Backlist Sites

Looking for some backlist titles? Here is a handy list of sites to visit.
Booklist Online
Carol Hurst
Kirkus Online
Peggy Sharp
Planet Esme
Publishers Weekly
Richie's Picks
School Library Journal
The Horn Book
The Urban Book Source (mostly adult content)

No to Age Banding

There is a website dedicated to doing away with "Age Banding" or putting age levels on books. Their description is:

We are writers, illustrators, librarians, teachers, booksellers, publishers, educationalists, psychologists, parents and grandparents. Some of the undersigned writers and illustrators have a measure of control over what appears on the covers of their books; others have less.

But we are all agreed that the proposal to put an age-guidance figure on books for children is ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers, and highly unlikely, despite the claims made by those publishers promoting the scheme, to make the slightest difference to sales.

We take this step to disavow publicly any connection with such age-guidance figures, and to state our passionately-held conviction that everything about a book should seek to welcome readers in and not keep them out.

At a recent meeting Philip Pullman ( the author of His Dark Material trilogy) gave a 20 minute speech on his opinion of the perils of age banding. It is interesting. If you read it, post a response here. I would find this an interesting topic to discuss.

Libraries Are Gonna Make It After All

How the Google Generation Thinks Differently

In a Times Online article Catherine O'Brien is lamenting about her son's style of studying for exams. The article has some interesting observations and at the end she summarizes the difference between those who grew up in the digital age, and those who didn't. I'm not sure this a result of when we came to the digital world or simple age. As a young person (1960's and 70's) I was very much like the "natives" just with different types of inputs.

NATIVES v IMMIGRANTS

Digital natives
Like receiving information quickly from multiple media sources.
Like parallel processing and multi-tasking.
Like processing pictures, sounds and video before text.
Like random access to hyperlinked multimedia information.
Like to network with others.
Like to learn “just in time”.

Digital immigrants
Like slow and controlled release of information from limited sources.
Like singular processing and single or limited tasking.
Like processing text before pictures, sounds and video.
Like to receive information linearly, logically and sequentially.
Like to work independently.
Like to learn “just in case”.

Plagiarism: Don't Do It

Go Green and Kill the Screen Savers

I just read on Yahoo Green! that screen savers are no longer necessary if you have a flat screen LCD monitor. One large telephone company took all the screen savers off their computers and that alone saved tons of carbon dioxide.

Tasha Tudor Dies

Tasha Tudor died June 18 at the age of 92. Her illustrations were the first ones I fell in love with when I discovered children's literature. Her illustrations were also the first ones I was able to recognize upon first seeing. In reading about her evidently she was "green" before it was chic to do. The New York Times obituary said, "She wore kerchiefs, hand-knitted sweaters, fitted bodices and flowing skirts, and often went barefoot. She reared her four children in a home without electricity or running water until her youngest turned 5. She raised her own farm animals; turned flax she had grown into clothing; and lived by homespun wisdom: sow root crops on a waning moon, above-ground plants on a waxing one."

Another trait she was known for was being optimistic. Somehow I saw that in her works.