Hi Everyone,
We just got the interview with the wonderful Shannon Hale up on abookandahug.com.
If you click on Books Alive, she's the very first interview and you can see her in
action.
Hope you are enjoying the first days of summer,
Barb
Barb Langridge
Children's Services
Howard County Central Library
10375 Little Patuxent Parkway
Columbia, MD 21045
410 313-7880
barb.langridge@hclibrary.org
-------------------------
Original Message:
From: Richie Partington <BudNotBuddy@AOL.COM>
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Cc:
Date: Thursday, June 3 2010 10:48 PM
Subject: Richie's Picks: FROM COVER TO COVER
Richie's Picks: FROM COVER TO COVER: EVALUATING AND REVIEWING CHILDREN'S
BOOKS (REVISED EDITION) by Kathleen T. Horning, HarperCollins, April 2010
***IMPORTANT: You MUST purchase the revised 2010 edition of Horning.
-- as noted on the Fall 2010 syllabus for my Children's Materials 0-4
classes
I did not think that there would be much of a need to write about the
revised edition of FROM COVER TO COVER. After all, the original 1997 edition
is the book that has been guiding so many children's services library
students in learning how to evaluate children's books. I'd read it when I was a
student in library school -- from cover to cover -- for one class and then
reread various chapters of it for several other classes. Wouldn't
everyone automatically order the revised edition of such a well-known and regarded
book?
One of the essential skills we learn in collection management is
"weeding." When you have a book in your collection that is no longer accurate
then
it needs to be deselected and removed from the collection or, as we say,
weeded. Then you replace it with something new. This happens all of the
time with science books because new discoveries make older books inaccurate
and obsolete. The same goes for atlases and books about countries. Stuff
happens. Countries change names, get new leaders, start wars, or national
boundaries move. You just have to get an up-to-date edition.
How about having your child or patron reading a book about US Presidents
that ends with Ronald Reagan? Working briefly in a school district in 2007
(Yes, that school district.), I came across such interesting curiosities as
a 1967 biography of Richard Nixon and a 1983 biography of Al Gore while
weeding one of their elementary collections. Laughable, when it's such an
extreme example, but a real and dead serious issue when it comes to educating
students in the Twenty-first century, particularly in an era of tightening
job markets and budget cutting.
Speaking of budgets, things got so bad budget-wise for the Sonoma County
Library (where I live in California) that they had to shut down the main
library and all twelve branches over the entire 2009-2010 winter holiday.
Kids were out of school for two weeks and not a library in the county was
open. You couldn't even access their online resources!
And so I appreciate the notion that the Sonoma County Library might want
to hold onto their three copies of the original edition of Horning and hold
off on purchasing the new edition.
But there is a problem. I just recommended to a friend of mine that she
read FROM COVER TO COVER. This friend is both a parent to a three year-old
and a graduate student in the School of Education at Sonoma State
University. She's a specialist in reading and language arts. If I give her or
another parent or another teacher a copy of the original Horning book, then
they won't learn that the American Library Association now recognizes the best
beginning reader of the year with an award named after Dr. Seuss. Nor
will they learn that the Newbery and Caldecott medals have been joined by the
Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal which is awarded annually to the
author of the most distinguished informational book for children. (How
many times have I now talked about ALMOST ASTRONAUTS, the most recent Sibert
winner?) Nor will they learn about all the other significant changes that
have taken place in children's publishing over the past thirteen years.
Being that so many of the books that Horning cites in the revised edition
were not yet published in 1997, readers of the original edition will also
miss out on hearing about such great books as THE RACE TO SAVE THE LORD GOD
BIRD HITLER YOUTH GROWING UP IN HITLER'S SHADOW WE ARE THE SHIP THE STORY
OF NEGRO LEAGUE BASEBALL THE TROUBLE BEGINS AT 8 A LIFE OF MARK TWAIN IN THE
WILD WILD WEST TRACKING TRASH FLOTSAM JETSAM AND THE SCIENCE OF OCEAN
MOTION ESCAPE! THE STORY OF THE GREAT HOUDINI THE LINCOLNS A SCRAPBOOK LOOK AT
ABRAHAM AND MARY THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE SUPERNOVAE DARK ENERGY AND BLACK
HOLES TSUNAMI! DIAMOND WILLOW THE UNDERNEATH THE HUNGER GAMES ELIJAH OF
BUXTON THE LOUD SILENCE OF FRANCINE GREEN THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY OF EDWARD
TULANE THE HOUSE OF THE SCORPION WHEN YOU REACH ME THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY and
THE GRAVEYARD BOOK (just to mention a few books to which Horning refers that
have also been Richie's Picks titles).
With all that we know today about the essential nature of reading to our
children from the moment they are born -- or even before they are born --
there are good reasons to encourage parents and childcare providers to read
FROM COVER TO COVER. They will really benefit from knowing how to choose
the best books for their child's or young students' needs. I recommend that
the revised edition of FROM COVER TO COVER be shelved in the Parenting
Collection. Us professionals will have no problem tracking it down there when
we need to refer to it.
But it's got to be the revised edition and I'm needing to know what to
tell my friend (the parent and reading specialist) about getting a copy, so
this is specifically a request to the Sonoma County Library that you order a
few copies of the revised edition of FROM COVER TO COVER asap.
Thanks!
(Hey, Marin County. You don't have a copy down there either.)
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator _http://groups.yahoo.com/middle_school_lit/_
(http://groups.yahoo.com/middle_school_lit/)
Moderator _http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EcolIt/_
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EcolIt/)
_http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php_
(http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php)
FTC NOTICE: Richie receives free books from lots of publishers who hope he
will Pick their books. You can figure that any review was written after
reading and dog-earring a free copy received. Richie retains these review
copies for his rereading pleasure and for use in his booktalks at schools
and libraries.
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