We don't yet have the Amazon Kindle, or anything similar in terms of price range or range of available, easily downloadable e-books in Australia.
It was amusing to read of the recent contretemps in the US, where Kindle owners found that the copy of 1984 which they had bought and downloaded had been erased (and a refund credited to their account). The Amazon version is that it was an illegal download. It is disquieting, however, to think of the 'digital tether' /sense of burglary (and consequent extremely poor publicity) involved in this. Read more in this NY Times article and the NY Times tech blogger also commented here.
Oh, and since 1984 is out of copyright in many countries, free e-books of it are not hard to find. Lookee here, for instance. Various formats for various devices, including a plain ole computer (eg. pdf). It's also interesting to note that the setup of the Kindle is such that whatever you have on your Kindle you can't lend, as you might lend a physical book (or can lend, if you have an e-book in a shareable format such as .pdf).
And that the book involved should be George Orwell's 1984? There's something deliciously ironic about that, isn't there?
Cheers
Ruth
Thursday, July 30, 2009
The happy life of teacher librarians: Pollyanna
It's a long time since I read Pollyanna, but when I was thinking about this blog entry, it came to mind. In particular, her 'glad game'. Do you remember her glad game? Faced with a grim life in a grim aunt's house, she looked for the sunny side in everything. Not a bad half-full glass philosophy, but even as a kid, when I reached the bit where she was fraffly cheerful that she was given crutches in a charity bundle, cheerful/glad because she DIDN'T need them, I think I did twitch and feel momentarily queasy....
Anyway, during the recent holidays, when we were absent, the library appears to have had some visitors. Four legged. Judging by the size of their mementoes, they're either extremely uncomfortable mice or rather small possums. So we think a rat or two, maybe. Given that the school's in a semi-rural area, mostly surrounded by paddocks, wildlife can happen. But it's not what we like. So some baits were laid.
The school was built in the 1970s, when the Department of Education laid durable mid green lino and durable mid green carpet. And here's the glad game, coming at you....
...when Templeton (actually no, I wouldn't want to be killing off Templeton, because he did help Wilbur and Charlotte) - when Monsieur Rat went scuttling about in our lino-floored tea area, he found the baits. They're green, too. So hey, on the downside, we've got a rat (until the baits work), but oh glad oh happy, the baits are greenish....so those mementoes, reflecting the scientific principle that what goes in must come out, are also greenish, and blend in with the lino....!!
The glass is half full! (and will stay that way, unless Monsieur Rat, who's probably feeling rather unwell round about now, crawls into a wall cavity before expiring. If he does that, his memory won't be green, but it will be With Us for some time, at least until the corpse has disintegrated sufficiently...) (it's happened before, and it takes longer than you would wish).
Ah, the happy life of teacher librarians. You don't have to notice the rat poo unless you choose to do so! Green is good!
Cheers
Ruth
Anyway, during the recent holidays, when we were absent, the library appears to have had some visitors. Four legged. Judging by the size of their mementoes, they're either extremely uncomfortable mice or rather small possums. So we think a rat or two, maybe. Given that the school's in a semi-rural area, mostly surrounded by paddocks, wildlife can happen. But it's not what we like. So some baits were laid.
The school was built in the 1970s, when the Department of Education laid durable mid green lino and durable mid green carpet. And here's the glad game, coming at you....
...when Templeton (actually no, I wouldn't want to be killing off Templeton, because he did help Wilbur and Charlotte) - when Monsieur Rat went scuttling about in our lino-floored tea area, he found the baits. They're green, too. So hey, on the downside, we've got a rat (until the baits work), but oh glad oh happy, the baits are greenish....so those mementoes, reflecting the scientific principle that what goes in must come out, are also greenish, and blend in with the lino....!!
The glass is half full! (and will stay that way, unless Monsieur Rat, who's probably feeling rather unwell round about now, crawls into a wall cavity before expiring. If he does that, his memory won't be green, but it will be With Us for some time, at least until the corpse has disintegrated sufficiently...) (it's happened before, and it takes longer than you would wish).
Ah, the happy life of teacher librarians. You don't have to notice the rat poo unless you choose to do so! Green is good!
Cheers
Ruth
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
If you like this blog (or another school library one)....
...then you might like to toddle over here and see if you feel inspired. It would be fraffly encouraging to 'umble blogwriters, toiling away to bring the light of knowledge etc to the world. Or in the case of this particular blog, hoping to entertain and inform you while entertaining and informing myself with the happy life of teacher librarians.
Cheers
Ruth
Cheers
Ruth
Trailer: Coraline
From the book by Neil Gaiman, Coraline is almost in Australian cinemas - not one for small children...
You Tube url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7wxoqeVK0
Australian release date, according to the IMDB, is 6 August 2009.
Official website: http://coraline.com/
Read Roger Ebert's review here (he's my favourite go-to online film reviewer).
Cheers, Ruth
You Tube url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7wxoqeVK0
Australian release date, according to the IMDB, is 6 August 2009.
Official website: http://coraline.com/
Read Roger Ebert's review here (he's my favourite go-to online film reviewer).
Cheers, Ruth
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Privacy, Facebook and student naivety
Presenting a session on Internet Security Issues at our school's Crossroads program recently, I remarked to the Year 11 students that if my dad had done something extremely foolish when he was a teenager, it might, maybe have made it to radio and newspapers. If I had done ditto, you can add television to the mix. Still large corp. media outlets, though, not necessarily aware of or able to capture an individual life easily or quickly.
Now, if they do something extremely foolish, it can land on YouTube via a mobile/cell phone, or on Twitter, within seconds. Such is the changed world they need to take account of. Their foolishness can be far more readily found by potential employers doing a bit of googling than would have been possible ten, twenty, more years ago.
A recent NY Times article discusses the change Facebook has made, so that ALL status messages are now by default, PUBLIC - ie available for anyone to see - unless the Facebook user actively chooses otherwise. Default is public. Private requires action. Previously, the default setting has been 'private'.
How many students will make the change? Or care? How many should? More than will. I find students interestingly (expectedly?) naive about such things, far more trusting than they should be. It's part of being young and bulletproof, maybe. I regularly discuss internet privacy issues with students informally, as well as on the more formal occasions such as offered by the Crossroads program. The school system in which I work has, at present, blocked social networking sites such as Facebook so they aren't available when logging in at school, but students are certainly using these outside school hours - and I know that there are schools/systems where social networking sites are used in educational contexts.
How aware will students be that something they don't mean to be public may have legal implications? Unintended and possibly serious consequences? A whole scale of possibilities, from the agonies of social embarrassment to active/passive cyber-bullying to legal action for libel?
Given that the new social media are new to parents and teachers, the responsibility for understanding the implications of this - and conveying wise advice - is shared by home and school. But do parents and teachers understand and convey? And, if they don't, how bitter might be the lessons some of our kids learn from unexpected experience?
Cheers
Ruth
Now, if they do something extremely foolish, it can land on YouTube via a mobile/cell phone, or on Twitter, within seconds. Such is the changed world they need to take account of. Their foolishness can be far more readily found by potential employers doing a bit of googling than would have been possible ten, twenty, more years ago.
A recent NY Times article discusses the change Facebook has made, so that ALL status messages are now by default, PUBLIC - ie available for anyone to see - unless the Facebook user actively chooses otherwise. Default is public. Private requires action. Previously, the default setting has been 'private'.
How many students will make the change? Or care? How many should? More than will. I find students interestingly (expectedly?) naive about such things, far more trusting than they should be. It's part of being young and bulletproof, maybe. I regularly discuss internet privacy issues with students informally, as well as on the more formal occasions such as offered by the Crossroads program. The school system in which I work has, at present, blocked social networking sites such as Facebook so they aren't available when logging in at school, but students are certainly using these outside school hours - and I know that there are schools/systems where social networking sites are used in educational contexts.
How aware will students be that something they don't mean to be public may have legal implications? Unintended and possibly serious consequences? A whole scale of possibilities, from the agonies of social embarrassment to active/passive cyber-bullying to legal action for libel?
Given that the new social media are new to parents and teachers, the responsibility for understanding the implications of this - and conveying wise advice - is shared by home and school. But do parents and teachers understand and convey? And, if they don't, how bitter might be the lessons some of our kids learn from unexpected experience?
Cheers
Ruth
Monday, July 27, 2009
Trailer: Alice in Wonderland
Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland, with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter - here's a teaser trailer:
YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7j7b-iLPU4&feature=player_embedded
According to the IMDB the Australian release date is 11 March 2010, so only a few days later than the US one.
Official website: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/aliceinwonderland/ (but darn that ticking is VERY ANNOYING and kinda doesn't make you want to stay and sigh over the lush illustrations...)
Our admittedly a tad vintage (but not shabby) and classically illustrated (the original Tenniel ones) hardback of Alice in Wonderland has been finding a few friends recently.
Cheers
Ruth
YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7j7b-iLPU4&feature=player_embedded
According to the IMDB the Australian release date is 11 March 2010, so only a few days later than the US one.
Official website: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/aliceinwonderland/ (but darn that ticking is VERY ANNOYING and kinda doesn't make you want to stay and sigh over the lush illustrations...)
Our admittedly a tad vintage (but not shabby) and classically illustrated (the original Tenniel ones) hardback of Alice in Wonderland has been finding a few friends recently.
Cheers
Ruth
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Childhood favourites
What did you read, when you were a school student, either in primary school or secondary school? Shane Symonds over at his TL blog had an interesting entry about what kids are reading now, and what he remembers reading when he was a kid: I remember reading Willard Price, Biggles, the Hardy Boys and the Three Investigators, he wrote. One point he made was about the amazing amount of choice kids have now.
Set me to thinking about what I read when I was a child. I hope you'll add your input in the comments - I'd like this entry and its comments to be a collective venture, representing more memories than just my own.
Although I've been a reader/bookworm from a very young age, my reading memories probably start in primary school. I know we had many Ladybird books, and some of the pictures are with me still. I remember authors, and series, and Puffins, which seemed to be the publishing house producing lots of what I read then. They published the editions I read of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods series, for example. I read my mother's copies of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series, and gradually accumulated my own; it was probably her copy of Daddy Long Legs I read, and its sequel, Dear Enemy. C.S. Lewis' Narnia series was another I read all through, and more Enid Blytons than I can count or remember. I never quite got into Alice in Wonderland, but had all four books in the Little Women series, and tracked down Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom, rather less well-known Louisa M. Alcott books. Mary Poppins and The Borrowers, all of them. At one stage I was at a school that had lots of the colour fairy books by Andrew Lang - the Green Fairy Book and Blue Fairy Book and I think he got into some rather more obscure colours after he'd used up the obvious ones (?Aqua ?Chartreuse - not chartreuse!). One local library near us had all, or nearly all the Wizard of Oz series by L. Frank Baum - not just the well known first, but also Ozma of Oz and The Patchwork Girl of Oz and others. Read those. My sister and I read Noel Streatfeild books, particularly the Gemma series but also the others; and all the Chalet School books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. Elizabeth Enright's books gave me a view of life in America. Winnie the Pooh is a given, and The Wind in the Willows. The entire series of Swallows and Amazons. Leon Garfield's versions of the past, and Joan Aiken's historical fantasy books.
There were single titles too, lest I sound series-obsessed. Children of the Oregon Trail. The Silver Sword. The Endless Steppe, in which the privations were terribly real. The Diary of Anne Frank, although I didn't find it all that interesting and much preferred The Footsteps of Anne Frank for its biographical account, to her first person voice. Elizabeth Goudge's children's books, and on into her adult titles. The Swish of the Curtain by Brown. The Far-Distant Oxus by Hull and Whitlock.
Longtime Passing and Pastures of the Blue Crane by Hesba Brinsmead were from my high school years, as were Mary Stolz books, particularly The Seagulls Woke Me and The Organdy Cupcakes. In both primary and high school I read the excellent historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece and Cynthia Hartnett, and D.K. Broster's Jacobite trilogy beginning with The Flight of the Heron. Sometime in high school my mother started me on Georgette Heyer with These Old Shades, and Arabella, and they remain favourites. The teenage girls of Fifteen and Seventeeth Summer seemed so real (I discovered recently that sometimes you can't go back, when I tried rereading one of those).
My memories start blending into what I read later and still keep on my shelves, at home or school or both. Robin McKinley is a teacher librarian's discovery in the 1980s, since I was an adult when it was published, and I'm not sure if I read The Dark is Rising books first as adult or child. Likewise The Wizard of Earthsea.
I'll admit to scooting over to the children's lit bookshelves at home to add to this list; and yet what's there is a fraction of what this voracious reader worked her way through at the school library and local library in my childhood and adolescence. There were so many more books than I can remember or recall. I note my enthusiasm for reading through authors/series, and that this is still popular with kids, even if the preferred authors/series have changed (maybe now they're also easier to remember than single books). I note how few of the books I have at school, or lend, are ones I read as a child. A lot of the above could be characterised as 'girls' books', too.
And thinking of my own work at school now as a teacher librarian, I wonder how many of the loans we do will be books that 'stick'? I don't know that this is the most important thing. Some will, because they do, for their individual impact on a specific child or because (eg. Harry Potter or Twilight) they have become social phenomena of unforgettable size. But many won't; and yet isn't the most important thing the fact that we are encouraging them to read, to voyage in stories and take from them what they will for entertainment and to inform their lives in ways we may never know?
Try this: whether or not you choose to leave it as a comment, write down ten authors/books you remember reading as a child; give each a brief comment on what you liked/why you liked them.
Cheers
Ruth
PS for another view, here's NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's recent list of the best children's books ever. He got over 2,000 comments (read them here) and wrote a response to that here. All of which gives you a bunch of ideas from many people on what are the best children's books. In their opinion/s, many and varied. In a reader's comment on his reponse, one person wrote: It would be magical to regain the joy I found in books when I was ten years old. But you really can’t go home again. Not always, as a grown-up. But sometimes, yourself. And sometimes when reading/sharing books with kids.
Set me to thinking about what I read when I was a child. I hope you'll add your input in the comments - I'd like this entry and its comments to be a collective venture, representing more memories than just my own.
Although I've been a reader/bookworm from a very young age, my reading memories probably start in primary school. I know we had many Ladybird books, and some of the pictures are with me still. I remember authors, and series, and Puffins, which seemed to be the publishing house producing lots of what I read then. They published the editions I read of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods series, for example. I read my mother's copies of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series, and gradually accumulated my own; it was probably her copy of Daddy Long Legs I read, and its sequel, Dear Enemy. C.S. Lewis' Narnia series was another I read all through, and more Enid Blytons than I can count or remember. I never quite got into Alice in Wonderland, but had all four books in the Little Women series, and tracked down Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom, rather less well-known Louisa M. Alcott books. Mary Poppins and The Borrowers, all of them. At one stage I was at a school that had lots of the colour fairy books by Andrew Lang - the Green Fairy Book and Blue Fairy Book and I think he got into some rather more obscure colours after he'd used up the obvious ones (?Aqua ?Chartreuse - not chartreuse!). One local library near us had all, or nearly all the Wizard of Oz series by L. Frank Baum - not just the well known first, but also Ozma of Oz and The Patchwork Girl of Oz and others. Read those. My sister and I read Noel Streatfeild books, particularly the Gemma series but also the others; and all the Chalet School books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. Elizabeth Enright's books gave me a view of life in America. Winnie the Pooh is a given, and The Wind in the Willows. The entire series of Swallows and Amazons. Leon Garfield's versions of the past, and Joan Aiken's historical fantasy books.
There were single titles too, lest I sound series-obsessed. Children of the Oregon Trail. The Silver Sword. The Endless Steppe, in which the privations were terribly real. The Diary of Anne Frank, although I didn't find it all that interesting and much preferred The Footsteps of Anne Frank for its biographical account, to her first person voice. Elizabeth Goudge's children's books, and on into her adult titles. The Swish of the Curtain by Brown. The Far-Distant Oxus by Hull and Whitlock.
Longtime Passing and Pastures of the Blue Crane by Hesba Brinsmead were from my high school years, as were Mary Stolz books, particularly The Seagulls Woke Me and The Organdy Cupcakes. In both primary and high school I read the excellent historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece and Cynthia Hartnett, and D.K. Broster's Jacobite trilogy beginning with The Flight of the Heron. Sometime in high school my mother started me on Georgette Heyer with These Old Shades, and Arabella, and they remain favourites. The teenage girls of Fifteen and Seventeeth Summer seemed so real (I discovered recently that sometimes you can't go back, when I tried rereading one of those).
My memories start blending into what I read later and still keep on my shelves, at home or school or both. Robin McKinley is a teacher librarian's discovery in the 1980s, since I was an adult when it was published, and I'm not sure if I read The Dark is Rising books first as adult or child. Likewise The Wizard of Earthsea.
I'll admit to scooting over to the children's lit bookshelves at home to add to this list; and yet what's there is a fraction of what this voracious reader worked her way through at the school library and local library in my childhood and adolescence. There were so many more books than I can remember or recall. I note my enthusiasm for reading through authors/series, and that this is still popular with kids, even if the preferred authors/series have changed (maybe now they're also easier to remember than single books). I note how few of the books I have at school, or lend, are ones I read as a child. A lot of the above could be characterised as 'girls' books', too.
And thinking of my own work at school now as a teacher librarian, I wonder how many of the loans we do will be books that 'stick'? I don't know that this is the most important thing. Some will, because they do, for their individual impact on a specific child or because (eg. Harry Potter or Twilight) they have become social phenomena of unforgettable size. But many won't; and yet isn't the most important thing the fact that we are encouraging them to read, to voyage in stories and take from them what they will for entertainment and to inform their lives in ways we may never know?
Try this: whether or not you choose to leave it as a comment, write down ten authors/books you remember reading as a child; give each a brief comment on what you liked/why you liked them.
Cheers
Ruth
PS for another view, here's NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's recent list of the best children's books ever. He got over 2,000 comments (read them here) and wrote a response to that here. All of which gives you a bunch of ideas from many people on what are the best children's books. In their opinion/s, many and varied. In a reader's comment on his reponse, one person wrote: It would be magical to regain the joy I found in books when I was ten years old. But you really can’t go home again. Not always, as a grown-up. But sometimes, yourself. And sometimes when reading/sharing books with kids.
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