KidLitosphere Central

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).

From Jen Robinson’s Book Page

So I’ve been struggling through a bout of laryngitis this week. It’s made me a bit cranky (or perhaps general malaise has made me cranky - whichever). But the nice thing about the whole online world is that I can still interact with people, without needing to talk. And so, here are a few tidbits from the Kidlitosphere and twitterverse.

First up, the Kidlitosphere’s own Betsy Bird was profiled in Forbes today (online anyway)! Author Dirk Smillie calls her “the most powerful blogger in kids’ books”. And really, who could dispute that? I think she uses her power for good, though, don’t you? I especially liked this part, a quote from Dan Blank: “She channels her oddness into this niche blog, which then extends beyond its niche. Why was she born to do this? Who knows?” But do read the whole article. It’s great stuff!

Speaking of Betsy, she’s at the halfway point in revealing the results of the top 100 children’s books poll, with today’s reveal of titles 51 to 55. The list of titles is a wonderful resource in and of itself. And what Betsy’s doing with the posts, profiling each book, including cover images and quotes from contributors - it’s truly a labor of love. She’s made me want to go and read, or re-read, every single one of these titles. See also an interesting analysis of titles 100-71 by Eric Carpenter at What We Read and What We Think. Eric looks at things like distribution of votes, distribution of titles by decade, etc. His post is well worth a look.

While I love many of the titles on Betsy’s list, the genre that catches my attention most reliably is dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, especially when published for young adults. There’s been plenty of activity within my pet genre this week:

• Lenore is still hosting dystopia month at Presenting Lenore. She has a very tempting list of upcoming sequels here.
• Scholastic released the title (Mockingjay) and cover of the third Hunger Games book, due out August 24th.
• Amy Sturgis at Redecorating Middle-Earth in Early Lovecraft has published an update to her tremendously comprehensive list of YA dystopias. (Thanks to Jenny Schwartzberg for the link).
• And PW ran an in-depth feature by Karen Springen today about the popularity of dystopias among teens. (Via PW Children’s Bookshelf newsletter)

My fellow Cybils panelist, Sam from Parenthetical.net, has posted mini-reviews of all of the non-winning finalists in our category, middle grade fantasy and science fiction. I’m not sure if or when I’ll get to this myself, so I refer you to Sam’s comments. They line up pretty well with what I would say, anyway. I’ll also note that Joni Sensel’s The Farwalker’s Quest is a post-apocalyptic title, and thus had my automatic attention. Melissa also has a Farwalker’s Quest review at One Librarian’s Book Reviews.

Speaking of the Cybils, special thanks to Rocco Staino for a lovely writeup about the Cybils winners at School Library Journal.  

The February I Can Read Carnival (an idea launched by Terry Doherty, now in its second moth) is running right now at Anastasia Suen’s 5 Great Books blog. Fittingly enough, Anastasia was the category organizer for the 2009 Easy Reader and Short Chapter Book committee of the Cybils. She has lots of excellent links for new readers.

Quick hits:

• David Elzey continues his series on the aspects of books that appeal to boy readers. He talks about violence/conflict, action, and emotion in parts 3 through 5.  
• At the Spectacle, KA Holt expresses her concern about lexile ratings being used to steer kids away from books that they want to read.
• Travis has a very fun post at 100 Scope Notes predicting what books will be like in 3001. He is ridiculously creative, isn’t he?
• The Texas Sweethearts have named their newest Featured Sweetheart: Mitali Perkins. Great choice, wouldn’t you say? You can read the interview here.
• Liz B writes again, at Tea Cozy, about why it’s wrong to sell advance reading copies, or place them in library collections. If she keeps saying it often enough, perhaps the message will get across. There’s an extensive discussion going on in the comments.

And that’s all for today. Hope you all found some news 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).

From Jen Robinson’s Book Page

There has been a lot going on around the Kidlitosphere this past week. Here are some links for your perusal:

The biggest news is that Betsy Bird has started reporting the results of her Top 100 Children’s Books Poll at A Fuse #8 Production. Betsy asked readers to share their list of top 100 children’s books of all time. She’s compiled the results, and is reporting the list in small chunks, complete with commentary and assorted covers for each book. These posts (see 100-91, 90-86, 85-81) are truly an amazing resource, filled with quotes and memories about beloved books, new and old. Even though we’re only 20 titles in, I would venture to suggest that the completed list is going to make an excellent recommended reading list. In fact, I actually dreamed about reading these posts last night. Stay tuned to A Fuse #8 Production for the rest of the Top 100.

For anyone who might be snowed in this week, Joan S. at the First Book blog suggests: “Settling in to enjoy a GOOD BOOK doesn’t require electricity or a wireless connection. Satellite dishes may be covered with snow, wires may be down, but READING A BOOK just takes a quiet nook and a willingness to enjoy the moment.”

I noticed two posts today about creative classroom activities dedicated to popular books. At Educating Alice, Monica Edinger shares a mural that her students created after reading When You Reach Me together as a class. And at Learn Me Sumthin’, Tony’s class is tracking Percy Jackson’s adventures using Google Maps. Here’s a snippet from Tony’s post: “Some very unexpected and wonderful things started to happen. The classroom conversations about writing became stronger, because I think the kids really started to see the connection that fiction, even fantasy like The Lightning Thief, is more ‘real’ when the author can layer in events, details that are real. Also the importance of setting, which can get lost of 4th grade writers is now more apparent.”

Speaking of classrooms, Everybody Wins! reports: “MrsP.com has created some beautiful literary-inspired valentines — that you can download for free at www.MrsP.com. They are perfect for teachers or mentors to use in the classroom this week. They are created for readers of all-ages and perfect to give to the book lovers in your life.” Here’s the direct link. They are very cute! 

And in other Percy Jackson news, Amanda from A Patchwork of Books reports: “The Guardian has an awesome interview with author Rick Riordan (of Percy Jackson fame) about his son’s dyslexia and ADHD preventing him from enjoying reading. Well Mr. Percy Jackson’s story helped fix that!”. Of course, the Lightning Thief movie comes out on Friday, too, so we’ll be hearing lots more about Percy in the coming weeks.

David Elzey is writing a series (based on work that he did as part of a graduate residency) on building better boy books. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here. Part 1 is introductory, while Part 2 is about grabbing the attention of boys by using humor. David says: “there are subtleties to some forms of humor that boys respond to above others that can be incorporated into fiction. Knowing these elements might help explain what makes many boys – both readers and characters – tick.”

At Booklights, Susan Kusel discusses reading Charlotte’s Web aloud to young children (who might not cope well with Charlotte’s death). Susan notes: “As a librarian, I frequently get asked what age the book is appropriate for. My answer is always that it depends on your child. Will they be able to handle it?” Commenters seem to agree.

Also at Booklights, Terry Doherty has launched a new monthly column called A Prompt Idea. She says: “Each month, I’ll talk about writing and suggest ways to add writing to children’s literacy diet. Even if your child isn’t ready to put pen to paper, prompts can open the doors to building vocabulary, honing communication skills, and being creative. Varying the outlets for writing and communicating is as important as offering different types of reading materials.”

Abby (the) Librarian and Kelly of Stacked are starting a new monthly roundup of posts about audiobooks. Abby says: “We want to encourage people to listen to audiobooks and to post about them. We want to provide a place for people to find out about great audiobooks.”

The Cybils winners will be announced this Sunday (Valentine’s Day). In the meantime, the Cybils blog has been running a fun series about the inside scoop on the nominees in various categories. Here’s Part I, Part II, and Part III. I continue to be wowed that Deputy Editor Sarah Stevenson manages to keep up her own blog, and keep coming up with creative content for the Cybils blog, too.

Quick hits:

• A new edition of the monthly Notes from the Horn Book e-newsletter is now available. This edition focuses on the recent ALA award winners. Roger Sutton has more details.
• Kate Coombs shares a lovely story at Book Aunt about the enthusiastic response to Caps for Sale from a 6-year-old Latina child being treated for cancer. As Kate says: “that, my friends, is what children’s books are all about.”
• I’m not generally a big interview person. But I did enjoy Jules’ recent “questions over breakfast with Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm” post at 7-Imp. There are many Babymouse references, as you might imagine.
• Steph Su shares her thoughts on Team Peeta vs. Team Gale. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, do give The Hunger Games and Catching Fire a look. Me, I’m Team Gale, and hoping to hear more from him in Book 3.
• This week’s Nonfiction Monday roundup is hosted by Mary Ann Scheuer at Great Kid Books. Mary Ann also hosted last week’s Poetry Friday roundup. Her linking muscles must be tired out! 
• Laurel Snyder wants to start a campaign to get Ruth M. Arthur’s A Candle in Her Room back in print. I would certainly buy it (or any of Arthur’s others) - I adored her books when I was in elementary school.
• Shrinking Violet Promotions has a post by Laurie Helgoe (author of Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength) about how to gather with introverts (who, by nature, resist gathering).
• Colleen Mondor has written a new article for Bookslut about diversity in young people’s literature. Liz B has some follow-on discussion at Tea Cozy, as does Colleen at Chasing Ray. See also Mitali Perkins’ proposal for faces and YA book covers at Mitali’s Fire Escape.
• Sarah/aquafortis has an interesting post at Finding Wonderland about how young adult literature often crosses genres, with YA novels appearing “between the cracks.” I love this about YA (and children’s) literature.
• Another Sarah reports at the Reading Zone about a lovely success story, in which a student learns that “reading is fun”. Who knew?
• For more Kidlitosphere links, check out Laura’s Superbowl Sunday Links post at Bib-Laura-graphy.

And that’s it for today. I’m feeling much better having the starred items in my reader cleaned up, and I’m off to watch the Duke/UNC game with a friend. Happy reading, all!

© 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).

From Jen Robinson’s Book Page

The Kidlitosphere has been largely dominated by news about the ALA awards and a couple of book cover controversies this week. Still, I did manage to find a few other links, too. Hope that you find some tidbits of interest.

After a brief absence, the monthly Carnival of Children’s Literature is back. Anastasia Suen has taken over organizing the carnivals from founder Melissa Wiley. The Carnival is a monthly celebration of children’s literature. A different person hosts each month. Participants submit either their best post from the current month, or (in some cases) posts according to a particular theme. For January, Jenny Schwartzberg will be hosting the carnival. The theme is Winter Wonderland (fitting, since the carnival will be held at Jenny’s Wonderland of Books). Submissions are due by midnight January 29th, at the Carnival submission page. I’ll let you know when the Carnival is available for viewing.

I mentioned briefly in my last roundup that a new tempest had blown up around the Kidlitosphere. I wasn’t even sure how to write about it, because I was running across posts everywhere. Fortunately, MotherReader is on the job. She has a summary of the most important links regarding the issue with the cover of Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore, another Bloomsbury title featuring a protagonist of color, and a whitewashed cover.

In related news, and I’m blatantly lifting this blurb from Betsy Bird’s latest FuseNews, “Little, Brown & Co? You got some ‘splaining to do. Both 100 Scope Notes and bookshelves of doom bring up a bit of whitewashing that I was assured at the time was a one time printing mischief on the first cover … unaware that it happened again on the second. And the third. You know what I’m talking about, Mysterious Benedict Society.”

YALSA has come up with their Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers and Best Books for Young Adult lists. These lists are amazing resources (the links go to more detailed posts at Kids Lit). Speaking of recommendations for young adult literature, at YAnnabe, Kelly is collecting recommendations from different blogs for unsung young adult novels. She has links to 47 lists from across the blogosphere so far. She invites people to post their own lists through Sunday. And at Interactive Reader, Postergirl Jackie Parker shares her 2009 Top 10 (or so) for Readergirlz.

Also via Kids Lit, the 2010 Edgar Nominees were awarded this week by the Mystery Writers of America (for kids, young adults, and adults). There were quite a few strong nominations for children and young adults this year - I agree with Betsy Bird’s assessment that 2009 was an excellent year for mysteries.

At The Reading Tub, Terry Doherty has a heart-felt plea for authors and publishers to make sure that early readers are actually welcoming to new readers. She illustrates visually how hard it is to read text that’s too small, and doesn’t have illustrations, and suggests that “Although the content of easy readers spans myriad subjects and might even have chapters, there are definite differences between an easy reader and a book for independent readers, even newly minted ones. The two easiest criteria to remember are big margins and illustrations.”

At the Cybils website, a lovely printable flyer about the contest, complete with the 2009 finalists, is now available. Also, thanks to Danielle Dreger-Babbitt for writing a lovely introduction to the Cybils for the Seattle Book Examiner.

Quick hits:

• I was sad to hear about the sudden death of author Robert Parker this week. Though better known for his adult mysteries (most notably the extensive and entertaining Spenser series), Parker did publish a few books for kids, too. Omnivoracious has the details.
• Kim has a nice post about life balance, using a grocery shopping analogy, at Escape Adulthood.
• Poetry Friday is at Liz in Ink today, a delightful meal-by-meal collection of blog visits. This week’s Nonfiction Monday roundup was at Wendie’s Wanderings.
• Marge Loch-Wouters has a mini-rant at Tiny Tips for Library Fun that resonated with me. She laments the “pervasive “You’re-Not-the-Boss-of-Me” attitude” that she sees in library patrons, by which people are completely unwilling to accept any limitations on their behavior. I think, sadly, that this behavior is everywhere these days.
• For more Kidlitosphere news, check out Abby (the) Librarian’s latest Around the Interwebs: Shiny awards edition.

Wishing you all a relaxing and book-filled weekend!

© 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).

From Jen Robinson’s Book Page

I’ll tell you - leave the computer behind for a few days, and hundreds of posts pile up in the reader. But I found digging out to be a good excuse to also spend some time weeding out inactive feeds. Anyway, here are a few highlights from the Kidlitosphere of late:

Terry Doherty just published this month’s roundup of new resources for literacy and reading at The Reading Tub. This monthly series is an offshoot of the weekly Children’s Literacy Roundups that Terry and I do together, one that Terry has largely taken responsibility for. This month, she focuses on several resources related to literacy and reading, including a new service for recording books for your kids.

MotherReader has provided a FAQ for the upcoming 2010 Comment Challenge (co-hosted with Lee Wind, and which I previously described here). You can sign up tomorrow (Friday) with either MotherReader or Lee Wind.

This weekend is also Bloggiesta, hosted by Natasha from Maw Books. As MotherReader put it, “It’s a chance to spend some time improving your blog, catching up on your reviews, and taming your Google Reader.” I don’t know that I’ll be formally participating in this one, since I’ve been catching up on my blog quite a bit this week already (and because I really MUST do some reading this weekend). But I’ll be there in spirit.

The deadline is approaching to submit titles for the ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards. You can find more information at the ForeWord website. “ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards were established to bring increased attention to librarians and booksellers of the literary and graphic achievements of independent publishers and their authors.”

It’s also time to submit titles for Betsy Bird’s Top 100 Children’s Fiction Chapter Books poll at A Fuse #8 Production. This is a follow-on to the previous Top 100 Picture Books list that Betsy compiled. Readers have until January 31st, 2010 to submit their top 10 middle grade fiction titles of all time (NOT just 2009 titles). No early readers, no young adult books. This poll is focused squarely on middle grade fiction. You can find more details here. There’s also a young adult poll brewing at Diane Chen’s School Library Journal blog, Practically Paradise. Diane says “These are the titles that appeal to teens including young adult novels, nonfiction, and picture books for teens (ages 13-19)”.

John Green has an interesting article in School Library Journal about the future of reading. It’s quite long, but well worth the time to read. For instance, in regards to the future of book distribution, he says: “Just this: if, in the future, most books are sold either online or in big box stores like Costco and Wal-Mart, you (librarians) will become even more important to American literature. How you choose to build your collection, whom you buy from, and how you discover the works you want to share with your patrons will shape what Americans—whether or not they ever visit libraries—will read and how they will read it.” And “There’s no question … that librarians are to thank for the astonishing growth of YA fiction over the last decade.“ Oh, just read the whole thing. I found this link at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

As previously mentioned, the Cybils shortlists are now available, and the Cybils judges (myself included) are reading away. For those in need of more reading suggestions, however, Cybils Deputy Editor Sarah Stevenson has a compilation of recommended reading lists from Cybils panelists. She notes that they are “not predictions, DEFINITELY not hints, and probably not prophecies, but certainly a great source of reading material if your TBR pile is getting low.” Now, this is not a problem I ever expect to have again in my life. But still, they’re nice lists. Elaine Magliaro also has a roundup of some more “official” best-of lists at Wild Rose Reader. And Sherry Early has a roundup of reader-submitted year-end booklists at Semicolon, 138 and counting. And last, but definitely not least, Betsy Bird has a scaled back version of her must-read Golden Fuse Awards (including such helpful categories as Best Swag of the Year).

Speaking of the Cybils, in response to the previously mentioned discussions about lack of diversity in the Cybils shortlists (more a symptom of a larger issue than any criticism of the panelists themselves), Colleen Mondor calls upon readers to demand diversity in publishing. She says: “We have to make this a big deal. No more holding a diversity challenge and thinking that is enough. No more having an event where we look at books by POC or with diverse protagonists. No more making diversity something we look at on special days or for special reasons.” See also Doret’s take at TheHappyNappyBookseller. What do you all think?

On a lighter note, Laini Taylor today described a Reader’s Retreat in New Hampshire, organized by Elizabeth MacCrellish, that sounds (and looks - she has photos) wonderful. Here’s the gist: “Reading reading reading, a juicy stack of wonderful books, and taking breaks for yummy meals prepared for you, in the company of other lovely kindred spirits who have also been living inside books all day?” This event, a Squam Arts Workshops (SAW) session scheduled for September 1-5, sounds amazing to me. Perhaps someday…

Quick hits:

• The Readergirlz spotlight title of the month is The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. Little Willow has all the details.
• Last week’s Poetry Friday roundup was at A Year of Reading. Tomorrow’s is scheduled for The Miss Rumphius Effect. This week’s Nonfiction Monday roundup was at Picture Book of the Day. Next week’s will be at All About Children’s Books.
• If you’re looking for weighty topics to post about, check out Liz B’s “terribly important to post about list” at Tea Cozy. I look forward to reading her eventual posts on all of these topics.
• Jules has a simply mind-boggling 2009 retrospective post at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.
• At Everyday Reading, Janssen shares her techniques for fitting reading time into her regular life. There are some additional suggestions from readers in the comments, too. I agree with Janssen and commenters that audiobooks are a great way to eke out some extra reading time. I listen while I’m cooking, folding laundry, and when I’m driving anywhere.
• And if that’s not enough linkage for you, Betsy Bird has a huge new edition of Fusenews at A Fuse #8 Production. Really, it’s well worth a look.

© 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).