PLEASE----Just One More Book
"Powered by passion" the Just One More Book site hosts thrice-weekly broadcast discussions of children's books as well as author/illustrator interviews and more. Check it out at:
http://www.justonemorebook.com/about
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
Readers! Writers! Teachers! Librarians! Literature Aficionados! COME TO "THE GATHERING IN THE WOODS"
Incredible Literary Conference!
This Hot Summer, Gather Under a Starry Night in the Cool Mountains of Pennsylvania
The Gathering, a literary conference for readers, writers, thinkers – anyone who loves literature – is open for registration. The dates are July 26-29, 2007, at Keystone College in the Endless Mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania. This theme-based event features core lectures, author/speakers, workshops, panels, and discussion groups. The theme is “Starry Night,” in which participants will contemplate the heavenly bodies and the natural world as the setting for literary imagination. Speakers include Katherine Paterson, Francine Prose, Carlos Eire, and poet Molly Peacock. Some special events are planned, including an evening of stargazing at Keystone’s Cupillari Observatory. Visit The Gathering Website: http://academic.keystone.edu/thegathering/. Request a brochure, ask questions, or register online.
CONTEMPLATIVE READING>DEMOCRATIC VALUES
"Democracy assumes the protection of the values that contemplative reading makes possible."
James Carroll
Don't miss James Carroll's provocative lead op/ed piece in this morning's Boston Globe at:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/12/silent_reading_in_public_life?mode=PF
He notes that historically, when vast number of people were illiterate, reading was a group and/or public activity; most people needed someone educated to read stories aloud and disseminate information. At some point, people became literate and could not only read individually to themselves, eventually they read silently without moving their lips when reading.
"This marked a move away from authoritarian literalism to the imaginative autonomy of the intelligent reader. Here is the most important implication of reading as a wholly interior act: To perceive is to interpret. Truth has no meaning apart from its meaning in the reader's mind. Silent reading is thus both the sign of and a means to self-awareness, with the knower taking responsibility for what is known.
This inescapable individualism is the bedrock principle of democracy, a form of social organization that became possible only when contemplative reading was widely enabled by the mass production of the printing press, and the popular education that followed. .... But democracy assumes the protection of the values that contemplative reading makes possible -- the self-awareness of citizens, their privacy, their capacity for willed interiority. Only because of such reading is each one a center of knowing, thinking, choosing, and acting. But what happens to consciousness when such values are put at risk?"
What happens indeed? That is one of the questions the NCBLA hopes to address at its national summit Democracy @ Risk to be held at the Library of Congress, spring 2008. For more information go to: http://www.thencbla.org/democracyatrisk.html
TEACHERS! PARENTS! ALL WHO LOVE POETRY!
What could be better than to hear favorite poets reading their work aloud!?
Their words, their voices--Lord Tennyson, Seamus Heaney, Ogden Nash, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath, Wendy Cope, Stevie Smith and more.... all reading their work aloud. Go to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/index.shtml
And share these recordings with friends and colleagues!
Their words, their voices--Lord Tennyson, Seamus Heaney, Ogden Nash, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath, Wendy Cope, Stevie Smith and more.... all reading their work aloud. Go to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/index.shtml
And share these recordings with friends and colleagues!
Friday, February 9, 2007
U.K. NATIONAL GALLERY OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE WEBSITE
WWW. SEVENSTORIES.ORG.UK
Elizabeth Mastern Hammell, Mount Holyoke College '65, and her colleague Mary Briggs, raised over 6 million pounds to create Seven Stories, the Centre for Children's Books transforming an old mill into a national gallery for children's literature in northern England. Check out their great website and collection online at: www.sevenstories.org.uk and visit their galleries when you travel to the U.K.
Elizabeth Mastern Hammell, Mount Holyoke College '65, and her colleague Mary Briggs, raised over 6 million pounds to create Seven Stories, the Centre for Children's Books transforming an old mill into a national gallery for children's literature in northern England. Check out their great website and collection online at: www.sevenstories.org.uk and visit their galleries when you travel to the U.K.
READ THE BOOK FIRST
Encourage Kids to Read the Book
Before Seeing the Movie!
The movie Bridge to Terabithia premiers next week. Though the promotional advertising may lead one to think otherwise, many librarians at ALA's mid-winter meeting felt that the film, based on NCBLA's vice-president Katherine Paterson's Newbery Award winning novel of the same name, is not only wonderful, it is true to the heart and the soul of the book. Much of the credit for this goes to David Paterson, the gifted writer who wrote the screenplay. For a preview, read an informative review at: http://themovieboy.com/directlinks/07bridgetoterabithia.
Even though this visual interpretation is by all accounts highly successful, the NCBLA encourages parents to read the novel, Bridge to Terabithia, aloud to your children before seeing the movie. There is very little on television in the early evening that is appropriate or of interest to kids. Reading novels aloud, chapter by chapter before bedtime, is both relaxing and enjoyable for the entire family. When your children experience a story first in book form, they use their minds, their imaginations, to create their own pictures of characters, settings, and action. Seeing a movie before reading the book robs your child of that incredible opportunity because once your child sees the film, images supplied by the director of the movie will be burned into his or her brain.
So read Bridge to Terabithia aloud together, as a family, before you see the movie. It is an experience that you and your children will remember and cherish forever.
Before Seeing the Movie!
The movie Bridge to Terabithia premiers next week. Though the promotional advertising may lead one to think otherwise, many librarians at ALA's mid-winter meeting felt that the film, based on NCBLA's vice-president Katherine Paterson's Newbery Award winning novel of the same name, is not only wonderful, it is true to the heart and the soul of the book. Much of the credit for this goes to David Paterson, the gifted writer who wrote the screenplay. For a preview, read an informative review at: http://themovieboy.com/directlinks/07bridgetoterabithia.
Even though this visual interpretation is by all accounts highly successful, the NCBLA encourages parents to read the novel, Bridge to Terabithia, aloud to your children before seeing the movie. There is very little on television in the early evening that is appropriate or of interest to kids. Reading novels aloud, chapter by chapter before bedtime, is both relaxing and enjoyable for the entire family. When your children experience a story first in book form, they use their minds, their imaginations, to create their own pictures of characters, settings, and action. Seeing a movie before reading the book robs your child of that incredible opportunity because once your child sees the film, images supplied by the director of the movie will be burned into his or her brain.
So read Bridge to Terabithia aloud together, as a family, before you see the movie. It is an experience that you and your children will remember and cherish forever.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
THE FUTURE OF TRADITIONAL NEWSPAPERS
In Five Years The New York Times will be Published Solely in an Electronic Format
For details go to:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/822775.html
As advocates who link literacy, critical thinking, and universal information access to responsibility citizenship in a democracy we must pose a few questions:
Will newspapers going totally electronic increase readership?
What happens to members of our society, young and old, who do not have electronic access to print information?
Libraries are the only place that all of our citizens have free access to the Internet. Will they be able to fulfill that need as it grows on current local, state, and federal funding?
Do we- young and old-digest, internalize, and assess informational text on an electronic screen in the same way that we digest traditional printed information?
Will information sources become even more consolidated, giving us fewer viewpoints?
How will this affect the continuing education of all our citizens? How will this effect the decisions and actions we make and take as individuals and as a nation?
For details go to:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/822775.html
As advocates who link literacy, critical thinking, and universal information access to responsibility citizenship in a democracy we must pose a few questions:
Will newspapers going totally electronic increase readership?
What happens to members of our society, young and old, who do not have electronic access to print information?
Libraries are the only place that all of our citizens have free access to the Internet. Will they be able to fulfill that need as it grows on current local, state, and federal funding?
Do we- young and old-digest, internalize, and assess informational text on an electronic screen in the same way that we digest traditional printed information?
Will information sources become even more consolidated, giving us fewer viewpoints?
How will this affect the continuing education of all our citizens? How will this effect the decisions and actions we make and take as individuals and as a nation?
What Will Happen to Harry Potter?
If you are wondering what will happen to Harry Potter in the final Rowling novel... go to MuggleNet.com
Will Harry find and destroy all of Lord Voldemort’s Horcruxes? Is Dumbledore really dead and if so, did Snape murder him as a part of Dumbledore’s or Voldemort's larger plan? Will Harry survive and become the Dark Arts professor at Hogwart’s? Will Hermione and Ron become an item? Did Sirius's brother take the horcrux necklace?
For more on this website go to: http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2007/02/11/books/1154663972480.html?8tpw&emc=tpw
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
NPR INTERVIEWS M.T.ANDERSON
Listen Up!
In case you missed it, you can go to NPR's website and listen to NCBLA Board Member M.T.-Tobin--Anderson's interview concerning his National Book Award winning novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume I, the Pox Party.
Find it at- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7060904&sc=emaf
Thanks and a hat tip to M.Kemper for informing us!
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
QUOTES OF NOTE
Tom Feelings, at The Center for the Study of Children's Literature, Simmons College, 1980
"Black artists, going into any art form, including book illustration…give to that art form a humanism that is sometimes exactly the opposite of Western society’s pessimistic and cynical attitude. The attitude is based on the belief that it is impossible for any individual or the group to change for the better, that all men are inherently greedy, self-centered, and in constant battle to conquer each other or nature. For the most part I believe that our ability to endure and survive with dignity the worst kind of anti-human oppression in American history points to the fact that all human beings can hold on to their souls, through anything, and therefore can change themselves and the society they live in for the better."
Jill Paton Walsh, Children's Literature New England, 1995
"Perhaps the most famous, and most troubling, question ever asked was asked by Pilate of Jesus. 'What is truth?' he asked."
Tom Feelings, Children's Literature New England, 1990
"Will we learn from our past? Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes? Not if we begin telling all the children the truth about this big house—this building we all live in, called the United States of America. Tell them about the climate, the atmosphere, the environment it was built on—who it was taken away from. Tell them about the true conditions those great documents of freedom were created under. Tell them the truth about the men who wrote them. Tell them all of it."
GREAT CHILDREN'S BOOK BLOGS
Gone Blogging!
Eisha and Jules publish a very interesting blog about children’s books, Seven Interesting Things Before Breakfast at: http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=458
We discovered their blog after reading The Horn Book’s Roger Sutton’s great blog at http://www.hbook.com/blog/
So thanks Roger!
We asked Eisha and Jules if they could recommend other blogs that may be of interest to NCBLA readers. Here is their best blog lis and have fun checking these sites out:
Fuse #8: http://fusenumber8.blogspot.com/
Big A little a: http://kidslitinformation.blogspot.com/
MotherReader: http://motherreader.blogspot.com/
Chicken Spaghetti: http://chickenspaghetti.typepad.com/chicken_spaghetti/
The Excelsior File: http://excelsiorfile.blogspot.com/
The Blue Rose Girls: http://bluerosegirls.blogspot.com/
Proper Noun: http://www.propernoun.net/
Jen Robinson's Book Page: http://jkrbooks.typepad.com/
A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy: http://yzocaet.blogspot.com/
The Brookeshelf: http://brookeshelf.blogspot.com/index.html
Eisha and Jules publish a very interesting blog about children’s books, Seven Interesting Things Before Breakfast at: http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=458
We discovered their blog after reading The Horn Book’s Roger Sutton’s great blog at http://www.hbook.com/blog/
So thanks Roger!
We asked Eisha and Jules if they could recommend other blogs that may be of interest to NCBLA readers. Here is their best blog lis and have fun checking these sites out:
Fuse #8: http://fusenumber8.blogspot.com/
Big A little a: http://kidslitinformation.blogspot.com/
MotherReader: http://motherreader.blogspot.com/
Chicken Spaghetti: http://chickenspaghetti.typepad.com/chicken_spaghetti/
The Excelsior File: http://excelsiorfile.blogspot.com/
The Blue Rose Girls: http://bluerosegirls.blogspot.com/
Proper Noun: http://www.propernoun.net/
Jen Robinson's Book Page: http://jkrbooks.typepad.com/
A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy: http://yzocaet.blogspot.com/
The Brookeshelf: http://brookeshelf.blogspot.com/index.html
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