The Joy of Children's Literature

If you want to see something that will get your weekend off to a great start, watch this YouTube video Gotta Keep Reading  by students at  Ocoee Middle School. This is what keeps us going! Thanks to Creative Literacy for the link.

A few articles around the blogosphere that might be of interest... Noes from the Horn Book offeres "Five Questions for Matt Phelan" who won the 2010 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction . The first question, "Do you think of The Storm in the Barn as historical fiction?" is very interesting since some think the fantasy element in the graphic novel should diqualify the book as historical fiction. Matt's response: Yes. I also think of it as a supernatural thriller and a family drama and a Jack tale. But when I was writing it, I only thought of it as a story. It wasn’t until after it was finished that I could step back and try to label it. It was a story first and foremost, even before I decided it would be a graphic novel. The other articles in Notes from the Hornbook highlight the ALA media award winners. Another interesting article is from  The Big Fresh  titled, " Just Because They Can Doesn't Mean They Should: Choosing Age-Appropriate Boo...

-- Publishers Weekly , 2/15/2010 Picture Books Shark vs. Train by Chris Barton, illus. by Tom Lichtenheld. Little, Brown, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-316-00762-7 This is a genius concept—the kids' equivalent of a classic guy bull session, centering on two playmates' favorite toys. So, who's better—Shark or Train? That all depends. When trick-or-treating, Shark is the clear winner, thanks to his intimidating smile (“The clown is very hungry,” he says, as a bowl of candy is poured into his bag). But in a marshmallow-roasting contest, Train triumphs by virtue of his built-in, coal-stoked rotisserie. Just when readers will think the scenarios can't get more absurd (bowling, a burping contest), the book moves into even funnier territory: hypotheticals in which neither comes out on top (their imposing presences make them ripe targets for getting shushed in a library, and their lack of opposable thumbs means neither is very good at video games). Lichtenheld's ( Duck! Ra...

The Fourth Annual Children's and Young Adulut Bloggers' Literary Awards were annunced yesterday! Cybils Awards for Children's and Middle Grade Books Picture Book (Fiction) All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon; illustrated by Marla Frazee; Beach Lane Books Picture Book (Non-Fiction) The Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton; illustrated by Tony Persiani; Charlesbridge Easy Reader Watch Me Throw the Ball! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) by Mo Willems; Hyperion Early Chapter Book Bad to the Bone (Down Girl and Sit) by Lucy Nolan; illustrated by Mike Reed; Marshall Cavendish Childrens Books Poetry Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors by Joyce Sidman; illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Graphic Novel The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook b y Eleanor Davis; Bloomsbury USA Fantasy & Science Fiction Dreamdark: Silksinger (Faeries of Dreamdark) by Laini Taylor; Putnam Juvenile Middle Grade Fiction Chains ...

-- Publishers Weekly , 2/8/2010 Picture Books Paris in the Spring with Picasso by Joan Yolleck, illus. by Marjorie Priceman. Random/S&W, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-83756-2 Debut author Yolleck introduces Gertrude Stein and her coterie—Picasso, Max Jacobs, Apollinaire (plus assorted girlfriends)—spicing her account with gossip and asides (“Pardonnez-moi, excuse me. I must interrupt for just a moment to tell you that these sketches are of Apollinaire and their friends Pablo and Fernande”). Apollinaire watches an acrobat and gets an idea for a poem, Max Jacob writes comic verse, Gertrude chats with Alice B. Toklas; the evening soirée that the narrative takes as its focus isn’t as important as the ordinary ways these extraordinary artists spend their days. The exuberant spreads by Priceman ( How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A .), scratched and scrabbled in ink and splashed with scarlets, yellows, and blues, showcase the streets of Paris with thoroughly Gallic charm. In ...

This week, the teachers enrolled in my children's literature course started their own blogs and will be posting reviews of the books they read and responding to each others' posts. Their blogs are listed below...if you have a few mintues,  please give them a few words of encouragement! TribeTeacher , LiteraryLady , and Parnaro's Post As the semester progresses, so will their posts. The use of a blog to post thoughts about the books they read is important for many reasons. First, if teachers are to engage their own students in using technology in rich and meaningful ways, they must first experience those benefits themselves. Second, the ability to read and respond to each others' blogs changes the audience for reader response, which is huge. Third, however, is that if blogs are only used to respond to online assignments, then the full potential of blogs for promoting critical and analytical thinking will not be realized. Blogs allow students to create...

From Read Roger : The following books will receive starred reviews in the March-April issue of the Horn Book Magazine : My Garden , by Kevin Henkes (Greenwillow) Once by Morris Gleitzman (Holt) Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs by Ron Koertge (Candlewick) The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan; illus. by Peter Sís (Scholastic) Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick (Roaring Brook) The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork (Levine/Scholastic) A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner (Greenwillow) One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (Amistad/HarperCollins) Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer; illus. by Josée Masse (Dutton)   Congratulations to these authors!

Apple's iPad is no book-killer: Author says technology is a threat to reading we can overcome By: Katherine Paterson Monday, February 1st 2010, 4:00 AM Last week, Apple's Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, which will compete with Amazon's Kindle and seduce even more readers from the printed page to the touchscreen. We recently learned that the average 8- to-18-year-old in America spends seven hours, 38 minutes a day, or 53 hours a week, with electronic media. Technology, which becomes more exciting by the day, seems to have taken over our lives. Are we witnessing the long anticipated death of the book? It is a legitimate concern. But we are not the first generation to fear change of this kind. Plato had Socrates argue in "The Dialogues" that if people learned to read and write - if, in short, the populace became literate - poetry would disappear, for it was only in the oral tradition that poetry could be preserved properly. Now it's easy to look back on...

-- Publishers Weekly , 2/1/2010 Picture Books I Can Be Anything! by Jerry Spinelli, illus. by Jimmy Liao. Little, Brown, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-316-16226-5 Newbery Medalist Spinelli ( My Daddy and Me ) again demonstrates his versatility as a writer in this buoyant riff on a familiar theme. “When I grow up, what shall I be?” asks the young narrator, answering this question with blithe, whimsical options, pictured with playful exaggeration in Liao's ( The Sound of Colors ) energetic watercolor and acrylic art. Accompanied by frolicking bunnies, the boy envisions himself as a “puddle stomper/ apple chomper/mixing-bowl licker/ tin-can kicker,” among numerous other “professions.” Though often clad in overalls, in some scenarios he wears more fanciful attire, hovering in a butterfly costume as a “honeysuckle smeller” or performing in a clown suit for a sad lion as a “silly-joke teller.” Liao's artwork runs with the simple, evocative phrases, striking a balance between the cla...