Monday Afternoon Visits: March 15: Kidlitosphere News and Views
March 15, 2010
It's been a while since I had time to do a Kidlitosphere news roundup. I don't have a ton of time this afternoon, but I wanted to at least share a few things.
Terry and I were both pretty caught up in the Share a Story - Shape a Future literacy blog tour last week, and so we have no children's literacy round-up for you all this week. I did do a post at Booklights today highlighting some of the links from each day of Share a Story that I thought would be of particular interest to parents. I'm also happy to report here that I won a giveaway - a set of four books from Sleeping Bear Press will be donated to the Santa Clara City Library (where I'm on the Foundation Board). This came about because I was a finalist in the RIF Multicultural Books giveaway. Many thanks to everyone who participated in Share a Story 2010!
Speaking of Booklights, Susan Kusel was kind enough to share some board book suggestions for me at Booklights last week. I've added many of them to my wish list for the baby.
Betsy Bird is up to number 21 in the Fuse #8 Top 100 Children's Books poll. She's going to share out the top 20 books one by one, so we all have a while to wait to see who the winner is. But I think it's safe to say that they'll all be wonderful books from here on out.
Mitali Perkins has a lovely post profiling 5 outstanding literacy warriors who are on Twitter. All five are organizations that I'm already following and retweeting on a regular basis, but I'm thrilled to see Mitali spreading the word and drawing more people's attention to these excellent programs. Mitali also has a slightly longer list of literacy champions that you can follow - I just double-checked, and found a few new people to follow. Mitali also shared a useful list of a dozen YA novels with Asian guy protagonists last week.
The SLJ Battle of the (Kids) Books started this week. You can read Liz B's thoughts on Round One, Match one at Tea Cozy, or view the full schedule here. SLJBoB is "a competition between 16 of the very best books for young people published in 2009, judged by some of the biggest names in children's books."
Shannon Hale has had a couple of interesting posts recently about the shortage of female characters in movies these days (especially animated movies), and what, if anything, concerned parties can do about this. She says: "what changes things is money. Even more specifically: the Opening Weekend. That's all that really matters. If women and girls flood movie theaters the opening weekend in support of movies that are led by or even have a realistic ratio of female characters, those accountants will notice and things will change."
Speaking of female protagonists, Doret has put together a "list of titles with strong and smart female protagonists" at TheHappyNappyBookseller. As she notes, the list is by no means complete, but it's an excellent place for anyone to start looking for strong female characters in books.
Meanwhile, David Elzey is still working on helping people to build better boy books at Fomograms, writing last week about nonlinearity in books for boys.
Quick hits:
- Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is at In Need of Chocolate. The most recent Poetry Friday roundup is at Becky's Book Reviews.
- Heidi R. Kling has declared this week author appreciation week. I learned about it from Becky Levine, who is planning to participate.
- Just a reminder: Abby (the) Librarian is working on a roundup of audiobook reviews for April 1st. You can find more details here. I don't usually review the books that I listen to on audio, because I like to be able to include quotations, but I'll definitely be tuning in for ideas.
- See also Abby's latest Around the Interwebs post for additional Kidlitosphere news.
- Dawn Morris defends the use of read-alouds in middle school at Moms Inspire learning.
Hope you found some links of interest!