Jen Robinson's Book Page: Items of Interest

The Penderwicks: Jeanne Birdsall

My Childhood Under Fire: Nadja Halilbegovich

Items of Interest

April 16, 2006

Yet again catching up on the blog news after a trip (regular readers may notice a pattern here), a few items especially caught my eye:

Two of the blogs that I regularly visit both reviewed a picture book that I love, Annette Simon's Mocking Birdies. You can find positive reviews at A Fuse #8 Production and Book Moot.
Book Moot also has a neat list of Titanic-related books, in honor of the April 14th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.
A Fuse #8 Production also carries "a fabulous rant" by J. K. Rowling "against our thin-girl-obsessed culture." My favorite part is where J. K. R. (she has the same initials as me) bumps into a woman she hasn't seen in three years, and the woman comments not on J. K.'s new baby, or on the publication of her sixth hugely best-selling novel, but on the fact that she's lost weight.
Both A Fuse #8 Production and Big A little a mention the movie version of Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, recently released to DVD. Like Kelly, I didn't find that The Thief Lord was my favorite Funke book (I LOVE Inkspell), but I do think that it should be a good movie.
Read Roger links to an article about Easter Crime, a Norwegian annual tradition in which people read mysteries and thrillers during the week leading up to Easter. There seems to be some sort of historical precedent to this, stemming from Vikings returning from raids to the British Isles, and settling down to tell tales of murder and mayhem. Since I love mysteries, I thought that this was a cool tradition.
Kids Lit links to a Philadelphia Inquirer article by Kristen A. Graham and Dan Hardy about a gender gap in reading. The article notes that "In the region and across the country, boys lag behind girls in nearly every educational benchmark." It discusses the gap in more detail, and explores various potential explanations for it.
Mother Reader has a funny post about cutting corners, in life and in books.
You can find some other pictures of funny signs on the blog Random Notions and Stories of Teaching. (I linked to a site last week that featured funny signs). The funniest one from Random Notions, to me, was this one.
The Magic of Books has a lovely post suggesting a vacation idea: that of buying location-specific children's books whenever you go somewhere. I love this idea, and plan to take it up immediately. Well, I've always bought children's books when I go to England, but I hadn't thought of local books from places in the U.S.

Posted at 05:51 AM in Children's Books, Reviews, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Comments

Yet again catching up on the blog news after a trip (regular readers may notice a pattern here), a few items especially caught my eye:

Two of the blogs that I regularly visit both reviewed a picture book that I love, Annette Simon's Mocking Birdies. You can find positive reviews at A Fuse #8 Production and Book Moot.
Book Moot also has a neat list of Titanic-related books, in honor of the April 14th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.
A Fuse #8 Production also carries "a fabulous rant" by J. K. Rowling "against our thin-girl-obsessed culture." My favorite part is where J. K. R. (she has the same initials as me) bumps into a woman she hasn't seen in three years, and the woman comments not on J. K.'s new baby, or on the publication of her sixth hugely best-selling novel, but on the fact that she's lost weight.
Both A Fuse #8 Production and Big A little a mention the movie version of Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, recently released to DVD. Like Kelly, I didn't find that The Thief Lord was my favorite Funke book (I LOVE Inkspell), but I do think that it should be a good movie.
Read Roger links to an article about Easter Crime, a Norwegian annual tradition in which people read mysteries and thrillers during the week leading up to Easter. There seems to be some sort of historical precedent to this, stemming from Vikings returning from raids to the British Isles, and settling down to tell tales of murder and mayhem. Since I love mysteries, I thought that this was a cool tradition.
Kids Lit links to a Philadelphia Inquirer article by Kristen A. Graham and Dan Hardy about a gender gap in reading. The article notes that "In the region and across the country, boys lag behind girls in nearly every educational benchmark." It discusses the gap in more detail, and explores various potential explanations for it.
Mother Reader has a funny post about cutting corners, in life and in books.
You can find some other pictures of funny signs on the blog Random Notions and Stories of Teaching. (I linked to a site last week that featured funny signs). The funniest one from Random Notions, to me, was this one.
The Magic of Books has a lovely post suggesting a vacation idea: that of buying location-specific children's books whenever you go somewhere. I love this idea, and plan to take it up immediately. Well, I've always bought children's books when I go to England, but I hadn't thought of local books from places in the U.S.