Children’s Literacy and Reading News Roundup Mid-October

The late September / mid-October edition of the Children’s Literacy and Reading News Roundup brought to you by Jen Robinson’s Book Page, The Family Bookshelf, and Quietly is now available at Jen Robinson’s Book Page. 

Jen has some great items that Carol posted the End of September Children’s Literacy and Reading News Roundup, but its worth your time to read both.

I am late to the party in congratulating Reading is Fundamental (RIF) and Carol on receiving a $4.18 million first-year research grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO LITERACY Program. This is great news … unlike the Scary Tale in a recent RIF newsletter:

There’s a six-year-old child out there whose book shelves are bare. He went all summer without reading a single book. He goes to sleep each night without the comfort of his favorite book heroes.

There are 16 million other children just like him. Just $10 provides RIF books and literacy resources to four children. You have the power to change a child’s future.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has published its report of Younger Americans’ Reading and Library Habits. There is good news in there: “More than eight in ten Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 read a book in the past year, and six in ten used their local public library.” Do click through to get more details on how these young readers are enjoying their books.

I just love pictures like this! It is the feature image of a Wired Science article about how books change a child’s brain grows. The article goes beyond the value of books and educational toys in a child’s life to talk about the physiology of how the brain literally grows based on their environment (i.e., nurturing, access to reading material).

Although the environmental elements aren’t new, the conclusions about how that lingers into adulthood is.

10 Surprising Features of Finland’s Education System on Edudemic is an annotated photo catalog of differences between the Finnish system and ours. Although the comparisons have a “wow” factor, it was how the Finns get the most from their structure that got my attention. Something as simple as 75 minutes of recess.

My thanks to Susan Stephenson of the Book Chook for scooping Vocabulary.com onto her Word Games board.When it comes to curating literacy tools and resources, you can’t go wrong with Susan’s Scoop.it pages.

Thanks for your continued interest in our children’s literacy and reading news collections. Carol is up next with an October wrap-up post, packed with great literacy news, for sure! We also (mostly Jen!) chat about literacy and reading on Twitter from @JensBookPage @CHRasco and @ReadingTub.