February 2012
43 posts
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“If one imagines literature as a landscape, with realism here, myth there, poetry...”
– Brian Attebery, “Fantasy as an Anti-Utopian Mode” (1986)
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Weingarten, "THE HARDY BOYS THE FINAL CHAPTER. .... →
When a group of literati last month published a list of the hundred greatest English-language novels of the 20th century, lionizing “Ulysses” and “The Great Gatsby” and “The Sun Also Rises,” I was privately disappointed they had not included “The Missing Chums.” I remembered “The Missing Chums” as the pinnacle of human achievement, a...
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“I wanted to tell my daughters big, important things, like ‘being brave does not...”
– Neil Gaiman
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Wright, "The Blyton’d, Potter’d childhood" (2012) →
Both the Potter and Blyton books are about the childhood we can’t get over, the childhood that still marks us. A childhood that we want to relive in idealised and anaesthetised ways, but, unfortunately, can’t help reliving in ways that are more troublesome and unavoidable. And the same could be said for many of those who ostensibly write for children, who in doing so always reveal...
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A Brief History of Children’s Picture Books and... →
From very early on, we both intuit and learn the language of pictorial representation, and most modern adults, the picturebook was our first dictionary of this visual vocabulary. Yet the picturebook — defined by its narrative framework of sequential imagery and minimalist text to convey meaning or tell a story, and different from the illustrated book in which pictures play a secondary narrative...
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Children's Books are Works of Art →
Children’s books are a preparation for adulthood, says children’s author, Philip Womack. The best children’s literature reflects and distorts grown-up life, allowing children to get used to troubling thoughts, before returning to safety in the last chapter.
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Series Books--A Curriculum Resource Center →
Hear audio clips of authors discussing how they came to write their series books. Access discussion questions, activities, and multimedia resources to enrich conversations about series books. Find resources for non-fiction series books too, including science books and biographies.
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“Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that...”
– Maurice Sendak (p. 151)
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Roald Dahl stories to be on millions of cereal... →
Excerpts from Roald Dahl books will appear on tens of millions of cereal boxes over the next few weeks as part of an ambitious attempt to encourage more children to read.
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"American Library Association to Little Kids:... →
Four out of five librarians are women, but when it comes to children’s book awards, nobody could accuse them of an excess of sisterhood. For decades the American Library Association has had a dismal record of honoring female artists with its Caldecott medal, given each year to “the most distinguished American picture book for children.” That record just got worse.
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Notable Children’s Books of 2011 →
A selection of the year’s best works.
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Trending in Youth Culture: The Best Blogs and... →
Andrea Graham [Editor’s Note: This article is also available in VOYA February 2012.] One of the most enjoyable challenges of working with youth is
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All Things BTFA: BTFA on Teacher Tube →
allthingsbtfa:
For those of you that have been with Book Trailers for All from the beginning, you know that we got our start as a group on Teacher Tube. Now, I love Teacher Tube because it is accessible in most school districts where our main site and our You Tube channel are sometimes not because of filtering…
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Following the trailers →
The days when books were sold by word of mouth or via discreet ads in newspapers or magazines are long gone. Audiovisual trailers for books – in the same style as those for blockbuster movies – are now an essential part of any marketing campaign for a big-hitting new novel.
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Neil Gaiman: Why Libraries Again...? →
neil-gaiman:
From: http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-Dreamin#4183210
“I’ve spent the past year and a half of my life in library school, and about three years before that working in some capacity in rural, suburban, and urban libraries, and currently I’m currently at a cross-road in terms of…
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A children's book club online →
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The 100 'Greatest Books for Kids' →
Any and every list is subjective, but here’s:
The 100 “Greatest Books for Kids,” ranked by Scholastic Parent & Child magazine:
1. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
2. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
3. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
STORY: ‘Charlotte’s Web’ and 99 more ‘great’ kids books
PHOTOS: Top 10...
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Robert Sabuda – winner of Sydney Taylor Book Award →
RS: When I first started making pop-up books librarians would come to my book signing and tell me how much they enjoyed my books but that they could not circulate them in their own collections. It made me sad at the time but things have changed since then. Many librarians started using my books at story time, especially Cookie Count, and decided that they would find a way to make them...
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Can bells and whistles save the book? →
Attempts to invigorate books with video and other digital bells and whistles keep bumping up against this fundamental problem: You can’t really pay much attention to anything else while you’re reading, so in order to play with any of these new features, you have to stop reading. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, then the attentional tug of all these peripheral doodads is vaguely annoying,...
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Cornelia Funke's top 10 fairytales →
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Newton, "Loitering in Neverland: the strangeness... →
But these multiple reimaginings only perpetuate a process that Barrie himself began. The first problem faced by Maria Tatar, the editor of The Annotated Peter Pan, is what version of the story one would choose to annotate. There are least six possible contenders: The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, purportedly by Peter Llewelyn Davies, a photo book of the Llewelyn Davies boys playing out the...
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Paul, "‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and Its Sci-Fi Heroine"... →
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” which opened up the world of science fiction to a generation of girls.
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Gopnik -- "Broken Kingdom: Fifty Years of 'The... →
…the fifty-year birthday of a good children’s book marks a real passage, since it means that the book hasn’t been passed just from parent to child but from parent to child and on to child again. A book that has crossed that three-generation barrier has a good chance at permanence. So to note the fiftieth birthday of the closest thing that American literature has to an “Alice in Wonderland”...
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Fabulous and Freaky: "Monster High" Book Series →
With famously fiendish pedigrees, distinctly developed personalities, and hip attire, these teens are the perfect blend of creep and chic. Introduced by Mattel in July 2010, the Monster High brand of fashion dolls features a lineup of scary-cool teenage characters based on monster movies, horror fiction, and mythology. From Frankie Stein to Draculaura to Deuce Gorgon, each individual is either...
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Maurice Sendak: 'I refuse to lie to children' →
Maurice Sendak looks like one of his own creations: beady eyes, pointy eyebrows, the odd monsterish tuft of hair and a reputation for fierceness that makes you tip-toe up the path of his beautiful house in Connecticut like a child in a fairytale. Sendak has lived here for 40 years – until recently with his partner Eugene, who died in 2007; and now alone with his dog, Herman (after Melville), a...
