Friday Visits: December 11: Kidlitosphere News and Views
December 11, 2009
Given the bustle of the holiday season, I've had trouble keeping up with Kidlitosphere news lately. But here are some highlights from the past couple of weeks (at least those that I think are still timely).
Michelle is running a Cybils Award Challenge at Galleysmith. She says: "The Cybils Award Challenge is where participants are encouraged to read from The Cybils Award nominees for the given year." The challenge runs through the end of 2010, so you have plenty of time to participate.
Speaking of the Cybils, several Cybils bloggers were nominated for this year's EduBlog awards. You can find the list at the Cybils blog. And, of course, it's not too late to use the Cybils nomination lists (and past short lists) to help with your holiday shopping!
Speaking of holidays, in honor of Hanukkah, I'd like to bring to your attention a podcast at The Book of Life, in which Heidi Estrin, Esme Raji Codell, Mark Blevis, and Richard Michelson discuss a variety of topics, including their predicted winners for the 2010 Sydney Taylor Book Award. For my Jewish readers, I wish you all a Happy Hanukkah!
Book lists abound this time of year. I mentioned several in Monday's post at Booklights, but have a few new ones to share here. Lee Wind offers a list of GLBTQ books for middle schoolers. Another list I like a lot is Kate Messner's list of her favorite 2009 titles, broken into creative categories (starting with my favorite, dystopias). Colleen Mondor has an excellent three-part piece with book recommendations for girls from several authors (the regular participants in Colleen's What a Girl Wants series). And, Library Lady from Read it Again, Mom! shares her lists of Best Picture Books of the Decade and Best Chapter Books of the Decade. Finally, for a fun list of movies, Susan Taylor Brown shares over 200 movies about the literary life.
This is very late news, but the Readergirlz author of the month is Tamora Pierce. Little Willow has all the details at Bildungsroman.
Liz B. at Tea Cozy was inspired by the recent School Library Journal cover controversy to start a list of "books where an alcoholic (including recovering alcoholic) is portrayed as something other than the evil, abusive person". (Have I shared that? People were offended because the librarians mentioned in Betsy Bird's SLJ article on blogging were shown on the cover having drinks in a bar.). Also from Liz, see the William C. Morris YA Debut Award shortlist.
Speaking of recent controversies, Steph Su has a thoughtful post on the recent situation by which certain young adult titles were removed from a Kentucky classroom in Montgomery County (see details here). What I especially like about Steph's post is that she links to comments from a blogger who she doesn't agree with, so that she can understand both sides of the debate. My personal take is that the county superintendent is using a specious argument about academic rigor to remove books that he finds personally offensive from the classroom. See also commentary on this incident from Laurie Halse Anderson, Colleen Mondor, and Liz Burns.
Quick hits:
- Excitement is building for the January 5th announcement of the next National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Reading Rockets has the scoop. Whoever is chosen will have some big shoes to fill, coming after Jon Scieszka.
- Janssen has a truly beautiful post at Everyday Reading about her family's last Christmas with her younger brother, Shepard. It's a tear-jerker, but also a nice reminder about what's really important.
- This week's Poetry Friday round-up is at Random Noodling by Diane May. See also an explanation of Poetry Friday from Susan T. at Booklights, and the results of this week's Poetry Stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect (an assortment of poems that mention time).
- This week's Nonfiction Monday round-up is at Rasco from RIF.
- This week's Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction review round-up is at Charlotte's Library.
- Becky Levine said some nice things about my blog last week, and I just wanted to thank her publicly. She also recommends several other blogs of particular interest to writers. Those are well worth a look. Also worth a look are the 31 Blogs You Might Not Know that Susan Taylor Brown is highlighting each day this month.
- For more links (including author Grace Lin's appearance on the Today Show) visit today's Around the Interwebs post from Abby (the) Librarian. See also Travis' most recent Morning Notes post at 100 Scope Notes and Omnivoracious' latest YA Wednesday post from Heidi.
- And, of course, you can always find lots of news in Betsy Bird's Fuse News posts at A Fuse #8 Production (here and here, for example). Betsy also broke the news this week that Kirkus Reviews (a journal heavily used by librarians for collection development) will be closing.
And that's all I have for you today. I hope that you find some tidbits worth reading, and that I can do better at keeping up with the Kidlitosphere news in the future. Happy weekend, all!