The Joy of Children's Literature

Did you know that Daniel Pinkwater's The Neddiad : How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Waved Civilization was published online before it was published in a traditional book format? Yep, it's true and he's at it again! Pinkwater is publishing his new book, The Yggyssey , online posting one chapter each Monday! The book description: The Yggyssey is set a few years after the events recounted in The Neddiad . Yggdrasil Birnbaum, progeny of the illustrious Captain Buffalo Birnbaum and denizen of the venerable Hermione Hotel, is our guide through this epic tale of Hollywood hijinks. The Yggyssey will be published in 2009, but you can read it right here, free of charge! Starting April 28th, a new chapter of THE YGGYSSEY will be posted each week until the end of the book is reached. Stay tuned for extras and special features, and don't miss a week! Here is the author's introduction : Dear Readers -- We had a lot of fun putting The Neddiad online in serial fo...

Award-winning playwright Margaret Edson ...you MUST watch this video of Mararet Edson's commencement speech at Smith College . Margaret Edson, an award-winning playwright and a Smith College alumna who teaches kindergarten in the Atlanta public school system, was the speaker at the college’s 130th commencement ceremony Sunday, May 18. Edson's speech is funny, inspiring, and brilliant! (Thanks to A Year of Reading and The Miss Rumphius Effect for the link). P.S. I can name all of my teachers through sixth grade, too, can you?

Knowledge Quest is devoted to offering substantive information to assist building-level library media specialists, supervisors, library educators, and other decision makers concerned with the development of school library media programs and services. Articles address the integration of theory and practice in school librarianship and new developments in education, learning theory, and relevant disciplines. KQWeb, the on-line component of Knowledge Quest , is dedicated to enhancing the print publication with expanded articles and original content. This month's edition is on visual literacy and the oline component is filled with excellent articles. Here are just a few: Learning to Look and Looking to Learn: Visual Thinking Strategies at the Eric Carle Museum Visual Information Literacy: Reading a Documentary Photograph On Writing (and Reading) the Graphic Novel (CBC meet the author/illustrator) Focus on Visual Literacy (PBS Teaching and Learning Resources) Reinventing the Book Cl...

I LOVE audiobooks! I live about an hour away from the university, so I'm on the road a lot, but I really don't mind because I'm always listening to an audiobook and the time flies by. I also think it gives me the feeling of multitasking -- I'm not only driving to work, but "reading" children's books, which better prepares me for teaching children's literature (who's deluding who--I listen to them for ME!) Today, I want to share with you some exciting things happening around audiobooks. Recently, I posted about Get Caught Reading Month sponsored by the Association of American Publishers. A new component of the campaign is Get Caught Listening : Recent studies have shown that one in every five American households listen to audiobooks. Get Caught Listening is a nationwide public service campaign intended to promote the joys of audiobook listening. The campaign will be produced by the Association of American Publishers and is expected to launch in Ju...

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and to celebrate, the Reading Rockets website has a new interview with author Janet Wong . From the website: Janet Wong's career switch was so dramatic that she was featured on a segment of The Oprah Winfrey Show. When Wong left her job as Director of Labor Relations at Universal Studios in Hollywood, he dreamed of becoming a children's book author. Over the next two years, she took writing class, submitted manuscripts, and piled up more than two dozen rejection etters. Through a combination of practice, persistence, and talent, Janet Wong quickly became a successful writer of poetry and picture books for young people. In 2003, Wong was invited to speak at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. I included a poem from Janet Wong's Good Luck Gold and Oher Poems titled: Speak Up in chapter 9 on poetry in The Joy of Children's Literature . If you are not familiar with the poetry or picturebooks by Janet Wong, you are in...

The National Council of Teachers of English offer a weekly update of "news, views, and ideas you can use" which I have found useful over the past several years. I find especially useful the "ideas you can use" section which is themed and provides links to articles, book chapters, and lesson plans published by NCTE for elementary through college. For example, the theme for this week's inbox is strategies for spelling instruction. There is a lesson plan and an article on the National Spelling Bee, but of particular interest to me is the first chapter from Lester Laminack and Katie Wood Ray's book Spelling in Use titled, Spelling--What's All the Fuss? on how spelling fits into the broader topic of learning to write. Other articles on teaching spelling in middle school, high school, and college are provided. Click here to read all of the past issues of inbox and here to subscribe to the weekly update. One note, you only have 21 days to print or downloa...

Teachers’ Choices began in 1989 as an annual project of the International Reading Association . Each year, teachers, reading specialists, and librarians from different regions of the United States select 30 great books for readers ages 5 to 14 from new publications donated by North American publishers. At least 6 teachers or librarians in each region read each book, and some books are read by as many as 200 people in a single region. A few years ago, I was the southeast regional coordinator for Teacher's Choices, so I know first hand how much time and dedication goes in to the selection process, especially the teachers reading and reviewing the books. This year's winners are (a downloadable bookmark is available here ): Primary Winners Ain’t Nobody a Stranger to Me by Ann Grifalconi. Jerry Pinkney, Ill. D Is for Drinking Gourd: An African American Alphabet by Nancy I. Sanders. E.B. Lewis, Ill. Guess What Is Growing Inside This Egg by Mia Posada Henry’s Freedom Box: A True St...

The Ringling Brothers Circus opened on this day in 1884 in Baraboo, Wisconsin. In 1907, The Ringling Brothers merged with the Barnum & Bailey Circus to become the Greatest Show on Earth ! The show prospered greatly in the roaring twenties, but the Great Depression of the thirties brought a slow decline, along with changing public tastes in entertainment influenced by television and the movies. The circus gave its last performance under the big top in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 16, 1956. In 1967, Israel Feld bought the company and split the show into two touring units, a "Red Tour" and a "Blue Tour" which tour the country independently. This year, the Blue show began a two-year tour advertised as the "All-New" 138th Edition titled " Over the Top " featuring a "tug-of-war" between ringmaster Chuck Wagner and clown Tom Dougherty---traveling aboard a 61-car train stretching over 5,400 feet long. The circus may not be what it used ...

The Edge of the Forest is an online monthly journal devoted to children's literature. In this month's issue: An interview with Brandon Mull , author of the popular Fablehaven series An interview with Elizabeth C. Bunce , author of Curse Dark as Gold An interview with Linda Urban , author of A Crooked Kind of Perfect The Backward Glance column is by Candice Ransom who looks back at Magic Elizabeth written in 1966. Picturebook , middle grade , young adult , and graphic novels are also reviewed.

Get ready for the Summer Blog Blast Tour to rock your literary world! Well, if it's going to rock your world, at least you should know what it is! The Summer Blog Blast Tour was started last year by Chasing Ray. Her reasoning for starting the blog tour is one close to the hearts of anyone interested in turning kids on to reading: This generation, the young generation, must be readers if you want them to care about any sort of literary conversation as adults. We get them reading now by showing them books that are perfect for them - books that speak to them - books that will matter forever to them. If they are book lovers at the age of 12 then really, they are book lovers forever. This is the first big way I could think of to try and accomplish that goal; by shedding light on a big group of innovative and wonderful authors who have written a lot of great books. The Summer Blog Blast Tour involves multiple blogs in the kidlitosphere conducting multiple interviews with children's...

Saturday, May 17th is Gary Paulsen's birthday! So, in his honor, today's post will highlight online resources about Gary Paulsen and his books. But first, a quick story... One of my favorite books by Gary Paulsen is Woodsong . Paulsen is a master craftsman in creating breathtaking, heart pounding, powerful moments in his books and in Woodsong, he is at the top of his game. I had been looking forward to reading this book with my son when one day he came home from school and told me he was reading some story in language arts class about a man and a dog in the Alaskan Iditarod. My heart sank, "What's the title of the story?" I asked. "I don't know, it's really boring" he replied. If it was really boring, then, of course, it couldn't be Woodsong , but I asked him to bring home his language arts anthology the next day so I could check...and of course, it WAS Woodsong --or should I say, an excerpt from Woodsong --the middle of chapter 7 to be exa...

"The love of reading takes center stage this month as " Get Caught Reading ," the Association of American Publishers’ popular reading promotion campaign, heads into its ninth year. The campaign, which centers on celebrities and public figures "caught reading" favorite books, has grown beyond its original framework to encompass a Spanish-language component, ¡Aja! Leyendo, and a new audio book component, Get Caught Listening, to be unveiled soon" (from the Get Caught Reading website). Posters, activities, and reading lists are available on the Get Caught Reading website to celebrate. But, other wonderful resources are also available. The ReadWriteThink website has lesson plans, web resources, and projects specifically for Get Caught Reading Month. Reading Rockets has a new webcast devoted to summer reading : "Research shows children lose one to three months of learning during the summer, and that loss can be compounded every year. For millions of low i...

In chapter 7 of JCL , I include the 2006 list of the most challenged books as reported by the American Library Association (ALA). Last week, ALA released their 2007 list of the top 10 most challenged books: 1. “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group 2. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence 3. “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language 4. “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman Reasons: Religious Viewpoint 5. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain Reasons: Racism 6. “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, 7. “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group 8. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou Reasons: Sexually Explicit 9. “It’s Perfectly No...

Back in March , I posted on BlogJoy about the First Annual Children’s Choice Book Awards . The Children’s Choice Book Awards program was created to provide young readers with an opportunity to voice their opinions about the books being written for them and to help develop a reading list that will motivate children to read. There were 25 finalists in 5 categories from which children could vote. Well, the votes are in and the winners have been announced! The Children’s Choice Book Award winners are as follows: Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year Frankie Stein written by Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Kevan Atteberry (Marshall Cavendish Corporation) Third Grade to Fourth Grade Book of the Year Big Cats by Elaine Landau (Enslow Publishers) Fifth Grade to Sixth Grade Book of the Year Encyclopedia Horrifica by Joshua Gee (Scholastic) Illustrator of the Year Award Ian Falconer, Olivia Helps with Christmas (Simon & Schuster) Author of the Year Award J.K. Rowling, Harry Pott...

Isn't this poster fabulous? It's the official poster of Children's Book Week created by Mary Grandpre (best known for illustrating the Harry Potter books). Children's Book Week began with the simple idea that children's books can change lives. Since 1919, Children's Book Week has been celebrated nationally in schools, libraries, bookstores, clubs, private homes-any place where there are children and books. Educators, librarians, booksellers, and families have celebrated children's books and the love of reading with storytelling, parties, author and illustrator appearances, and other book related events. Read more about the history of Children's Book Week here . The Children's Book Council is hosting events all week in New York City, but you can set up your own celebrations this week. Ask the children in your classroom to bring their favorite book to class and share a small excerpt. Ask them to create their own poster for Children's Book Week de...

Several previous posts on BlogJoy were about online resources on children's literature to which you could subscribe and receive free monthly updates. Just in case you didn't subscribe (tsk, tsk), here are descriptions and links to a few of the recent updates: ALA Booklist Online: ReAD Alert : includes a review of Sacrifice by S. J. Bolton and a feature article on the year's best crime novels. Notes from the Horn Book : includes annotated lists of books about brothers and sisters, summer suspense novels, and jazzy picturebooks. Also five questions for mystery writer Mary Downing Hahn. Center for Children's Books: includes bibliographies on dystopia and under the sea . Enjoy!

I leave Friday (5/2) for the 53rd annual International Reading Association conference , being held in Atlanta this year. The theme this year is Engaging Learners in Literacy . IRA is a big conference that I enjoy attending every year. This year I will be attending the research conference on Saturday (5/3). This year, Catherine E. Snow is the keynote speaker. On Sunday (5/4), I am a co-organizer for Institute 14: Technology Tools to Engage ALL Learners in Literacy which will be held in the Georgia World Congress Center - B402 from 9:00 - 5:00. There will be an amazing line up of presenters (lecture and lab) on the use of technology in literacy instruction. On Monday (5/5), I am presenting: Deepening Literature Response Through Engagement in Online Activities which will be held in the Georgia World Congress Center - C207 from 3:00 - 4:00. This session will discuss how online literature response activities can deepen student engagement and comprehension in ways not possible through tra...