Thursday Afternoon Visits: NCAA Tournament Edition

I'm watching a bit of college basketball in the background, while catching up on Kidlitosphere news today. (You just have to listen for when the crowd gets loud to know when something exciting is going on.) Here are a few highlights from the children's and young adult book blogosphere.

At The Miss Rumphius Effect, Tricia begs to differ with a Guardian article that says: "The larger-than-life, black-and-white morality of children's books is a relief for adult readers tired of ambiguity." I agree with Tricia that this is not a particularly nuanced representation of the moral complexity often found in children's books. But I'd be happy to see more adults take time to check out children's and young adult literature either way.

Little Willow has the official press release for the Readergirlz, Guys Lit Wire, YALSA 2009 Operation Teen Book Drop, a "reading stimulus plan for hospitalized teen patients... Teen patients in pediatric hospitals across the United States will receive 8,000 young-adult novels, audiobooks, and graphic novels." In preparation for the April 16th event, the Readergirlz Divas are hosting a series of weekly contests. You can find more details here.  

Laini Taylor has the scoop on an upcoming Phoenix event called Project Book Babe, a fundraiser for bookseller Faith Hochhalter, who is going through chemotherapy right now for breast cancer. Laini also has news about her own expected and sure to be a book-lover baby.

Terry Doherty has a wrap-up post for the Share a Story - Shape a Future literacy blog tour at The Reading Tub. Please join me in thanking Terry for this amazing event. Although the initial event is finished, Terry promises "Share a Story-Shape a Future will be back. For the near term, the blog will remain our bulletin board and archive. If/When we pull together the links and bloglists into a single spot, that’s where you’ll find it. When we’re ready to start thinking about themes and start planning our lineups, that’s where we’ll make the announcement." [Image credit: Author/illustrator Elizabeth Dulemba created the Share a Story - Shape a Future logo.]

Speaking of raising kids who love books, Jenny from Read. Imagine. Talk shares a lovely anecdote in which her very young son, Ethan, demanded to go to the bookstore right away "because there was a new book out that he "really very needed to get right now.""  He was following her example, and gives us all a real-life demonstration of the way that modeling book-loving behavior rubs off on kids.

I've been enjoying Sarah Mulhern's "Slice of Life" posts at The Reading Zone. Yesterday, she related some snippets of discussion from her 6th grade girls about the best literary boyfriends. Sarah concluded: " I couldn’t help but smile- they weren’t arguing over boy bands, or movie stars, or athletes- it was literary characters. This language arts teacher couldn’t be prouder." As she should be. Sarah also shares her accelerated reader frustration, and a more positive follow-up.

Tamara Fisher has a great post at Unwrapping the Gifted about using bibliotherapy with gifted kids. She explains: "Essentially, by having gifted students read literature and/or biographies featuring gifted children or adults, the students can gain insights into their own giftedness." She also provides a list of sample questions to ask kids about their reading, and an extensive reading list.

Dates are now available for Rick Riordan's author tour for The Last Olympian. He'll be here in the Bay Area on May 9th, just a few days after the official release date. Safe to say that these events will be very, very popular! Perhaps I'll see some of you there.

Kate Coombs has a fun post about picture books with bite at Book Aunt. She says: "it is with some gusto that I give you a handful of books that aren’t sweet. In fact, they are tart and funny, and above all, toothy."

I also enjoyed this post at Ink Splot 26, about the movie Race to Witch Mountain. I know that a lot of people think it was corny, but I love the 1975 Disney movie version of Escape to Witch Mountain. I will have to have the new special edition DVD, even though my brother Steve, the king of gift-giving, already bought me the regular DVD. So I was pleased to learn from Nancy T's interview with the stars of the new movie that the actors who played the original Tony and Tia will have cameos in the new movie. Fun stuff!

And finally, I wanted to say thank you to Travis from 100 Scope Notes, who recently included my blog in his "blogs that clog my reader (in a good way)" list. I'm in excellent company. And his is a blog I never miss, either.