Monday Blurb: Carol Rasco’s January Roundup and Other Tidbits

Happy Monday!

The end-of-January children’s literacy and reading news round-up, brought to you by Jen Robinson,  Terry Doherty, and Rasco from RIF is now available at Carol’s blog: Rasco from RIF. Over the past couple of weeks Jen Robinson, Carol Rasco, and I have collected plenty of content for you about literacy & reading-related events; literacy and reading programs and research; and suggestions for growing bookworms.

Once again, Carol has packed in tons of great information. She’s got everything from new looks for classic books (via Stacked Books) to the Best of Children’s Book iPad Apps 2010 (via Kirkus). I’ll second Carol’s vote for her new favorite gift for nurturing creativity with little ones.

Head over to Carol’s Roundup to get the full scoop … more like 2 scoops with sprinkles.

A friend sent me an NPR story this last night. It is called Closing the Achievement Gap, and in her report, Alix Spiegel explains how doctors and others are using “old studies for new results.” She opens with the details of the 1995 landmark study that looked at how kids hear language at home. You remember: by age 4, children in welfare homes hear 13 million words spoken to them; in a professional home it’s 48 million. What I didn’t know was that it took ten years to transcribe the work of following and recording the verbal interaction of 41 families for those four years.  You can read the transcript or listen to the audio (5:45) on the NPR site.

Last but not least Tricia Stohr-Hunt hosts today’s Nonfiction Monday Round-up at The Miss Rumphius Effect.