away and those voices turn inwards or vanish. Turns out that libraries have nothing at all to do with silence.


It's a terrific article, very much worth reading in its entirety.  I want to think some more about its ideas, such as connection, and conversation, and art happening, the sort of engagement involved in the act of reading.  This week, as every week, I will have the joy and pleasure and sheer bloody fun of putting a book in the hands of a kid and watching their eyes light up, or (they are teenagers after all) their body language just relax that small bit that is (in reality) a decibels-loud acknowledgement that the book and the transaction and the library were good things for them.  And so many of them have fabulous smiles, don't they?
 
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...!!)

Display of banned books

Searching through Flickr for something else, I came across this image of a display of banned books. 

Toddle on over to the image source to see it in larger sizes, and check out what's been included. (It has a Creative Commons license).

Click here to see more of this school librarian's displays.

Click here for my recent GIFSL about displays of banned books.

Cheers

Ruth

Fiction reviews, straight to your inbox

The very excellent Fiction Focus blog from CMIS in WA has an email subscription option so you can find out about new fiction reviews.  Find out about all their sub options, and sign up by clicking here.

One to share with your English teachers?

Cheers

Ruth

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

Should we organise books by colour?

This is such fun...



...although perhaps it might not work for a library.

Original YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFnuP9niRUg&feature=player_embedded

Found via http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/

Cheers

Ruth

Margaret Atwood on the future of publishing

At the recent Tools of Change conference, author Margaret Atwood spoke on The Publishing Pie: an Author's View.  Agree?  Disagree?  Make up your own mind; you can watch her presentation on YouTube.






Here is the original link on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6iMBf6Ddjk

More of the conference proceedings, some with slideshows/video: click here.

Cheers

Ruth

Found via this blog, which consistently covers a whole lot of interesting links about ereaders, digital books and the future of publishing and books.

What is a good book? Nancy Pearl's answer

Nancy Pearl, yup, the one that's the model for the librarian action doll, was recently named Librarian of the Year.  In Library Journal's article about this, Nancy discusses her idea of 'a good book'.  I've highlighted a couple of bits that particularly caught my attention.

What is a “good book”?



As part of the author tour for her newest book, Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers (Sasquatch Bks.; LJ Xpress Reviews, 10/8/10), Pearl went to Westport, CT, to “talk about good books” to librarians and library patrons. “By good,” she says, “I don’t mean any literary canon, but just books that you might enjoy. A good book is a book someone likes and a bad book is one they don’t like. When someone doesn’t like a book, it doesn’t mean they will never like it. They don’t like it for that moment,” says Pearl.


“We shouldn’t be afraid to suggest a wide variety of books to people. I think libraries are the last democratic institution, small ‘d’ democratic. It wasn’t always that way. Librarians were gatekeepers.... When it comes to readers’ advisory, though, I think we need to validate a patron’s reading,” Pearl says.


“When people ask, ‘What should I read next?’ we should always try to give them three books. One should be pretty close to the one they loved. The second should be a little bit different, a bit of a stretch. The third book is the real stretch book, the reach book. The book they never would have found because it is nonfiction and they only look at Westerns,” Pearl says.

“People come into the library and head straight to the section where they have found the most pleasure.... It is our job to take them around to the rest,” she ­continues.

“I do believe that the more well-written books you read, the less tolerance you are going to have for bad writing, but the hardest thing to define is a well-written book. When someone tells you they liked a book because ‘I love well-written books,’ they usually mean books like award winners, for instance the Pulitzers. Those books win awards for the writing. You don’t have to understand what somebody means by ‘well-written,’ but you have to go beyond the awards we all know and see which books won the Governor General’s Award in Canada, or [Britain’s] Man Booker Prize. No one who reads for the story will say, ‘I like well-written books.’ They will talk about page-turners, books you stay up too late to finish,” Pearl ­concludes.

Lots of food for thought there.  I'm going to try that three book idea... I think I've been more likely, when kids ask, to find three similar rather than that three book progression.  Not always, but often enough that I should be trying to extend myself, as well as my readers.  Always good to get a new perspective!  Read the complete article here.
 
Cheers
 
Ruth

PS.

A few more thought-provoking quotes from the article:

...she is a passionate and diligent advocate for old and important library ideas: literacy, reading, entertainment, enjoyment.... She is neither snobbish about the old ways nor disdainful of new ideas. Ask her about audio or ebooks or gaming, and you’ll get an earful about the importance of stories told in their myriad forms,” says Janes.
*
says Pearl. “My fear is that we don’t recognize or will forget that library service is like a three-legged stool: information, outreach and programming, and reading.”
*
The book will never disappear as a piece of narrative fiction or nonfiction, according to Pearl, but it is obvious that the format, the way it is delivered, is changing. She knows people will always need escape, stories, and ways to look at the world through the experiences of others.


“I think the more you read, the better person you become, because you can see how other people respond, the way they think, and the way they behave in various circumstances,” Pearl asserts.
*
“When you read a book, it is just you and the author. Even when people read the same title, everybody reads a different book.... When you listen to a book, a third person enters the equation,” Pearl says. “It is a different experience.”

GIFSL* 57: Display banned books

Another infographic from Good.is, this time on the most controversial books in the US.

Interactive mage link.  Article/info link.

If you want a longer list, try the ALA site section about banned/challenged books.

One creative Australian teacher librarian of my acquaintance set up a display of banned books in her school library - To Kill a Mockingbird etc - items readily available in her library but which had been subject to censorship/challenge historically/currently.  They were borrowed with great alacrity, and all sorts of interesting discussions ensued, in her student reading circle and beyond.  I haven't tried this one yet, but it's on my list... Maybe a co-operative venture with the English staff?

Cheers

Ruth

Rap: I'm reading a book

Forwarded to me by one of the senior executive at my school:



Find it here if the above doesn't work for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuRuwR2JSXI

Which I'm sure I'll find an opportunity to show!

Cheers

Ruth

Library Day in the Life, Round 6, Tuesday

During the summer holidays (and with an iPhone handy) I've been in the habit of checking my Twitter stream each morning and emailing interesting tweets for later investigation on my laptop (bigger screen...).

So, as a snapshot of what I found this morning that I thought might be useful to my work as a teacher librarian - for me, or my colleagues, or the kids - here's what I emailed for future investigation.  It's a lucky dip depending on what others are tweeting and retweeting, and filtered by the people I follow (my Twitter @ruth_skerricks is my professional Twitter stream, where I follow people tweeting about education, technology, libraries, books...).  The motivational quotes are ideas for the senior study skills program I'm working on, some of the other links may or may not be useful, but it's all a great professional development resource.  I can't access Twitter at work (social networking sites are generally blocked) so if I email myself the links I can investigate them and if they prove useful/relevant to others, email them on to colleagues.

NY Public Library (@nypl)
25/01/11 9:49 AM
From our Tumblr: "We can’t behave like people in novels, though, can we?" http://bit.ly/fq6jmK

Josh Stumpenhorst (@stumpteacher)
25/01/11 9:49 AM
My video tutorial page: http://bit.ly/f5RUbv  #edchat #edtech
 
Fiona Jones (@fionareadersrr)
25/01/11 9:37 AM
RT @Infoventurer: Kathryn Greenhill Daily http://bit.ly/emzftW  ▸ stories today @curtinuni @camcd @fionareadersrr @libsmatter @jeanburgess

Motivational Quotes (@motivatquotes)
25/01/11 9:27 AM
Our attitude towards others determines their attitude towards us. ~ E. Nightingale http://bit.ly/9fOwbe

Shannon Miller (@shannonmmiller)
24/01/11 10:20 PM
RT @pgreensoup Quizlet Flashcards Now Embeddable http://bit.ly/g8TtzG  #vanmeter

Buffy Hamilton (@buffyjhamilton)
24/01/11 10:22 PM
Seth's Blog: Three ways to help people get things done: http://is.gd/kUvITS

Shannon Miller (@shannonmmiller)
24/01/11 10:23 PM
Joliprint ...Print friendly & PDF your blogs and websites http://ow.ly/3IXN0

Glenda Morris (@jasmont1)
24/01/11 10:42 PM
“@glendagregory: Top 10 sites for Creating Digital Magazines and Newspapers by David Kapuler (cont) http://tl.gd/8bq4vj 

Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks)
24/01/11 11:15 PM
Here's a primer on tonight's TS Eliot Prize, with poems from all the contenders http://bit.ly/hjrI2R  #books

Will Richardson (@willrich45)
24/01/11 11:31 PM
Reading: A project on the future of education http://bit.ly/eIJYXc  Interesting vision

Josh Stumpenhorst (@stumpteacher)
24/01/11 11:46 PM
Watching and discussing this with my team today: TED talk about engaging boys in EDU http://bit.ly/gFBJ6S  #edchat

Judy O'Connell (@heyjudeonline)
24/01/11 11:58 PM
The simplybooks Daily is out! http://bit.ly/9VRDYi  ▸ Top stories today by @booksin140 @sydneyunipress @thereadingzone @readingtub

Josh Stumpenhorst (@stumpteacher)
25/01/11 12:08 AM
What is innovation? Be innovative this week! http://bit.ly/gmI1lm  #edchat #ntchat

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly)
25/01/11 12:06 AM
Our First Year With Amazon Kindle as an Independent Publisher http://bit.ly/g7rTzU

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly)
25/01/11 12:16 AM
From FutureBook: what book publishers can learn from the gaming world. http://bit.ly/dS9SP6

Phillippa Cleaves (@pipcleaves)
25/01/11 7:26 AM
Imagine if our own students made a social network like these :-) RT @ITJil: 20 Social Networks for Lifelong Learners http://bit.ly/bC6zZZ
 
Judy O'Connell (@heyjudeonline)
25/01/11 8:27 AM
A New Culture of Learning: some thoughts. http://amplify.com/u/anj49

Tehani Wessely (@editormum75)
25/01/11 7:59 AM
The Shaun Tan cover art of Australis Imaginarium is eligible for nomination to the Chronos Awards! http://bit.ly/dZIx8o

Motivational Quotes (@motivatquotes)
25/01/11 7:44 AM
You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. ~ Jim Rohn

tripwire magazine (@tripwiremag)
25/01/11 5:21 AM
40+ Fresh and Amazing Free Fonts to Download http://su.pr/5Dljb3

Phillippa Cleaves (@pipcleaves)
25/01/11 7:52 AM
RT @RoshOR: “@willrich45:"A Tilt in Thought" from a principal. http://bit.ly/dFjThC Good stuff.” lets stop whining and just get on with it. 
 
Bobbi Newman (@librarianbyday)
25/01/11 8:53 AM
Top Ten Links 2.3 – All About Ebooks
Librarian by Day http://bit.ly/eA7Pqk

Cheers

Ruth