Betsy Bird has an excellent article about children's literature blogs in this month's School Library Journal (it's actually the cover story). She discusses how and why she started her own blog ("a magazine article changed my life"), and the difference between what blogs offer and what professional journals offer. She says:
"Blogs replace nothing and will never replace professional review journals. They supplement them instead. And if the publishing world happens to be listening that's wonderful, but it's not what's driving these sites. Bloggers blog because they love literature written for youth, and they want to share that love with others who feel the same way."
I agree completely.
The article is accompanied by a list of "ten of the best blogs for folks who take kids' lit seriously (but not too seriously)". I don't envy Betsy at all in having to come up with a list of only ten, and I think that she did a great job.
I also love the photo in the article, as well as the cover photo. Click through to see.
Articles like this are important, because they reach out to a broader audience (in this case the readership of the print School Library Journal) and give them entry points into the Kidlitosphere. Kudos to Betsy and SLJ for doing such a great job with this one.
Thank you for this story — it was just the right day to read it.
Posted by: beth kephart | November 01, 2009 at 02:11 PM
Glad you liked it, Beth! I thought it was a great story, too.
Posted by: Jen Robinson | November 01, 2009 at 05:53 PM
I've given you an award. It will be posted on Friday, November 6th
http://coffeeforthebrain.blogspot.com
Aaron @ Coffee For The Brain
Posted by: Aaron | November 01, 2009 at 06:27 PM
Thanks for this! I've spun through the top ten list and added feeds to a few of them, reading lots about the WTWTA movie, the Printz awards and cats. I also found this list of 100 book blogs from Online School which I found really useful: http://tiny.cc/YuG8Z
Posted by: Tristan Bancks | November 01, 2009 at 07:59 PM
It's kind of cool--I've seen a lot of lists, articles, etc about kidlit blogging lately. Thanks for mentioning Confessions of a Bibliovore on your reply to Betsy's post, by the way. Now I feel like gathering up the best from my RSS feed!
Posted by: Maureen | November 01, 2009 at 08:23 PM
Thanks for thinking of me, Aaron!
Tristan, I like the Online School lists, too (they actually have a couple of different ones relevant to KidLit blogs).
And Maureen, you are very welcome. I agree with you - it's great to see lots of articles out there about KidLit blogging these days.
Posted by: Jen Robinson | November 02, 2009 at 08:53 AM