Friday Kid Lit Round-Up

It’s Friday!  You can sleep in late tomorrow but before you do, get the skinny on the kid lit blogosphere here at the Round-Up.

Author/illustrator Bruce Hale wrote in with this comment,
“If you'd like some help hooking reluctant readers in your school or library, may I humbly recommend my newest book in the UNDERWHERE series, Flyboy of Underwhere? Like the first two books in the series, it's a hybrid of novel and comic book, with plenty of humor, action and fun illustrations.  Just the ticket for boys who aren't that 'into' books!  (How do I know?  I  was one.)”
And for some fun book extensions, try these PDFs: How to Draw Chet Gecko and How to Write a Story.

Our very own Scholastic blogger extraordinaire Jill White is offering tips in her Strategies for Gifted Learners blog.  Frog and Toad All Year and Happy Apple and the Mysterious Monster from Outer Space are two book-based lessons worth checking out. Hey, I’m all over any lesson that includes ice cream.  Do you have one with cookies Jill?

Jenny at Random House is reminding folks that this week is Banned Books Week.  She writes, “We're hoping everyone will make this year's Banned Books Week a time to celebrate the freedom to read - and to remember and remind others never to take that freedom for granted." Visit their First Amendment First -Aid Kit for more detailed instructions, valuable information, and interesting thoughts on censorship from some of their authors.

Over at American Library Association is this scary info:
The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received a total of 420 challenges last year. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. The 10 most challenged titles were:

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
3. Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes
4. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
7. TTYL by Lauren Myracle
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
9. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

And from another of our tireless and dedicated bloggers, Anastasia Suen,...
“Nominations for the third annual Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards (the Cybils) will be open Wednesday, October 1st through Wednesday, October 15th. The goal of the Cybils team (some 100 bloggers) is to highlight books that are high in both literary quality and kid appeal.
To nominate titles, visit the Cybils blog between October 1st and 15th. A separate post will be available for each category - simply nominate by commenting on those individual posts. If you are not sure which category to choose for a particular book, a questions thread will also be available.”

And at Chicken Spaghetti, you can read Perry Nodelman’s thoughts on the art of writing for picture books.  Here’s a taste: “A picture book text is indeed something like a poem, I think—like a sonnet or a villanelle, maybe, because the constrictions of the form are so firm and so complicated.” It’s definitely worth taking a look at the full article.

OK my friends, with that I’m off.  Have a super weekend and we’ll see you back here on Nonfiction Monday.

Comments

[Angela Bunyi]

I'd say so...does it count that my classroom library books have their own website with a search engine like a public library?

Happy Wednesday!

Angela

[Jeremy Brunaccioni]

Hi Angela,

We're happy to have you. Would a home library where the books are sorted by subject and author make me a bibliophile?

Best,
Jeremy

[Angela Bunyi]

Hello Jeremy,

I just wanted to say thanks for adding me to your recommended sites. I'd do the same for you, but my settings are pretty restricted as a newbie. You seem to be a bibliophile of sorts, so I look forward to checking your links out.

Thank goodness for RSS feeds...

Angela Bunyi

[Jeremy]

Jill, I should have known you'd have one. Sounds delicious!

Best,
Jeremy

[Jill White]

Actually Jeremy I do have one on cookies. We read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Next we rewrite the story in eight blocks, still using the cookie and the mouse. We have done things like take our illustrated stories to children's hospitals along with baked sugar cookies and the items to decorate them. We read our stories to the children and then decorated cookies with them!