Reading News & Children’s Literacy Roundup – May to mid-June

Welcome to the Children’s Literacy and Reading News roundup brought to you by Carol Rasco at her blog Quietly, Jen Robinson of Jen Robinson’s Book Page, and yours truly at the Family Bookshelf blog.

Lots of offline stuff has kept me away these past few weeks, and thankfully Carol and Jen have their fingers on the pulse! As usual, they have both found some wonderful, uplifting stories to stretch our thinking and renew our passion.

If you haven’t stopped by Quietly, do check out Carol’s May in Review roundup … that opens with nothing less than the lure of Betsy Bird’s 2012 poll searching for the Top 100 Children’s Picture Books and Top 100 Children’s Novels. Alas, the most recent Fuse #8 blog posts are for the books just outside the Top 10! Coming in at #11 are Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes and When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (both titles link to Betsy’s blog posts). Talk about a summer reading challenge … reading all 100 of the books in one or the other poll!

The other must-read item from Carol (at least in our house) was the origin of that most spectacular word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Catherine’s first movie EVER was [amazon_link id=”B001JRB16U” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Mary Poppins[/amazon_link], and as you can imagine, we had posed to us the same question Carol wanted answered: where did that word come from?

I love Carol’s idea of taking a word and exploring where it came from! Oh, and the article is like jumping into a chalk painting on the sidewalk and visiting Uncle Albert.

Jen has packed – I mean PACKED – her mid-month roundup with a collection of summer reading related events. One of the readers of her Growing Bookworms newsletter asked about summer reading programs, and in addition to suggesting her local library, Jen also asked her peeps on Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter, she had ideas from @NYPL, @naomihamertime, @librariandee, and @pragmaticmom … and she has them all nicely organized in the roundup! When I read about the Showcase Cinema on Bookworm Wednesdays, I had the same question Jen did: are these movies based on books?

For those virtually inclined, there is a wonderful post at the Nerdy Book Club about using Pinterest to Find Summer Reading ideas. Whether you want printables ore are looking to create a personal reading journal, the post has it all. We have links to other ideas on our Family Literacy topic on Scoop.it, too.

With Summer Reading Programs comes the perennial summer question: should we give kids trinkets / prizes for reading? Jen has a link to Stephen Krashen’s article in the Schools Matter blog, where he cites research that many of us parents know from our daily lives: offering a reward doesn’t always get you to your goal. It reminded me of a recent article I’d read in the Help! I Need a Publisher blog about how reading for pleasure is often viewed as “not real reading.” Here’s an excerpt from Nicola Morgan’s post:

Reading for pleasure seems somehow more frivolous, epicurean, than reading for benefit, information, work. It is not; and we fall into some dangerous traps if we think so. Reading for pleasure should come first. It is essential to reading at all.

Do click through to read the full post and also a letter from the Society of Authors to (UK) Schools Minister Nick Gibbs with three recommendations. Here’s the first one: 1. Primary and secondary schools should be required by law to have a school library and a trained librarian. Love that “by law” part.

It was fun going being in Baltimore last weekend for some extended family fun. Ironically, it wasn’t until we got home that I found this piece in the Ellicott City Patch about Page’s Corner. This is a brand new company started by three stay-at-home moms in an effort to counter “[that] world of televisions, computers, iPads, iPods, [where] busy parents too often aren’t able to spend quality time with their kids away from a screen.”

Page’s Corner offers a product called a StoryCraft Box(tm), which includes a book, reading comprehension questions, and all of the materials to do two crafts related to the story. Depending on the product, you can work with two kids or ten!

Thanks for reading and for all your support in sharing our Roundups around the Twit-osphere and beyond! Carol will be back at the end of the month with a look back at this month’s children’s literacy and reading events and news; I’ll be back in mid-July with a roundup, too. In the interim, we’ll keep sharing literacy links on Twitter. Follow us at @CHRasco, @readingtub, and @JensBookPage. You can also check out literacy news trends on the Reading Tub’s Twylah page (now on our blog navigation).