Saturday Afternoon Visits: March 27

From Jen Robinson’s Book Page

There continues to be lots going on around the Kidlitosphere. Here are a few quick highlights on this beautiful day:

The winner of the 2010 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was announced this week (I first heard about it from Tasha Saecker at Kids Lit). Congratulations to Belgian illustrator and author Kitty Crowther, who won a prize of 5 million kronor ($620,00 US). I love that this award celebrates the creator of Pippi Longstocking, and the importance of children’s literature. The size of the award is a strong statement about the value of children’s literature and its creators.The ALMA website explains:

“Astrid Lindgren is one of Sweden’s most important authors. Her works have been translated into more than 90 languages. She renewed children’s literature and combined artistic integrity with commitment to the rights of children and young people. Astrid Lindgren passed away in 2002 at the age of 94, but her stories will live forever. To honour her memory and to promote interest in children’s and young adult literature around the world, the Swedish government has founded an international prize in her name, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.” 

Gregory K has announced the lineup for his upcoming 30 Poets/30 Days celebration of National Poetry Month. It’s quite a star-studded list. And I love the new logo, created by Greg’s kidlitchat co-host, Bonnie Adamson.

Lots of people are raising a rallying cry for libraries this week. Dawn Morris has a heartfelt post about libraries at Moms Inspire Learning. And Jennifer R. Hubbard from writerjenn inspired a whole library-loving blog challenge, which has spread to dozens of blogs. The basic idea is that the participating bloggers promise to donate to libraries based on the number of comments that they receive. There are too many participants for me to highlight them all here, but I did want to mention that The Texas Sweethearts will be making a donation to the Reading Tub for their challenge. How great is that?

Trevor Cairney has a fun post today at Literacy, families and learning on choosing great educational toys for children. He breaks the post down by type of play, from timeless construction toys to toys that allow kids to create things. He concludes with a few principles that he follows when choosing toys (like “Do they stimulate creativity and learning?”).

Based on the responses to her recent survey about blogging books for boys, librarian Ms. Yingling has started sharing some themed booklists, aimed at middle school age boys. This week, she shares a host of books about war, neatly categorized according to which war is covered. She says: “While not all of the books on this list have a lot of fighting, they have all been popular with my boys.”

There seems to be a bout of spring-induced sports fever spreading in the Kidlitosphere:

• Doret from TheHappyNappyBookseller is doing a fantastic Baseball Lineup series in which she asks nine authors of baseball stories for kids a series of 12 questions each (3 per day). Personally, I haven’t been able to resist chiming in on the first two posts, to share my responses, too. They’re great questions for baseball fans of all ages.
• Colleen Mondor takes on sports books in the latest installation of her What a Girl Wants series at Chasing Ray. She asks her band of author friends: “What books can you think of about famous female athletes in history? Do we honor them on the same level as male athletes? And what about game playing girls in MG & YA novels? Can you think of some great ones and do familiar teen girl tropes (like mean girls and romance) play into those novels? In other words, is a book about boys playing ball crafted the same as one about girls playing ball? Is the sport enough when selling a book about girl athletes?” Thoughtful responses abound.
• At The Miss Rumphius Effect, Tricia features a baseball poem about Forgiving Buckner. She speculates that baseball just might be “the true harbinger of spring.” I can’t disagree with that. Speaking of poems, this week’s Poetry Friday roundup is being hosted by Julie Larios of The Drift Record.

Other quick hits:

• I enjoyed The Reading Countess’ recent “Have a Seat!” post, in which she shares pictures of the many reading nooks that she has available in her classroom.
• Betsy Bird has a detailed recap of week 2 of School Library Journal’s Battle of the Kids Books at A Fuse #8 Production.
• At Shrinking Violet Promotions, Mary and Robin have an excellent interview with Lee Wind about his new blog, The Zen of Blogging.
• At Roots in Myth, P.J. Hoover shares five reasons (for authors) to visit a juvenile detention center.
• And for more links, check out Tanita Davis’ Sequel Rambles post at Finding Wonderland, Cynthia Leitich Smith’s latest Cynsational News post at Cynsations, or Abby (the) Librarian’s latest Around the Interwebs post.

And that’s all for this weekend. Happy reading, and happy spring. Only 8 more days until Red Sox Opening Day!

© 2010 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson’s Book Page. All rights reserved.
You can also find me on Twitter and at Booklights from PBS Parents.
All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission (with no additional cost to you).

Sunday Afternoon Visits: March 21

From Jen Robinson’s Book Page

Happy Spring! Happy March Madness! A belated Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Here are a few links from around the Kidlitosphere, for those who are actually indoors on the computer this fine weekend:

First up, I was delighted to see that Jen Funk Weber profiled me this morning as her first Extreme Reader, a new series that she’s doing at Needle and ThREAD: Stitching for Literacy. She shares my story about reading on a raft in a lake in New Hampshire as a kid. Jen is looking for other extreme reader stories, as well as extreme stitcher stories, if you have any to share. And have you seen her tutorial for stitching Readergirlz bookmarks? Anyone interested in both books and needlework should really be following Jen’s blog.

Betsy Bird is up to #17 in the Top 100 Children’s Novels poll at A Fuse #8 Production. You can also enter a challenge to predict the top 10 titles. I got an extra kick out of seeing Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory side by side at #18 and #19. The book-loving Matilda is one of my all-time favorite characters from children’s literature. And I’ll always have fond associations for Charlie, because I taught myself to type by copying Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There’s also a top 100 YA books poll going on at Persnickety Snark.

Speaking of Matilda, great fan of reading, Terry Doherty has started a list/widget at The Reading Tub with books about kids finding a love of reading. She would welcome your suggestions. Also, my congratulations to Terry for being the latest Featured Sweetheart at the Texas Sweethearts blog. There’s a great interview!

Helaine Becker believes that kids enjoy reading. Inspired by a recent visit as guest author at a bookstore, she shares her thoughts on why kids sometimes get a reputation for being non-readers. I think she makes some good points, especially: “Kids don’t like to read books that are “good for them” or jammed down their throats.” 

Middle school librarian Ms. Yingling is shifting the focus of her blog a bit to focus more on finding books for boys. She’s reformatted her blog, added a list of other blogs that suggest books for boys, and declared Guy Fridays. It’s always interesting to me how people shift the focus of their blogs over time, as they discover areas that they are particularly passionate about.

Sara Zarr, on the other hand, wants to know if blogging is dead. She notes: “I don’t have time to read and comment on blogs the way I used to, and that seems to have led to fewer comments on mine, or folks do their commenting on Twitter and Facebook where my blog feeds—or commenting has been replaced with sharing, liking, and reTweeting.” The post is a bit slanted (understandably) towards author blogs, but the discussion has implications for us all. I think it depends on whether you’re blogging FOR the sense of community, or to share particular things that lend themselves more to the longer format of the blog (vs. Twitter or Facebook).

Lee Wind (co-founder of the Kidlitosphere Comment Challenge) has a new blog about The Zen of Blogging. He says: “This is my new on-line home for sharing weekly inspiration and how-to tips about blogging with you.” 

Speaking of the Comment Challenge founders, Pam Coughlan has a great post this week at Booklights about Thrifty Reading, with suggestions for acquiring books during tough economic times (and no, shoplifting is NOT among her suggestions). See also Susan Stephenson’s suggestions at The Book Chook for finding free reading material online. Also at Booklights, Susan Kusel suggests checking out holiday-themed books from the library EARLY.

Quick hits:

• At Maw Books, Natasha discusses the two types of book owners (basically those who do and don’t derive part of their satisfaction from actually owning the book). Which type are you?
• Poetry Friday this week was at Some Novel Ideas. Charlotte’s weekly roundup of middle grade fantasy and science fiction reviews is up at Charlotte’s Library.
• Congratulations to Laurel Snyder, who has an article in today’s Boston Globe about fairy tale novelizations.
• The deadline to submit posts for the March Carnival of Children’s Literature is Thursday, March 25th. The March Carnival will be hosted by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
• As usual, Abby (the) Librarian has more links in her weekend Around the Interwebs post, and Laura has some on her Happy St. Patrick’s Day Links post at Bib-Laura-graphy.

© 2010 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson’s Book Page. All rights reserved.
You can also find me on Twitter and at Booklights from PBS Parents.
All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission (with no additional cost to you).

The 2010 Kidlit Conference

(this is a reposting from the 2010 main page for KidLitCon. There’s great info here that we don’t want lost, even as we start posting info for the 2011+ conferences)

Greetings, YA and KidLit Blogdom!

Welcome to the first informational post for the Kidlitosphere 2010 Conference!

This year’s conference will be hosted by Andrew Karre (Carolrhoda), Ben Barnhart (Milkweed Editions) and Brian Farrey (Flux) in beautiful downtown Minneapolis.

Let’s start with the basics:

Where: Open Book, Minneapolis, MN
When: Saturday, October 23, 2010

The rough schedule calls for a wine and cheese reception on the night of Friday the 22nd, a day of workshops and panels on the 23rd, followed by a closing conference dinner in the evening.

We’re still working out the details of cost for the conference and hotel; we hope to have all the particulars very soon. Our goal is to make the cost comparable to past conferences. Once we’ve finished getting bids, we’ll post registration information. But if you send an e-mail right now to kidlitcon2010@gmail.com with the subject line “Intent to Register,” you will receive $5.00 off the cost of registration.

We are now accepting proposals for workshops and panel discussions. We’re looking for a range of topics aimed at both beginning and experienced bloggers. While we’ll consider all submissions and ideas, we are most interested in seeing sessions that address:

• Issues of diversity in reviewing/blogging
• Effective marketing/networking
• Ethics of book reviews
• Beyond the blog (vlogs, etc.)

Remember: this is your conference! If there is a topic that you’d like to see addressed but don’t feel you’re able to present on, please shoot us an e-mail at kitlitcon2010@gmail.com with your suggestion. Later on, we’ll list the topics that people would like to see covered and solicit proposals based on the requested list.

Please download and fill out the submission proposal form, then e-mail it back to us at the above address. Deadline for submissions is August 1, 2010. Our goal is to reply to all submissions by mid to late August.

Follow us on Twitter here: twitter.com/kidlitcon2010

And here’s the Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/Kidlitcon-2010/137299689614524

Please note that the KidLitCon 2010 blog will be your best source for up to date information.

Lots more info to come in the next few weeks. (We’re working on a few fun surprises…) For now, start spreading the word! Be a fan on Facebook! Follow us on Twitter! Let people know when the conference is and to start their plans to attend/present/support!

See photos from the KidLitosphere Conference

See more information about KidLitosphere Conference 2009

Visit the KidLitosphere Conference 2008 site

Visit the KidLitosphere Conference 2008 CafePress store

Monday Afternoon Visits: March 15

From Jen Robinson’s Book Page

It’s been a while since I had time to do a Kidlitosphere news roundup. I don’t have a ton of time this afternoon, but I wanted to at least share a few things.

Terry and I were both pretty caught up in the Share a Story - Shape a Future literacy blog tour last week, and so we have no children’s literacy round-up for you all this week. I did do a post at Booklights today highlighting some of the links from each day of Share a Story that I thought would be of particular interest to parents. I’m also happy to report here that I won a giveaway - a set of four books from Sleeping Bear Press will be donated to the Santa Clara City Library (where I’m on the Foundation Board). This came about because I was a finalist in the RIF Multicultural Books giveaway. Many thanks to everyone who participated in Share a Story 2010!

Speaking of Booklights, Susan Kusel was kind enough to share some board book suggestions for me at Booklights last week. I’ve added many of them to my wish list for the baby.

Betsy Bird is up to number 21 in the Fuse #8 Top 100 Children’s Books poll. She’s going to share out the top 20 books one by one, so we all have a while to wait to see who the winner is. But I think it’s safe to say that they’ll all be wonderful books from here on out.

Mitali Perkins has a lovely post profiling 5 outstanding literacy warriors who are on Twitter. All five are organizations that I’m already following and retweeting on a regular basis, but I’m thrilled to see Mitali spreading the word and drawing more people’s attention to these excellent programs. Mitali also has a slightly longer list of literacy champions that you can follow - I just double-checked, and found a few new people to follow. Mitali also shared a useful list of a dozen YA novels with Asian guy protagonists last week.

The SLJ Battle of the (Kids) Books started this week. You can read Liz B’s thoughts on Round One, Match one at Tea Cozy, or view the full schedule here. SLJBoB is “a competition between 16 of the very best books for young people published in 2009, judged by some of the biggest names in children’s books.”

Shannon Hale has had a couple of interesting posts recently about the shortage of female characters in movies these days (especially animated movies), and what, if anything, concerned parties can do about this. She says: “what changes things is money. Even more specifically: the Opening Weekend. That’s all that really matters. If women and girls flood movie theaters the opening weekend in support of movies that are led by or even have a realistic ratio of female characters, those accountants will notice and things will change.”

Speaking of female protagonists, Doret has put together a “list of titles with strong and smart female protagonists” at TheHappyNappyBookseller. As she notes, the list is by no means complete, but it’s an excellent place for anyone to start looking for strong female characters in books.

Meanwhile, David Elzey is still working on helping people to build better boy books at Fomograms, writing last week about nonlinearity in books for boys.

Quick hits:

• Today’s Nonfiction Monday roundup is at In Need of Chocolate. The most recent Poetry Friday roundup is at Becky’s Book Reviews.
• Heidi R. Kling has declared this week author appreciation week. I learned about it from Becky Levine, who is planning to participate.
• Just a reminder: Abby (the) Librarian is working on a roundup of audiobook reviews for April 1st. You can find more details here. I don’t usually review the books that I listen to on audio, because I like to be able to include quotations, but I’ll definitely be tuning in for ideas.
• See also Abby’s latest Around the Interwebs post for additional Kidlitosphere news.
• Dawn Morris defends the use of read-alouds in middle school at Moms Inspire learning.

Hope you found some links of interest!

© 2010 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson’s Book Page. All rights reserved.
You can also find me on Twitter and at Booklights from PBS Parents.
All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission (with no additional cost to you).

Sunday Afternoon Visits: February 28

From Jen Robinson’s Book Page

I’ve been spending some time weeding through my ridiculously large to be read pile this weekend, after a relatively hectic work-week, so I haven’t had much time for reading blogs. But I managed to do a bit of catch-up today. Here are some links that I thought people might be interested in.

This year, for the first time, you can purchase stickers to place on your Cybils finalist and winning titles. All of the information, and samples of the stickers, is available at the Cybils blog.

Speaking of book-related contests, School Library Journal’s annual Battle of the Kids’ Books starts tomorrow. This contest pits book against book, until a field of 16 is narrowed down to one by an illustrious panel of judges. Betsy Bird has the details at A Fuse #8 Production. You can also follow the action on Twitter at @SLJsBoB or at the Battle of the Kids’ Books blog.

At The Reading Tub, Terry Doherty has an interview with Liz Burns from A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy. Terry says: “We *know* a lot about Elizabeth Burns’ book, TV and movie interests from A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy, but she doesn’t talk much about her job as the Youth Services Consultant at the New Jersey State Library Talking Books and Braille Center. In fact, she makes it clear on the blog that what she says there is her opinion and not her employer’s. Last fall, after reading several articles about Braille literacy, I asked Liz if we could do an interview.”

Speaking of Tea Cozy, Liz has sparked a discussion about the difference between “lit blogs” and “book blogs”. All of the discussion is in the comments, so do go beyond the main post if you’re interested in this. Personally, right at the moment, I don’t have the energy for any clique-ish behavior or finger-pointing. But I’m glad that Liz is sorting things out. [See also Liz’s thoughts on the new CommonSense Media ratings at Barnes & Noble’s website.]

Colleen Mondor has the 12th edition of her What a Girl Wants series at Chasing Ray, with musings and book recommendations from authors about “Bad Girls” in literature. She says: “This month the panel discusses just what good and bad have to do with sex and the teenage girl, why we persist in labeling girls so much more harshly than boys and books that help readers navigate these ever present and always turbulent teen waters.”

Amy has an interesting post at Literacy Launchpad about watching movies made from books, and why it’s important to use them as an addition to, rather than a substitute for, reading the book.

And speaking of movies made from books, check out the new Percy Jackson Reads! poster from the ALA store. There are also bookmarks available. I think this poster would be a great classroom addition - let’s by all means jump on the coattails of the popularity of the book and the movie and use them to encourage reading. I’m sure that Rick Riordan agrees.

David Elzey continues his great series about building better boy books. Part 7 is about keeping things short. He says: “There are readers, many of them boys, who will pick up that book and judge it by its girth, by its font size, by the amount of white on the page. As a former bookseller, if I had a dollar for every boy I ever witnessed fan a book’s pages as a method for deciding whether or not to read it, I’d have enough money today to buy a small publishing house.”

Greg Pincus is offering a free consultation from his blog, The Happy Accident. He says: “At conferences recently, besides doing my main presentations, I’ve also been giving individual, shorter social media consultations (see below for the details of how they work). Because they’ve proven to be so popular, I’ve decided to start offering that same service here through The Happy Accident. To kick this new offering off  (and to help celebrate my fourth anniversary of blogging over at GottaBook), I’m going to give one of these consultations out for freeeeeee.” Comment by midnight tonight with a recommended blog or blogs to enter. You’ll already find a great list of recommended blogs in the comments.

Today is the last day of The Brown Bookshelf’s 28 Days Later celebration of African American authors and illustrators, featuring Charles R. Smith, Jr. Of course, one of the great things about blogs is that it’s easy to go back and look over the posts from the entire month, if you’ve missed them.  

Quick hits:

• Franki from A Year of Reading rounds up various posts about the recent Dublin Literacy Conference.
• KatieD at Creative Literacy has some nice tips on becoming a better blogger. Like “Take breaks and keep coming back”.
• As reported in Publisher’s Weekly, John Grisham announced that he’ll be writing a new series of legal thrillers for middle grade readers, starring a 13-year-old legal whiz. Now, I tend to be a bit skeptical about prolific adult authors verging into KidLit territory. But I have to say that I think that Grisham’s writing style, as exemplified in his lighter titles for adults, like The Firm, will translate well to books for kids.
• Episode 12 of the Exquisite Corpse Adventure, written by Lemony Snicket, is now available. Thanks to Monica Edinger for the link.
• At TheHappyNappyBookseller, Doret and her commenters are discussing the question of how early to post reviews ahead of publication date.
• Elaine Magliaro has an extensive list of links for the upcoming Women’s History Month at Wild Rose Reader.
• At Book Moot, Camille shares advice for authors on school visits, with nuts-and-bolts dos and don’ts.
• The Featured Sweetheart at The Texas Sweethearts blog this week is Kelly Holmes, who launched the Unsung YA Heroes celebration a few weeks back at YAnnabe.
• And for more links, check out Betsy Bird’s latest Fuse News, Laura’s latest Sunday Links at Bib-Laura-graphy, or Abby’s latest Around the Interwebs at Abby (the) Librarian.

And now it’s back to my towering stacks of books. Eventually, my creating order from the books will translate into more reviews for you. In the meantime, Terry will have this week’s Literacy and Reading News round-Up tomorrow at The Reading Tub.

© 2010 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson’s Book Page. All rights reserved.
You can also find me on Twitter and at Booklights from PBS Parents.
All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission (with no additional cost to you).