Kids Lit
Books and More for Children and Teens

Notes from the Windowsill is a great page dedicated to children's books, "celebrating children's books loved by adult readers." They publish bibliographies as well as a journal about children's books that is published several times a year. Both the bibliographies and the journals are available at no charge on the website.

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The New York Times: Girl Power Fuels Manga Boom in U.S.

For the first time since the 1950s, girls are starting to buy comic books. This time, the comics are manga from Japan. This is an important trend for librarians to be aware of. The article lists some of the top publishers and series.

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BBC NEWS: Toys have lasting impact on brain

Tests of baby owls show that things learned in youth transfer to adulthood. The study shows that "learning new skills very early in life prompts neurons in the brain to build new connections that still work into adulthood."

Goodness, think what reading to kids at an early age is doing! Let's go out and build more neural connections in the children we work with.

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Quidditch.com's Incomplete Guide to Lemony Snicket Allusions offers an in-depth look at dystopian references within the Series of Unfortunate Events.

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News from Reading Today Daily : Gr8 news! Texting “no bar to literacy” The claim that kids using text messaging abbreviations destroys their written literacy skills has been proven unfounded.

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Books for Children Portraying Aging and Older Characters in a Positive Light contains books for preschoolers through sixth graders. It is a joint project between the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and Societal Education about Aging for Change (SEA Change).

You will need Adobe Acrobat to read the pdf file.

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Ypulse has a posting about the top magazines read by college women. Interestingly, there were some teen titles on the list, including Seventeen, CosmoGirl, YM and Teen People. There is also a list for the top magazines read by college men.

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Space Art in Children's books 1950's to 1970's offers some great scans of vintage space travel illustrations from children's books.

Via Boing Boing.

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Lissa Explains it All offers HTML help specifically for kids. The site offers information on CSS, frames, tables, color, and javascript.

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A Fast and Brutal Wing by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson.

Niki and Emmet are siblings who were caught naked in the woods on Halloween night. That same night, a famous author who lived nearby disappeared. Through the kids' writings and newspaper articles, readers slowly begin to learn the truth about what happened.

In Niki's writings, she claims that she and her brother can change into animals at will. She can become a cat and Emmet becomes a hawk. This fascinating book lets readers find their own truth.

I couldn't put this one down. I just had to continue to work out the puzzle of the book. It was quick moving and lots of fun, but filled with mystery and suspense. Recommended for teens who enjoy fantasy and/or mysteries.

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News: Harry Potter 6 release date: July 16, 2005

Woo hoo! We will have to plan a Harry Potter party that Saturday. Our last one was very well attended by those elusive preteens. We did a treasure hunt, trivia contest, and mixed magical potion drinks. I would definitely do the potion drinks again. The kids had a really fun time with those. I'll have to come up with some other ideas...

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Sky News has this article about a popular book-writing kit for children for sale in Britain. The kit walks kids through plot choice and character selection. Unfortunately, the article ties the phenomenon together with Rowling and Harry Potter. I am certain that it runs much deeper than a single series. Perhaps we could start to refer to the depth of great children's books out their right now to inspirt young writers.

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Infants, Children Prefer Sounds Over Pictures And Only Slowly Become Visually Oriented, Studies Find

This is an important study for those of us who do storytimes or other programming for infants and toddlers. According to the research by Vladimir Sloutsky, a professor in the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State University, "sounds are more dominant over visuals from infancy, and only slowly through childhood do visuals become more important."

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JS Online: The new Web of life is an article about how the lives of college students are affected by the Internet. The answer is: profoundly! People working with teens should read this, since it offers insight into why teens are so interested in technology and truly integrating it into their lives.

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Slashdot - Le Guin Peeved About Earthsea Miniseries

Um, I would say more than peeved, I would say royally pissed off. Read both her personal website and the Slate article. I had taped the episodes of the TV movies to watch, but deleted them after hearing how awful they were. I do not want a colorless Earthsea to cloud my personal vision.

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NPR : The Real Lemony Snicket

All Things Considered interviews Daniel Handler, author of the Series of Unfortunate Events. He compares A Cat in the Hat with his series, and also talks about Jim Carrey as Count Olaf and his own childhood fears.

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The CCBC has held their annual Newbery Discussion. The winner was A Dream of Freedom by Diane McWhorter with Al Capone Does by Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko and The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place by E.L. Konigsburg.

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Madison Public Library offers a great selection of Reading Suggestions for Kids and Teens. The lists run from preschool to middle school to teens and cover all sorts of topics.

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CNN.com - A delightful variety of children's books featuring a collection of humorous books with descriptions that will send people looking for them immediately.

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Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, the movie, has an incredible website filled with twists and turns and places to explore. Enjoy!

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Center for Children's Books at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offers some items online, including collection development help, booklists, storytelling help, and programming ideas.

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incorporated subversion has the results of the 2004 Edublog Awards which will lead interested blog readers to a huge crop of the top education blogs.

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thebestkidsbooksite offers content that covers storytimes, books, crafts, holidays, and more. A great site for those of us in search of fingerplays, songs, and craft ideas.

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Yahoo! News reports that Gloria Estefan will be the latest celebrity to write a children's book. The book will be about Estefan's pet bulldog, Noelle.

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Now you can view the trailer of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the new film from Tim Burton that stars Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. It looks splendid!

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Coming Soon! has the story of Phobos Entertainment picking up the media rights to Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. They plan to do both a movie and a video game.

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Better Homes and Gardens offers a chance for kids to Build a Snowman online. Just click and drag the features you want onto to the snowman.

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ACHOCKABLOG points us to The Economist's collection of recommended children's books.

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Dibdabdoo

An ad-free child-safe search engine and directory of sites.

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Homepage for James Ransome who illustrates picture books, including Bruh Rabbit and the Tar Baby Girl.

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The CCBC has posted the results of their annual mock Caldecott Discussion. The winner was Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes. And the two honor books were ellington was not a street illustrated by Kadir Nelson and written by Ntozaki Shange and A Hot Day on Abbott Avenue illustrated by Javaka Steptoe and written by Karen English.

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booktrade.info has a story about the V&A Illustration Awards where Sara Fanelli was the overall winner for her illustrations of Pinocchio.

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The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson (0-525-47347-5)

This charming book reminds me of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Aiken. It has many of the same old-fashioned features filled with horse-drawn carriages, orphans, frightening boarding schools, and brave children. But it differs in other ways. It has warm-hearted, kind adults, and the gorgeous setting of Vienna.

Annika was left in a church as a tiny infant and found by Ellie and Sigrid who took her home and adopted her. Ellie and Sigrid work as servants for three professors, so Annika was brought up used to hard work, but also surrounded by great food and love. She dreams of her mother coming and finding her, and one day it happens. Her mother, a German aristocrat, arrives and takes Annika off to her castle in Germany. But the castle is falling apart, there is very little food, and few servants. Annika yearns to return to the warmth of her Vienna home, but refuses to leave her new-found family. But all is not as it seems, and Annika must sort out the truth in the middle of all of the lies she is being told.

This would be a great read aloud for a classroom. It has adventure and bravery on the part of both the boys and girls in the story. Enjoy!

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Katherine Paterson spoke at the Cambridge Forum in November. WGBH now has her speech available online.

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In a Global Test of Math Skills, U.S. Students Behind the Curve

"The PISA study, conducted every three years, ranked the United States 24th out of 29 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that represents the world's richest countries. Students from Finland and South Korea scored best in the survey, which measured the ability of 15-year-olds to solve real-life math problems."

The gap is widening between the U.S. and other countries. I liked that the article mentioned that perhaps some of the blame can be placed on "an overreliance on facile standardized tests."

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Storyteller.net offers all sorts of resources and news items for storytellers and storytelling. It has a listing of storytellers around the world, book recommendations, CD reviews, stories, and online samples of storytelling. Plus an RSS feed for the news section!

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One more comic book link for the day. HeroMachine is presented by Underground Online. You can create your own comic book hero or heroine. From the color of their outfit to their hairstyle to the type of gauntlet on their wrists.

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Sequential Tart is a webzine about the comics industry that offers interviews, articles and news.

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TOKYOPOP 5th Annual Manga Talent Competition runs from December 1st through February 15th, 2005. The top 20 finalists will have their work posted on the TOKYOPOP website. This is definitely a contest to share with your library's manga fans and budding artists.

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The New York Times > Children's Books: Notable Books of 2004 offers a list of the top nine books for children from age three through twelve and up.

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The New York Times > Babes in a Grown-Up Toyland

This article starts by asking if the new interests of children in video games, TV and other electronic diversions are eroding childhood. Then interestingly, it goes on to ask if our belief in a sheltered childhood is incompatible with modern society.

At the end of the piece, a comparison is made between The Secret Garden as a book of yesterday and Harry Potter as a phenomenon of today. But there is still a place for The Secret Garden in libraries and in lives. And there are many of us, including children's librarians, giving children sheltered childhoods and sharing books that are modern right next to old favorites. It never has to be one vs the other. They can be done side by side. Modern children in a sheltered world.

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New York Daily News - Babies are bookin' it

A nice article on new toddler programs, baby reading areas, and board book collections in Brooklyn.

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Mesoj is a blog from an education librarian from Alabama.

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The last I knew, David Almond had a site through Random House. Now check out his new site! It is both evocative and functional, offering biographical information, books and reviews, writing tips, a FAQ for schools, and a notice board.

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The Leaf Chronicle has this article that offers a small collection of children's books that look at complex issues in life. The books include subjects like adoption, dementia in a grandparent, and friendship.

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The Rabbit Hill Festival of Literature
will be held in Westport, CT in late March and early April. It sounds simply wonderful. I am so envious of the tour of Weston Woods studios.

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ProudParenting.com

This site provides information and support for parenting GLBT children and teens or being gay parents who are raising children. It offers book reviews, news, and more.

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