Children's Literacy Round-Up: June 12

Here's the children's literacy news for this week:

• The U.S. Embassy donated a collection of children's books to the Al-Babtain Central Library for Arabic Poetry in Kuwait, according to the Kuwaiti Times. The library chairman "stressed the importance of encouraging children to read through providing them with interesting publications on topics of knowledgeable value, adding that this would better prepare our future generations."
• The Jefferson County Library Foundation recently donated 840 children's books and backpacks to preschool and Head Start students, according to YourHub.com in Denver.
• As outlined in the Jackson Clarion Ledger, Scholastic and Disney have both announced plans to make electronic versions of classic children's books available. The article also quotes the U.S. publisher of the Disney book group as saying "I still prefer to read traditional books. But if our program was available right now, I would be reading it to my child." You can also read about these programs in the Vail Daily News.
• The Virginian-Pilot recently featured Cheryl and Wade Hudson, who write and publish children's books aimed at black people. I especially liked this quote: ""What children's book authors really do is speak to the children in all of us," Cheryl Hudson said. "Children's books are healing and hopeful. They give us a window of imagination. "In 32 pages, they can take you all over the world.""
• I also enjoyed this Glenwood Springs Post Independent article about a librarian who works to get kids hooked on reading. Her name is Ms. Robinson. OK, it's Pam, not Jen, but still, you get quotes like this: "Robinson holds storytime for kids every Wednesday at the library, and she makes it interesting with music, puppets and games in addition to colorful books." If only...
• The Creswell Chronicle has a nice article about steps parents can take to encourage literacy in the home. Items listed include: "Write a letter a week with your child" and "Encourage your child to watch captioned television programs and DVDs", in addition to the usual concepts of reading with your kids, and showing them reading as an example.
• The University of Arkansas website recently carried a press release about a literacy conference for teachers. The idea is "to help the state's teachers meet challenges they face in helping their students succeed academically."
• The Youngstown Vindicator (Ohio) writes about a library program aimed at increasing literacy in babies. "The Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County created the Baby Brilliant program to teach early literacy skills to children and adults. The skills that the program teaches include letter knowledge, phonological awareness, print motivation, narrative skill, print awareness and vocabulary."

And that's it for this week. Happy summer reading!