Sunday Afternoon Visits: November 8: Kidlitosphere Links and News

It's been a fairly quiet weekend on the kidlit blogs, for whatever reason. However, I have run across a few things of potential interest for you.

At Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, Terry Doherty shares a monthly roundup of new literacy and reading-related resources. The new resources section was something that we spun out of our weekly children's literacy roundups, in the event of streamlining those, and Terry's been collecting ideas for this monthly column. I hope you'll check it out. She's got lots of useful tidbits.

The NCBLA blog reports that the fourth episode of The Exquisite Corpse Adventure is now available. This installment was written by Susan Cooper. The post adds: "And if you need further incentive to share the Library of Congress and the NCBLA's reading outreach project with the young people in your life, take a look at Timothy Basil Ering's electric new illustration for Episode Four!"

In the context of a recent graphic novel kick, Gail Gauthier muses at Original Content on how many books are "rigidly" formulaic. She says: "Maybe reading the same formula/pattern/storyline over and over again assists them in some way I've just never heard about." In the comments, Becky Levine adds: "I wonder about this often--how many things we see as formulaic, "old" don't feel that way to a child reading them--since they don't have X number of decades of this kind of reading behind them." What do you all think?

At Books & Other Thoughts, Darla D. wonders whether it's a good idea for parents to "ink out all of the bad words" in books before giving them to their children. Darla says: "A discussion between this parent and child about unacceptable language and why the parent believes it is not a good idea for her daughter to use those words might be more productive than expurgating the text." There are a range of opinions in the comments - it's quite an interesting (and civil) discussion.

At Biblio File, Jennie Rothschild discusses Amazon's new capability to quickly share Associates links on Twitter, in the context of the new FTC disclosure regulations. She notes: "the way I understand it, you'd have to disclose ON YOUR TWEET that you'll make money off the link. But how does one fit a link, why you're linking to the product, and a disclosure all in 140 characters? That, I don't know." I don't know, either. The idea of being able to share a Tweet that says "I'm reading this" and then get a small commission if anyone should happen to click through and buy the book, well, that has some appeal. But I think that the disclosure would be very tricky to pull off in any meaningful way.

Lori Calabrese has started a new monthly meme (possibly to become a weekly meme, if there's sufficient interest) in which she'll link to book giveaways around the Kidlitosphere. Don't you love her cute logo for Fish for a Free Book? She says in the launch post: "If you are hosting a children’s- young adult book-related giveaway, sponsoring a giveaway, or just found a really awesome giveaway that you’d like to share with us, please leave it here! (Please make sure it’s children’s book related)".

Speaking of giveaways, I, like Betsy Bird, don't usually link to them in my roundups (there are just too many). However, Betsy recently talked at A Fuse #8 Production about one that I think is brilliant. From the press release: "The YA and MG authors of the 2009 Debutantes are giving away a 46-book set of their debut novels to ONE lucky library, anywhere in the world! In light of recent budget cuts to libraries in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other communities, these debut authors would like to contribute their library to your library, offering up brand new novels for your patrons at no cost." Pretty cool!

Quick hits:

• Susan T. identifies a bunch of additional "best of" lists at Chicken Spaghetti. Really, it would be redundant for me to link to any of these. If you're interested, you can peruse Susan's 2009 list of best of lists.
• This week's Poetry Friday roundup is at Wild Rose Reader, hosted by Elaine Magliaro.
• 5 Minutes for Books has a lovely guest post by Fiona Ingram about her adopted daughter's "journey into the wonderful world of words."
• Daphne Lee explains the high cost of books, including children's books, at The Places You Will Go (books are particularly expensive in Malaysia, where Daphne lives). She also suggests alternatives for families having difficulty buying books on their own.
• Happy third blog birthday to Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
• You can find more links at the Book Dads Weekend Wander and Katie B's Odds and Bookends column at First Book.

And that's it for today. Hope you're all having a lovely Sunday.

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission on purchases (with no additional cost to you).