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Archive for the 'reading' Category

Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers

Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008 in video games, books, reading and gaming. 0 Comments

“You can’t just make a book anymore,” said Mr. Haarsma, a former advertising consultant. Pairing a video game with a novel for young readers, he added, “brings the book into their world, as opposed to going the other way around.”

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Mr. President-Elect, Start Reading

Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008 in books, government, politics and reading. 0 Comments

Garry Wills and Aleksandar Hemon offer some recommendations for Barack Obama to put on his reading list, because even if he has already read these titles, “it is good to refresh the message of each, to show where we have been going wrong.” At the top of the list is Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: “If Mark Twain said at one time that America had become the United States of Lyncherdom, this book shows why, in the world’s eyes, we have become the United States of Torturedom.”

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NextGen: I Loved That Book!

Published by rwatstein November 2nd, 2008 in librarians/information professionals, books and reading. 0 Comments

Laura Raphael says it’s OK to use the “L” word when recommending personal favorite reads, and finds that “making a personal recommendation, based on our own likes and dislikes, can be beneficial to our customers.”

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WrestleMania Reading Challenge Program

Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008 in reading and teens. 0 Comments

Now that summer reading programs are over, you might be looking for a hook to keep your kids reading during the school year. The WrestleMania Reading Challenge, sponsored by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) could be just the thing for your tweens and teens, grades 5-12. YALSA has put together a terrific toolkit to make it easy for you, and fun for your readers.

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Reading the Classics, Graphic Novel Style

Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008 in education, books and reading. 0 Comments

Think it’s hard to get a 6th-grade class excited about reading Shakespeare? Or maybe push the high school freshmen through Beowulf? If you’re old enough to remember the Classics Illustrated comic books, you’ll be glad to know that they’re back, along with a whole army of other graphic novel lines that promise to encourage readers to get into, and through, the classics.

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The Word on Street Lit No. 7

Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008 in libraries and reading. 0 Comments

Street lit, ghetto books, or urban fiction: no matter what you call this hot genre, its many incarnations seldom remain on library shelves. To clue librarians into this infrequently reviewed phenomenon, Library Journal proudly presents The Word on Street Lit, a new monthly online column written alternately by Rollie Welch and Vanessa Morris. In this edition: Sistah Souljah, Freeze, and K’wan.

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35 Going on 13: Teen Books for Adults

Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008 in libraries, collections, reading and teens. 0 Comments

While many of today’s teen readers easily navigate the teen collection and fully appreciate the depth and breadth of what is being published for them, those of us new to this world need a place to start. This recommends the best of the teen market. October’s offerings are linked by a common theme: Books That Go Bump in the Night.

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PA. Principal, Librarian Sleep on Roof for Reading

Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008 in librarians/information professionals, books and reading. 0 Comments

A principal and librarian have come down from the rooftop of their northwestern Pennsylvania school in a stunt to encourage student reading. Fifty-one-year-old principal Pam Hanisek and 39-year-old librarian Amanda Barko dared kindergarten through seventh-grade students at the Erie First Christian Academy to read a total of 1,000 books over the summer. They promised to sleep on the school’s roof if the students met the goal.

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Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers

Published by rwatstein October 12th, 2008 in video games and reading. 0 Comments

When PJ Haarsma wrote his first book, a science fiction novel for preteenagers, he didn’t think just about how to describe Orbis, the planetary system where the story takes place. He also thought about how it should look and feel in a video game. The online game that Mr. Haarsma designed not only extends the fictional world of the novel, it also allows readers to play in it. At the same time, Mr. Haarsma very calculatedly gave gamers who might not otherwise pick up a book a clear incentive to read: one way that players advance is by answering questions with information from the novel.

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Why Cowboys Read

Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008 in libraries and reading. 0 Comments

Libraries in Laramie County, Wyoming, are the best of an excellent lot. The collection is skewed towards local interests; there is a lot of Christian fiction, as well as volumes on truck repair. The central library runs book clubs for home-schooled children and teenagers, which are well-attended. In southern Wyoming, at least, an excellent library system was not built in the face of resistance to public spending. The interesting truth is that it is excellent precisely because of it.

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Summer Reading That May Improve Your Fall Teaching

Published by rwatstein July 12th, 2008 in education, books and reading. 0 Comments

This summer reading list features titles on improving teaching and learning at the college and university level, most from a national association of faculty developers.

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More Than Hours of Books - Teen Summer Reading Programs Round-Up

Published by rwatstein June 21st, 2008 in books and reading. 0 Comments

Asking teens to read ten books and log their hours is, well, just a big yawn to them. Teens and young adults need interaction and energy-expending activities more than ever during the summer months, and we’ve turned up some great Teen Summer Reading Programs that put a new spin on spending time at the library.

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50 Reasons to Read More

Published by rwatstein June 21st, 2008 in libraries, library services and reading. 0 Comments

Librarians need no excuse to read more, but our patrons, funding agencies, and skeptical acquaintances might derive some benefit from this list. “ 15. Experience other people’s adventures: From climbing Mount Everest to building a multibillion-dollar corporation, you can experience part of these feats by reading about them.”

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School Librarian Dons Different Personas to get Kids to Read

Published by rwatstein June 21st, 2008 in children, librarians/information professionals and reading. 0 Comments

With her students out on summer break, now might be the only time to learn the whole story about Cary Kelly, the one-of-a-kind librarian with the multiple personalities. A former professional ballet dancer, Kelly, 60, sees her job these days as a different kind of performance – one that inspires children to embrace the joy of reading and grasp life lessons not easily addressed in a traditional curriculum. The Sacramento Country Day School librarian does it in ways that may be unlike any educator in the country – she goes into character, time after time after time. Voices, costumes, lingo, the whole bit.

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How READ Posters Get Made

Published by rwatstein June 21st, 2008 in libraries, American Library Association, library services and reading. 0 Comments

In addition to the hundreds of celebrity suggestions from librarians, teachers, readers, and fans, ALA Graphics staff seeks out celebrities from a wide range of occupations: movie and TV stars, comedians, athletes, musicians, innovators, heroic figures, and the like. They try to find highly recognizable—and therefore popular—celebrities. They also consider a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds to reach the diverse populations libraries serve.

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What Do Children Read? Hint: Harry Potter’s Not No. 1

Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008 in children, books and reading. 0 Comments

Children have welcomed the Harry Potter books in recent years like free ice cream in the cafeteria, but the largest survey ever of youthful reading in the United States by Renaissance Learning revealed May 5 that none of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular books has been able to dislodge the works of longtime favorites Dr. Seuss, E.B. White, Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton, and Harper Lee as the most read.

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Read the full report What Kids Are Reading here

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Read a Book and She’ll Have to Eat a Bug

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in libraries, children, library services and reading. 0 Comments

The theme for the Summer Reading Program at many New Mexico libraries will be “Catch the Reading Bug.” Ami Segna, youth services librarian at the Alamogordo Public Library, is taking it one step further. She plans to tell children she will formally eat a bug for their viewing enjoyment. The choice of bug will be based on how much they read. “If it’s 60 percent of their reading, it will be a chocolate-covered ant. If it’s 70 percent, a cheddar-cheese flavored meal worm.”

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An Initiative on Reading Is Rated Ineffective

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in education, children, government and reading. 0 Comments

President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released recently. The program, known as Reading First, drew on some of Mr. Bush’s educational experiences as Texas governor, and at his insistence Congress included it in the federal No Child Left Behind legislation that passed by bipartisan majorities in 2001. It has been a subject of dispute almost ever since, however, with the Bush administration and some state officials characterizing the program as beneficial for young students, and Congressional Democrats and federal investigators criticizing conflict of interest among its top advisers.

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“Redefining Readers’ Advisory”: Take the RA Talk Online

Published by rwatstein March 3rd, 2008 in libraries, library services and reading. 0 Comments

Readers’ advisory is spreading across the Internet. Online RA generates more thorough interviews with superior results, and attracts patrons who normally don’t use it. RA guru Neal Wyatt tells what you need to know

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UK Launches National Year of Reading

Published by rwatstein January 12th, 2008 in reading. 0 Comments

Ed Balls, the U.K. Secretary of State for Children, Schools, and Families, joined Prime Minister Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street January 8 to launch 2008 as the National Year of Reading. He called for every British school, library, and college to sign up for activities and encourage new opportunities for reading

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Newspaper Site Readers Spread the Word

Published by rwatstein December 16th, 2007 in news and reading. 0 Comments

Readers of newspaper Web sites are 52% more likely to share their opinions than those who do not visit newspaper sites, according to study conducted by Millward Brown and sponsored by the Newspaper National Network and Newspaper Association of America in September and October.

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TV and Reading Are Consumer Faves

Published by rwatstein December 1st, 2007 in users, television and reading. 0 Comments

US consumers say their favorite leisure activities are reading, watching TV and spending time with friends and family, according to The Harris Poll. Computer activities were named fourth most favorite, although the percentage of respondents listing it as a favorite has increased slightly in the last seven years.

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2.0 for Readers

Published by rwatstein November 20th, 2007 in web 2.0 and reading. 0 Comments

Imagine facing a reader who asks for book suggestions based on the newest cutting-edge slipstream novel by an author you have never heard of. You don’t even know if your library owns the title, but you gamely look it up in the catalog…only to discover that not only do you own it, but your sf/fantasy expert has entered some read-alike suggestions and provided a brief comment on the major appeals of the genre. In addition, patrons have tagged the book with a range of descriptors, submitted their own reader reviews and reading suggestions, and given the book five stars. Suddenly, you know a great deal more about this book and can not only make some better informed suggestions but can also invite the patron to join in the dialog by submitting comments, reviews, and ratings. This day is not far away in the future of readers’ advisory (RA) services

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Web Users Reading Less Print - But They Aren’t Necessarily Reading Less

Published by rwatstein November 3rd, 2007 in internet and reading. 0 Comments

Since 2001, most Internet users say that they have continued reading the same amount of printed material, according to the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future. Three-quarters said so in 2001, and 70% did in 2006. But the number of Internet users saying they spend less time with offline printed materials rose from 19.3% in 2001 to 23.2% in 2006. In a statement accompanying the findings, the USC Annenberg Center said Internet users “are using printed materials less often and are instead seeking out that information online, frequently from the online versions of the same sources. Everything in our work strongly suggests that this trend will increase significantly.”

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Reading Jane Austen on a BlackBerry

Published by rwatstein November 3rd, 2007 in gadgets, literacy and reading. 0 Comments

Columnist Steve Johnson writes: “I just read Pride and Prejudice on my BlackBerry. And, against all my own prejudices, all my own pride in the history and tradition of the printed word, I liked it. I liked holding it in one hand, having it always with me, and customizing my fonts and screen color. I really liked reading it in bed without the encumbrance of a book light. I hadn’t expected to fall so easily under the spell of the e-book.”

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