Reading Round-Up, 18 June

Another Nugget from Down Under Last week I linked to Trevor Cairney’s blog (Literacy Families, and Learning) because his article about Children’s Choice Awards caught my attention. Well, this week Trevor has another terrific, very thoughtful post about Comic Books. It has some history of comic books (now called graphic novels) and he talks about them as a supplemental literacy tool. Comics, are they still relevant? is worth a read. (You might just have the right question for Jeopardy).

No surprises here According to a study by Scholastic, as kids get older, they are less interested in reading. Loise Ash has a summary of the 2006 Scholastic report (just released) that says that the decline in pleasure reading begins at age eight and continues through their teen years. Read Louise ‘s post at Reading Today Daily, the International Reading Association Blog. When you go to the Scholastic Website for the whole report, the first thing that catches your eye is “Kids ages 5-17 believe technology will supplement — not replace book reading and say they will always want to read books on printed paper.” (emphasis mine)

More Boy Buzz…Barbershop Style The National Institute for Literacy and Mocha Moms have joined together to launch an “innovative partnership to boost children’s literacy skills.” The initiative is aimed at getting (and keeping) boys reading. For those who don’t know Mocha Moms, it is a national support organization for stay-at-home moms of color. As part of their effort to promote reading for/with boys, they have been opening reading areas (they call them nooks) in barbershops across the country. The Boys Booked on Barbershops (B-BOB) initiative was launched in 2004, and is growing. Brian Scott has press-release type information about two upcoming launches in his post at Reading and Literacy News. Check out the reading statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics (paragraph 6). They are sobering.

Literacy Conference The US Department of Education has announced that the 19th Annual Literacy for All conference will be held November 16-18, 2008 at the Northeast K-8 Literacy Conference & Reading Recovery Institute. To learn more about the conference (deadlines, goals, etc.) click here. Now, if we could just get government educators to trim their use of language so it wasn’t so overwhelming to interested but not technocratic parties!

Librarians DO have a phonetic sense of humor Here’s the title of this Father’s-Day-themed post on the Burbank Library Blog: Lĭt / uh / ruh / sē Äw / fĭs . The post (dated Friday, June 13, 2008) describes and links to articles and programs that encourage males to serve as reading role models in a boy’s life. I had seen the article at Reading Rockets, but I didn’t know about FRED (Fathers Reading Every Day), a program developed by the Texas Agrilife Extension Service, which is affiliate with Texas A&M University system. The Burbank Library Blog post will also link you to an article about dad’s need to read in this Head Start bulletin.

In Other News In my first Reading Round-Up (April 28, 2008), I highlighted Big Universe as a resource for reading picture books online. Publishers have partnered with them and you can browse their collection of 400 titles (and growing) to read the complete book online. The Reading Tub, Inc. has begun linking our reviews to those books. If we have a book on the Big Universe site, we have a button in the Tub that says “Read This Book on Big Universe.” Will it replace actually reading the book? No. Will it give you a chance to preview the book yourself? Most definitely. It will also let you put what we say in context of your own reactions to the book. Now THAT’S transparency!