Scottish Book Trust - again!

After blogging about the August newsletter, I realised I still had the July one in my in-box because it came in while I was on holiday (now a distant memory) and I'm still not caught up properly. Its main feature was a link to their audio interview with Catherine Rayner who won the Greenaway Medal in June.

Titles for Scottish Teens

The Scottish Book Trust's Teen's and Young People's Newsletter for August features their new weekly quiz. The current quiz is on banned books, and they've also got a "Censored Hit List" section - the title that really surprised me was Alice in Wonderland. It used to be banned in China, apparently, for the portrayal of anthropomorphized animals that have the same status as humans. For much more information, check out our own Banned Books list - not, I hasten to add, books that we've banned, but titles (some as surprising as Alice) that have been banned or censored in the past.

Other features in SBT's newsletter are Teen Hit Lists, e.g. Books with Bite or Books that make you LOL, and an interview with Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell (authors of the Edge Chronicles).

Booktrust Early Years Awards

The shortlist has been announce for the Booktrust Early Years Awards, which celebrate, publicise and reward the exciting range of books being published today for babies, toddlers and pre-school children. One of the judges this year is the BBC's Edith Bowman who said ‘It has been such a wonderful experience being on the judging panel this year; I've been able to read so many books to my little boy and it's only made me enjoy reading to him even more. Books are such an important thing in children’s lives and the high standard on offer is incredible.’

The winners in the three categories (Baby Book Award, Pre-school Award and Best Emerging Illustrator) will be announced on 23rd September.

Neil Gaiman and the Newbery Medal

See the July/August Horn Book for Neil Gaiman's Newbery Medal acceptance speech (he won for The graveyard book), plus an article about him by his editor, Elise Howard. The book, about a boy raised by ghosts, has won other awards since the Newbery, picking up the Hugo best novel prize at the fantasy convention Worldcon in Montreal recently, as reported in the Guardian last week.

Reading champions for boys

The National Literacy Trust's Reading Champions team has created two new toolkits - one for secondary and one for primary - to support schools to get their boys hooked on reading. The new toolkits are packed full of ideas, activities and case studies to give you plenty of inspiration to start using the Reading Champions framework.