Posts of the week 2

Phew, made it to the second week of Friday roundups! Except that it's Saturday - oh well, near enough. A lot caught my eye in the past seven days, so here they are in the order I spotted them.

Black History Month is coming up in October. You might find useful titles scattered through Strathclyde University's Children's Booklists page - see the lists on Diversity, Global Citizenship, Refugees and Slavery.

Lizzy Ratner asks in The Nation "What are children's books for?" She's inspired by an exhibition at New York Public Library on the history of children's books. It runs till March 2014, but I don't think I can contrive to be in New York before then, wonderful though that would be.

Malorie Blackman's piece in the Guardian on the value of libraries has been widely circulated on social media so you might have seen it. Libraries' huge contribution to children's literacy is threatened by swingeing cuts across the country. "Where is the outrage?" she asks.

Vivienne Smith at Reading Fictions pays tribute to Margaret Mahy (1936-2011) with particular reference to a title I heartily approve of, The Librarian and the Robbers, concluding "If you aspire to a life full of unexpected exploits and all things delightful, become a reader! Treasure awaits us all on the shelves of the library." Hear, hear!

I've discovered that Seven Stories now has an online Enid Blyton exhibition, with one on Judith Kerr coming soon. For those of us who can't get to Newcastle to see their exhibitions live, this is a great new idea.

I've added Rhino Reads to my RSS feed of useful blogs to follow. It was the post I've linked to on gender non-specific characters that I first noticed, but it all looks worth a read if you are interested in picture books.

UKLA (UK Literacy Association) has announced its 2014 children's book awards longlists - for ages 3-6, 7-11 and 12-16+. The winners will be announced in July.

A bit of fluff to finish with. Regular readers will know of my love for Anne of Green Gables. Green Wedding Shoes offers an Anne of Green Gables Wedding Inspiration (posed) with "Anne" and "Gilbert" looking divine. So if you're a red-haired woman thinking of getting married it could be just the thing for you.

That's the end of this week's Children's Literature Roundup. No extra charge for the wedding advice.

Posts of the week

This is a hostage to fortune, but I thought I would start a weekly feature of blog posts that have caught my eye over the past seven days. If I'm absent next Friday, then you know that was a very bad idea! In no particular order, here is this week's selection.

Elaine Aldred is a Doctoral student in Education at the University of Nottingham. Her blog, Strange Alliances, aims "to explore all different kinds of writing and storytelling, through examining the craft of writing." The post that interested me was Gez Walsh. A style all of his own. Gez, a former social worker, first started writing when he was trying to get his dyslexic son to read and felt the available books were too boring. They started writing a poem together and things took off from there - it resulted in his first book, The spot on my bum. Now, he says "I devote my whole life to working with children. I work with kids that nobody else wants to work with. I’ve also written some books for their parents too, because you got vicious cycle of having parents who can barely read who won’t buy a book for a child because they don’t put any value in it." Worth checking out.

Over at Book Riot, Kelly Jensen writes about Books for boys and books for girls: problems with gendered reading and concludes "The more we expose young readers to the wide variety of reading possibilities, the wide variety of how books look and feel and grow in our hands and minds, the more positive steps we take in combating gendered reading. Maybe while we’re at it, we also stop writing about “books for boys” and “books for girls.” Books are for readers." Do you agree?

I've added The Cambridge Children's Literature Students' Blog to my "Favourite blogs" page. It's written by graduate students at the Cambridge-Homerton Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature - in their latest posts, they tell of their exploits at a Picture-book Conference in Stockholm. Lucky them!

We love this book's newsletter pops into my inbox every Friday. One of the articles they are highlighting today is Hating the happily-ever-after, an examination by Holly Bourne of romantic clichés in teenage novels. Have fun thinking of books to match each category!

Last, but not least, Scottish Book Trust has an interview with Lynne Rickards in its Spotlight On feature today. In it, Lynne talks about her influences, her writing and her work as a Writer-in-Residence in Methil in Fife where she has been collaborating with a group of women to produce a picture-book on healthy eating. We also find out that Lynne likes dark chocolate, fresh fruit and crunchy organic carrots - two out of three for healthy eating Lynne, two out of three!

PS I would go for the dark chocolate myself, preferably washed down with a nice glass of red. Speaking of which, wine-o'clock is not far away so time to finish this post and start thinking about dinner.

Looking back at Refugee Week: books for children

Lajee Dancers in Glasgow

Last week was Refugee Week. In Scotland, it kicked of with a photo-call of a few of the acts performing throughout the week, including these talented young dancers who live in a refugee camp in Palestine. Aida Camp is crowded and insecure - how do you explain to children the sorts of lives these young people are living?

Step forward the amazing Zoe Toft who writes the award-winning blog Playing by the Book. All through Refugee Week she featured children's books about refugees. For example she both reviewed Azzi in between, about a young girl arriving in this country, and interviewed its author, Sarah Garland. She wrote about fiction for kids to make them think about life as a refugee and listed over 75 books about the refugee experience. Finally, she posted about 17 authors and illustrators who were themselves refugees, including famous names such as Judith Kerr and Eva Ibbotson.

Zoe's posts are often accompanied by suggestions for activities, written for her own children but adaptable for the classroom. Books about refugees are not just for Refugee Week - use them at any time to encourage children to empathise and learn to combat negative attitudes in society.

New YA blog

I've added another YA blog to my "Favourite book blogs" tag (see the top of the column to your right). It's called UKYA, and it celebrates the work of UK authors of young adult fiction. Each entry has a brief review of a book and a link to the author's website. A really useful feature is that you can search the reviews by genre (e.g. humour or horror) or by country (England, Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales). I clicked on Scotland, and was pleased that all the books which came up were already in stock here. There are also sections for books which have won prizes and forthcoming titles and, for overseas readers, a glossary of Britishisms! Some of these made me smile - I don't want to quote the more risque (!?) ones in a respectable university blog, but this one I can get away with:

Ant and Dec: smirking presenters of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.

The blog also has a clean, uncluttered template which makes it very easy to use. Recommended.

These are the featured Scottish titles. Borrow them from us!

Football, spies and Tom Palmer

Author Tom Palmer likes football and has a secret ambition to be a spy. He's combining these two ideas in his new thriller series, The Squad, about a youth football team in which half the members are spies. The first title won't be published until 2012, but while he's writing it he's also producing a weekly blog for teachers, hosted on the National Literacy Trust website, tracking its progress. The blog will be written in a way that the children (upper primary level) will be able to relate to their own school work and will include an optional writing exercise based on what Tom has been blogging about. He will answer questions such as: How do authors write their books? Where do the ideas come from? How do they develop characters? 


Tom Palmer has also contributed to NLT's Reading the Game pages Another thing I like on this page is the football shaped book review form which I think would be great to use in the classroom.


We have a couple of Tom's books in stock at Jordanhill and also have a football section on our Books for Boys page - although football books needn't, of course, only be read by boys and the team in The Squad includes both boys and girls.

GIRLS ♥ BOOKS

 A group of writers, including Cathy Cassidy, Fiona Dunbar and Joan Lennon, have got together to contribute to a joint blog called GIRLS ♥ BOOKS. There are sections to appeal to girls of 8+, 9-12 and teens. The authors say:

"It’s a place where we can tell you our latest news, whisper the secret stories behind our books, and share our favourite things. We’ll have a new blog post every day for you – plus giveaways, book reviews, event announcements and more. So if you’ve ever wondered what your favourite writer’s desk looks like, which book is lighting up her bedside table right this minute, or whether when she was 13 she had a really unfortunate haircut and was afraid of swans, GIRLS ♥ BOOKS is just for you."

At the same time as I discovered this site I also found Chicklish, subtitled "Reader, I snogged him", which is specifically aimed at teens and worth a look too.

One of our most popular pages on the Jordanhill website is Books for Boys .We're working on a similar page for girls. Watch this space!

Catch the Patrick Ness blog tour

Patrick's latest book A monster calls is published today and will be in the library very soon. This book is different, as the review from our supplier, Holt Jackson, shows:

"Conor is dealing with his Mum's cancer and finding it very difficult to come to terms with it. Each night he struggles with nightmares and one night a monster calls at his window much to his surprise and fear. What happens next is a gripping and sometimes challenging tale of having to deal with fear, loneliness and loss. This is a book like no other - originally imagined by Siobhan Dowd who sadly died of cancer before writing it, Patrick Ness took up the mantle and wrote the book in her honour. He should be proud of his achievement as this is one of the best teenage books I have read. Both gripping and moving in equal parts, this is a book to look out for and a great testament to both Patrick and Siobhan."

In the meantime, you can read a different extract every day on the Monster calls blog tour - see Patrick's website for details of this and other publicity, including a Radio Scotland interview. The Guardian has a podcast of him reading an extract and answering questions and A monster calls is also book of the week on the Ultimate Bookguide.

Click on the links here to see our catalogue holdings on Siobhan Dowd and Patrick Ness (whose Chaos walking trilogy now has its own discussion forum if you are interested). And finally, click on the Patrick Ness label at the end of this post to see my own reviews of these books.

A book blog for kids: Lynne Rickards

Lynne Rickards' new blog differs from most of the others I've mentioned before in that it's aimed at children rather than at the adults who buy books for them. I think they would really enjoy it. Each post has a theme plus a photo or other illustration and (usually but not always) a forgiveable plug for one of Lynne's books. For example, today's post is about snails and relates back to Jacob O’Reilly Wants a Pet - but it also has some practical information about building a snail hotel. Not my cup of tea but it might well appeal to small children who are less easily revolted!

Lynne has also created book bags around some of her stories and we have them in the library in the storysack collection. The Pink Bag celebrates diversity with the story of Patrick, the pink penguin. As well as a copy of Pink! it includes, amongst other things, a Circle Time lesson guide, a pink toy, a quiz and a letter from Patrick. The Pets Bag is based on the aforementioned Jacob O’Reilly Wants a Pet and includes the book and a cuddly snail in its contents. Finally, the Green Bag explores good nutrition in an appealing way along with recipes and classroom activities. The book in this one is I do not eat the colour green. See Lynne's website for more details.

Storysacks have grown immensely in popularity since we started stocking them a few years ago. For our full range, see this list from SUPrimo.

The Next Chapter - new blog from Barrington Stoke

Barrington Stoke, the Edinburgh-based publisher of books for struggling, reluctant and dyslexic readers, has a new blog, The Next Chapter, with inclusive literacy ideas for teaching with their books. First up is a write-along competition based on Ninja: First Mission by author Chris Bradford. Check out the blog to see how your class could win.

Jordanhill Library has a good selection of Barrington Stoke books. See our Reluctant Readers page for more information.

What's new? Crime blog for teens, Richard & Judy and other delights

Here's a round up of items that have caught my eye in the last few days:

Crime Central is a new blog for teens, set up by authors Keren David, Anne Cassidy, Gillian Philip and Linda Strachan. It's stated aims are "to celebrate crime fiction for teen readers. Find out about new books, leave your comments and reviews, read interviews with authors." There's not much there at the moment, it's one to watch, but there is a competition to win a signed copy of one of Anne Cassidy's books.

The Bookseller tells us that Richard and Judy will launch a new children's book club with W H Smith on the 27th January. The Children's Book Club will involve real families, with the books selected by a ­variety of children, and will have three categories: Reading Together (from pre-school to year 1), Developing Reader (7–9 years) and Fluent (any age from 8 years on).

Jill R Bennett has started a new review site, Red Reading Hub. Jill is an Early Years specialist and says "In these pages, I hope to be able to highlight books, both those recently published as well as ones that have been well and truly tried and tested, that ‘work’ with children either at home, playgroups, nurseries or schools. In some instances, there will be ideas for working with the books."

The latest winner of the Costa Children's Book prize is Jason Wallace for Out of the Shadows, a story set in Zimbabwe just after independence. Oops, I seem to have missed that one so I've ordered it for the Library now. You can read an interview with Jason Wallace on the Books for Keeps site and Booktrust has a reading guide to download.

Finally, it's time to elect a new Children's Laureate. Anthony Browne's tenure is coming to an end and suggestions for the next one are invited - previous Laureates have been Quentin Blake, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Rosen so there are some hard acts to follow. There's also a competition for children to win tickets to the award ceremony in June. The closing date is 28th February.

Why Patrick Ness is better than Tom Cruise and other miscellany

Well, the snow and the end of term have got in the way of blogging for quite some time, so here are some of the items I'd been meaning to write about all thrown together in an end of year pot pourri. No particular order, but I've put Patrick Ness first because I liked the headline!

Why Patrick Ness is better than Tom Cruise comes from those nice people at Scottish Book Trust who recently took Ness on tour around Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire. Alison, the librarian from Clydebank High School, posted on their blog to talk about the effect of Patrick Ness on her pupils. There's also a video from the tour.

Still with Scottish Book Trust, did you know about their Teachers' Online Bookgroups? There's one each for books for primary and secondary age children, and one for professional development. Each has downloadable material to go with the texts, e.g. for Choke Chain by Jason Donald (a book for secondary children) there are teachers' notes, an interview with the author and a podcast of him reading an extract from the book.

Picture books do still work for kids - an article in October in the New York Times suggested that picture books were no longer a staple as parents tried to push their children towards "chapter books". This has promted responses from both CBS News and Publisher's Weekly - don't write the obit for picture books yet, they say. Certainly not in this Library, where they remain very popular.

Enid Blyton falls out of children's favour is an article in the Telegraph which relates that Blyton has fallen out of the top ten list of children's authors for the first time in decades because youngsters cannot relate to her language. Hmm, we don't stock her anyway because we don't consider her good enough quality (though I read them all when I was growing up and I turned into a librarian, so they can't be that bad!)

If you want quality, Julia Donaldson is a safe bet. An article in the Guardian's Books Blog praises Stick Man as a potential Christmas classic.

Looking for fiction for 10-14s? Look no further than the Literacy Adviser (Bill Boyd, latterly of Learning and Teaching Scotland) - and happily, most of the recommended titles on his long list are in stock here. The rest of the site is worth a look too. I now subscribe to his blog, and after the New Year I hope to create a Blogroll of this and others that I consult regularly.

Another good blog to follow for children's and teenage fiction is Tall Tales & Short Stories. For example, here's an interview with Keith Charters and Graham Watson of Strident Publishing - a Scottish publisher based in East Kilbride, many of whose books we have in our catalogue.

David Almond is a popular, and award-winning, author whose My Dad's a Birdman is now a play - Observer review here. Skellig, of course, was made into a film and we have both book and DVD in stock.

If you like Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Darkness series you might want to listen to her reading from the 6th and final title, Ghost hunter, in a Guardian podcast.

Books for Keeps has started a film-review section. Guess what the first review is? Harry Potter of course!

And finally - the "Books of the year" lists have started coming out. Here are 32 gathered together (not all children's) by SCC English blog and an international collection (all children's) from Chicken Spaghetti.

Season's greetings to everyone. See you in 2011!

More on the Carnegie shortlist

The excellent Bookbag has full reviews of all the books shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and here's an equally excellent Prezi as prepared by my friend Anne Robinson, Librarian at Dixie School. It's got summaries and useful links - just ignore the bits at the end specifically for the Dixie pupils. Let me know what you think of the books!

Heroes / sheroes update

Vote on Lucy Coats' 7 heroes / sheroes of children's literature on her Scribble City blog by 24th March - if you don't know what I'm talking about, see the post two below this one!

Heroes / sheroes

Lucy Coats has responded to the Guardian's illustrated list of 10 of the best children's book heroes with a poll of her own. She doesn't agree with all the Guardian's choices - read why on her blog, Scribble City Central, where she's asking you to come up with your own top 5 heroes and sheroes. You have to do this by Friday 19th when she will collate the entries and come up with two top 5s. There are prizes to win too! I haven't got my own top 5s together yet but I've backed up the person who voted for Cynthia Voigt's Dicey Tillerman. Homecoming is one of my favourite books, about a young girl whose mother has abandoned her family. Dicey leads her younger brothers and sister on a long journey to find their estranged grandmother. She's a great character - see our catalogue for this and Cynthia's other titles and please borrow them and read them!

Children's book miscellany

This post is an update for several links I haven't had time to blog about individually in the last couple of weeks. I'll start with ones about specific authors. Katherine Paterson is currently serving as the US's equivalent of our Children's Laureate, the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Read for your life in Public School Insights is an interview in both podcast and transcript while Fiction Focus's Tuesday Spotlight collects together a number of links, articles and interviews as well as the trailer for the film of Bridge to Terabithia. The latest Horn Book (yet to arrive in the Library) is also largely devoted to Paterson.

Who else? In alphabetical order - much loved picture book authors Janet and Allan Ahlberg feature in Trevor Cairney's blog, Literacy, families and learning; Michael Foreman is interviewed in Write Away and Mo Willems, loved for Don't let the pigeon drive the bus, talks to chron.com.

Films and classics next. Lucy Coats wonders if the Percy Jackson film The Lightning Thief, from Rick Riordan's book, in which the hero discovers that not only is he the son of Poseidon but Zeus is after him for a crime he hasn't committed, will reignite interest in Greek myths. Again, there's a movie trailer to enjoy. Tim Burton's film of Alice in Wonderland is also out, and in the Guardian, AS Byatt "takes another trip down the rabbit hole to celebrate classics she first enjoyed as a child".

Some more about reading itself: boys read as much as girls but prefer the simpler books (Independent); why kids re-read books (Literacy, families and learning); how to make reading cool (Guardian); and sharing picture books, a series of Book Trust videos.

Finally, Curious pages is a blog I've been dipping into for a while. It's billed as Inappropriate Books for Kids, which really seems to mean old-fashioned. The link I've included is to a 1971 Snoopy book. Recent posts include one on Shel Silverstein, complete with video, and another on Florence Parry Heide who wrote the Treehorn books. I love it, but then I'm of that sort of vintage.

Anthony Browne's Laureate blog

See a sample of his work in progress in Anthony Browne's Children's Laureate blog. You can also see the picture he did for Radio 4 last week to illustrate their piece about scientists from Bristol University who have discovered that fossil remains can be used to find out about more about the colouring of dinosaurs like the Sinosauropteryx – a small meat-eating dinosaur from 125 million years ago that we now know was a bright orange with distinctive white rings on its tail. However, somehow I don't think they looked like Anthony's rather grumpy looking creature!

Terry Pratchett and the Bookwitch

Here's an entertaining interview with Terry Pratchett from the Bookwitch's blog, followed by an account of a talk he gave at the National Theatre. Oh dear, part of it features a librarian who doesn't come out of it very well. But we're not all the same!

Trailer trash - do web trailers help promote books?

An interesting Awfully Big Blog Adventure post from Elen Caldecott, with examples including a trailer for Ian Beck's Pastworld. And if you like clips of cats doing daft things, there's one of those thrown in for good measure!

Elen's book is in stock in Jordanhill Library and her next one, How Ali Ferguson saved Houdini, is due next year.

Best books of 2009

See Chicken Spaghettis's big list of lists - an international round up of "best of" lists of children's books and prizewinners for 2009. Have a look at the rest of the blog while you're there: the name comes from her favourite recipe - that's provided too!
Enough blogging for today.

Getting boys to read

Here's a blog about boys and reading. Getting boys to read is a (US) community based blog for parents, librarians, and teachers which provides information and support through articles, videos, interviews, and their forum. Recent posts include: Teen Boys and Young Adult Lit: An Important Relationship; Digital Storytelling: Engaging Boys with Technology; Should we Separate Genders in the Classroom?; 6 Reasons Why Boys Like Magazines, and Dr. Seuss Stories: Reading that Entertains.