The Collecting Children's Books blog has a useful entry about Newbery Medal winners. It's interesting to read through the years and winners and be reminded of classic titles and more recent books, but the blog entry also, usefully, adds information on books related to each winner.
Kids like the comfort and familiarity of series, so this is a handy list for reference, based on some rather good books.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Australian Book Industry Awards 2008
Sydney Morning Herald article about the winners here.
Shortlist of nominees here - among the books, it can be interesting from a library collection point of view to know what else was considered worthy.
Or, if you want to know some of the winners (some of which are on the CBCA shortlist):
Shortlist of nominees here - among the books, it can be interesting from a library collection point of view to know what else was considered worthy.
Or, if you want to know some of the winners (some of which are on the CBCA shortlist):
- Book of the Year - Geraldine Brooks for her novel People of the Book (HarperCollins Publishers Australia).
- Literary Fiction Book of the Year - People of the Book.
- Book of the Year for Younger Children - Li Cunxin's children's version of Mao's Last Dancer, The Peasant Prince (Penguin Group Australia), with illustrations by Anne Spudvilas.
- Book of the Year for Older Children and the International Success Award - John Flanagan for his novel Rangers Apprentice 7: Erak's Ransom (Random House Australia).
- General Non-Fiction Book of the Year - Kaz Cooke for Girl Stuff (Penguin Group Australia).
- Publisher Marketing Campaign of the Year 2008 - Allen & Unwin for Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.
- The Pixie O'Harris Award for distinguished and dedicated service to the development and reputation of Australian children's books - Kate Colley.
- The award winners were chosen by an academy of booksellers and publishers.
AAP
List taken from SMH link above.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Rosemary Sutcliff with GREAT covers
With the popularity of all sorts of fantasy fiction that's got history/histories/imagined worlds' histories in it, Rosemary Sutcliff's novels are ones I'd love to be promoting to my kids. But the only copies in the library right now are older ones, with older covers, and harder to promote. One tries, but one mostly gets that glazed look...
So I was jubilant to find this blog entry, and will be getting my fabulous independent bookseller to track down these editions. Go and read the blog entry at Rosemary Sutcliff: an appreciation and see more eyecatching covers and the titles that have been or will be reissued (I borrowed the image above from them, and suspect it probably originally came from Amazon).
Warrior Scarlet is a particular Rosemary Sutcliff favourite of mine, but I know that the cover on my own 1970s paperback edition just wouldn't cut the mustard with kids now. Not the prose, which is as muscular and engaging and unsentimental as ever it was: it's the cover designs, which can and have dated. But how many kids would at the very least pick up that new cover for Mark of the Horse Lord? More than a few, I'd guess (partly because they'd either like to meet or be the cover model!).
Monday, June 16, 2008
TED Tuesday: a different view
Instead of listening to a TED talk today, go and look at their website.
http://www.ted.com/
The access you have is either through a list of themes, or a 'visualisation'.
I don't have the answers, yet; still thinking. But I wonder how that style of presenting information is something we should be considering in relation to how we teach, how our libraries are organised, how we are communicating with our students.
For now, I don't know how to program such a layout/format, but that's not really the point.
Many teachers came through our own education in the linear, text-based age (I was chuckling last week when our school internet cable had been damaged, and there was no internet at all for two days till it was repaired - ye gods, how DID we all manage to get an education without the net???) and yet our students operate in a world that also includes hypertext and the visual in ways that we, too, need to incorporate into the learning environments we create, to engage them where they're at and bring them along on this educational journey.
http://www.ted.com/
The access you have is either through a list of themes, or a 'visualisation'.
I don't have the answers, yet; still thinking. But I wonder how that style of presenting information is something we should be considering in relation to how we teach, how our libraries are organised, how we are communicating with our students.
For now, I don't know how to program such a layout/format, but that's not really the point.
Many teachers came through our own education in the linear, text-based age (I was chuckling last week when our school internet cable had been damaged, and there was no internet at all for two days till it was repaired - ye gods, how DID we all manage to get an education without the net???) and yet our students operate in a world that also includes hypertext and the visual in ways that we, too, need to incorporate into the learning environments we create, to engage them where they're at and bring them along on this educational journey.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Library furniture find
I've been keeping an eye out for a shelf unit to use at the entrance to the library to display new books. We've had them on tables, and thought about converting a study carrel desk we had, but *meh* - why is it so often in school that you're making do, making do?
I've looked around at library suppliers (big $$), places like Officeworks, Ikea...
...but found what I want at Target, and they're on special this week, in Sydney at least.
It's a 3 x 4 shelf cube unit in dark wood laminate, and unlike some there is a back on it (it's a relation of the Ikea Expedit type of shelving unit), so it's a set of dark wood boxes that it seems to me will have many possibilities.
They're normally $199, on special this week until 19 June for $99. Self assembly, but that's not too hard to do.
I tried putting a couple of books on the shelves at Target, just to see how it looked. Even large ones fitted in the spaces, and the dark background gave the books a certain impact. I noticed earlier this year that a large and very well funded private school library I was in displayed their new books on dark shelves, and filed that little nugget away for reference.
For the staff development day at the beginning of next term, we're being given most of the day, and a very small budget, to do some 'they have to be visible' renovations. It was done last year, and classrooms were painted, spaces reorganised, jobs that don't get done for lack of time or other reasons, did get done...and so it's happening again (it was popular with the staff and the work done noticed by the students).
We've got our eye on the foyer/entrance of the library, and so this shelf unit is a good beginning. I want to renovate the foyer/entrance to have impact and excitement, so the kids will walk into the library and the specific atmosphere of a place where things happen, things are possible, and learning is exciting.
Budget? Small. Ideas? Big!
I've looked around at library suppliers (big $$), places like Officeworks, Ikea...
...but found what I want at Target, and they're on special this week, in Sydney at least.
It's a 3 x 4 shelf cube unit in dark wood laminate, and unlike some there is a back on it (it's a relation of the Ikea Expedit type of shelving unit), so it's a set of dark wood boxes that it seems to me will have many possibilities.
They're normally $199, on special this week until 19 June for $99. Self assembly, but that's not too hard to do.
I tried putting a couple of books on the shelves at Target, just to see how it looked. Even large ones fitted in the spaces, and the dark background gave the books a certain impact. I noticed earlier this year that a large and very well funded private school library I was in displayed their new books on dark shelves, and filed that little nugget away for reference.
For the staff development day at the beginning of next term, we're being given most of the day, and a very small budget, to do some 'they have to be visible' renovations. It was done last year, and classrooms were painted, spaces reorganised, jobs that don't get done for lack of time or other reasons, did get done...and so it's happening again (it was popular with the staff and the work done noticed by the students).
We've got our eye on the foyer/entrance of the library, and so this shelf unit is a good beginning. I want to renovate the foyer/entrance to have impact and excitement, so the kids will walk into the library and the specific atmosphere of a place where things happen, things are possible, and learning is exciting.
Budget? Small. Ideas? Big!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Do school libraries need books?
A recent article in The Age newspaper about a school in Coburg prompted discussion on the oztl list about the shape and features of information services in schools now and into the future. Does the future hold libraries at all, or is the model defined by a space and its contents outmoded? (in which case, who's doing the work a teacher librarian does now? It's not all simplistically replaceable by Google and a keyboard. And is a library simply a space and books anyway?).
Read the article here.
Link in full:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/education-news/libraries-close-their-books/2007/03/23/1174597895189.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
or tinyurl:
http://tinyurl.com/3fjvjy
There is an article written by the Principal and staff, with their view of this situation: New age, new paradigm: the Coburg experience published in Access, November 2007. (Let me know if you're aware of an online link to it).
Read the article here.
Link in full:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/education-news/libraries-close-their-books/2007/03/23/1174597895189.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
or tinyurl:
http://tinyurl.com/3fjvjy
There is an article written by the Principal and staff, with their view of this situation: New age, new paradigm: the Coburg experience published in Access, November 2007. (Let me know if you're aware of an online link to it).
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Books in the future
An opinion piece in the New York Times, Bits, Bands and Books by Paul Krugman, puts forward the view that:
In 1994, one of those gurus, Esther Dyson, made a striking prediction: that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product — software, books, music, movies — the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.”
and
Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we’ll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.
In an e-book world of the future, what is the role of the library? If the price of books, delivered to e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle (when will this be for sale here in Australia?) comes down so much, will it make that content more widely available, and students will be able to own, or rent? content independently of a school library. They can now, of course, with the internet, or physical books.
How can authors make a living if content is sold so cheaply?
How will students learn to navigate the e-book jungle to the ones that will be of most use to them? - just as they need this guidance with the net.
Food for teacher librarian thought.
In 1994, one of those gurus, Esther Dyson, made a striking prediction: that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product — software, books, music, movies — the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.”
and
Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we’ll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.
In an e-book world of the future, what is the role of the library? If the price of books, delivered to e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle (when will this be for sale here in Australia?) comes down so much, will it make that content more widely available, and students will be able to own, or rent? content independently of a school library. They can now, of course, with the internet, or physical books.
How can authors make a living if content is sold so cheaply?
How will students learn to navigate the e-book jungle to the ones that will be of most use to them? - just as they need this guidance with the net.
Food for teacher librarian thought.
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