- Carnegie’s shortlist takes children back in time UK’s oldest and most prestigious children’s book award has just announced it’s shortlist. Interestingly, all the nominees have a common theme of world history and its conflicts. The shortlist is as follows: Elizabeth Laird’s Crusade, Tanya Landeman’s Apache, Philip Reeve’s Here Lies Arthur, Linzi Glass’ Ruby Red, Kevin-Crossley Holland’s Gatty’s Tale, Meg Rosoff’s What I Was, Jenny Valentine’s Finding Violet Park
- Darwin’s first draft goes online The draft notes of Charles Darwin which eventually led to the writing of his theory of evolution has been made available online. These draft notes are part of the 20,000 archive items that have been made available as part of the Charles Darwin online archive.
- Taking Play Seriously at the Public Library with Young Video Gamers The New York Public Library recently organized an event as part of their “Game On @ The Library!” initiative to showcase their latest addition to their collection - video games. Game consoles, such as Nintendo’s Wii, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3 amongst others, were put around the lobby of the library for anyone to try out the different video games on giant TV projector screens. And they hope to expand their range of games to even online PC games such as ever popular World of Warcraft. (via LISNews)
- Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing This is meant more for my personal note as I do a little book reviewing for MPOW. Anyway, some choice words that you should avoid using when doing your book reviews such as poignant, compelling and intriguing. (via LISNews)
- Lookybook An ebook site dedicated to children’s picture books. Definitely worth a look if you’re a children’s librarian. Currently, there are about 200+ titles and the site hopes to expand that to 1000 by the mid of the year. Reading is free and you don’t even need to register. However, registration to the site allows you to create bookshelves, read and write reviews, and email interesting books to your friends, amongst other privileges. (via LibrarianInBlack)
- The Great Library Card Collection A 15-year-old boy in Suisun City, California has amassed over 3,000 library cards from all 50 states in the US as well as 74 countries. However, he has only managed to scan in library cards from Northern California, Southern California and Western United States. Not too sure if he has one from MPOW.
- No more ginger beer as Famous Five updated The good old days of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five have been changed forever. They drink ginger beer when they meet up or eat cream buns. They have moved on to pizzas and mobile phones. Even the make-up of the Famous Five have been updated to fit the more contemporary look of our world now with a more international cast of characters. Even te storyline has been updated to the more current issues such as pirate DVD operations.
- Teachers are using comics, now called ‘graphic novels’, to captivate reluctant readers If you think graphic novels are just full of superheroes, then think again. There are now graphic novels of every subject including the complete works of Shakespeare as well as many other classics. Even in MPOW the demand for our graphic novels far out-stripped supply. But I guess we need to bring in more than just superhero-related ones. One of my personal favorites is the Bone series by Jeff Smith. I’ve got the 1000-page tome of the entire Bone series that was released a couple of years back though I’ve also got the single issue ones when it was re-published by Image Comics. (via Library Stuff)
- Bookhunter by shigabooks A webcomic about Bookhunters searching for a priceless book that was stolen from the Oakland Public Library in the year 1973. Very interesting storyline!
- Every issue of Elfquest free One of the oldest independent comics, Elfquest, has now made every issue of the comics available online. Go read it! (via Boing Boing)
- The 100 Best Last Lines from Novels (PDF file) Hmmm … interesting stuff! American Book Review has compiled a list of 100 best last lines from novels. Are there any favorites that you have that are not on the list? Leave them in the comments below. (via kottke.org)
- Boatipedia - How Do I? … Library FAQs Library FAQs by Boatwright Memorial Library uses a wiki as its content management system. Personally, I think it’s a very cool idea. Maybe I can convince some of my colleagues to look into this. (via LibrarianInBlack)
Australian author, Sonya Hartnett, was announced as this year’s awardee for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial award for literature. The award comes with a 5m Swedish kronor prize (S$1.41m) and this is the sixth installment of the award. She would be presented with the award on 28 May by Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria at Stockholm’s open-air Skansen museum.
Hartnett, 39, has written about 18 novels for children, young people and adults. She wrote her first novel, Trouble All The Way, when she was only 15. Other books include Surrender, Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf, Forest, What the Birds See, Thursday’s Child, and Princes.
The award is given out by Swedish government to commemorate the creator of the popular Pippi Longstocking books. The purpose of the prize is to promote interest in children’s and youth literature around the world as well as to strengthen children’s rights on a global scale. Previous winners of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial award include Philip Pullman and Maurice Sendak.
- 100 books every child should read A pretty long article that has been broken up into 4 parts. This first part is just an introduction into the joys of reading, particularly when you start at an early age. The other three list the books according to the age of the child: early years, middle years and early teens.
- Kerpoof What’s this you ask? Well, this is the children’s version of Facebook without the deluge of ignoring application invites. The site is for children to communicate and collaborate with each other online. And the site only allows kids that know each other to interact online. Interestingly, the company that runs Kerpoof says that more and more schools are using it in the US. I guess teachers are also making of online tools as much as librarians in engaging kids. (via Techcrunch)
- Bookchase® Ever wanted to run your own little bookshop, but without laying out the actual capital? Well, now you can! A company in the UK has developed the world’s first board game about books. And it does look really interesting. The price is a little steep for a board game at S$90 before shipping, but I know who would be interested in playing it. (via LibrarianInBlack)
- MCL Learning 2.0 Chance upon this site when I was doing some search on Web 2.0 usage in libraries. Very interesting and I’m sure we can use some of this to encourage more staff to dip their toes into the giant pool of Web 2.0 tools and technologies. I think I’ll also be using this to prepare for my talks to teachers on the use of Web 2.0 tools for schools.
- Librarians at the gates Although this news article is about the striking library staff in Victoria, Canada, I particularly like the quote from one of the reference librarians, Peter Thompson, who says, “If you don’t like working with people, you won’t like librarianship.” How true!!! Read the article for more inspiring quotes from this same librarian. (via LISNews)
- Public Transportation Meets Public Library Very interesting concept to put book vending machines at BART stations (that’s like our MRT stations). However, the concept might not work in Singapore given that most libraries are at close proximity to the MRT stations. But maybe we can put it at, say, Changi Airport for travelers to pick up a book on their way out of the country. (via Library Stuff)
- Hooked on books An article on turning reluctant readers into enthusiastic ones. It also includes some book suggestions. (via Library Stuff)
- ‘Google Generation’ is a myth, says new research The research shows that although young people are familiar with using the computer and the Internet, they, however, do not possess the analytical and critical skills to assess the information that they find. I guess that’s where the role of librarians coming in to help these young people do the critical and analytical assessments. (via LISNews)
- Evaluating Web Content in the 2.0 Era Related to the previous link, some guidelines on how to evaluate web content has been put up by a couple of librarians from the University at Albany, SUNY. (via Library 2.0)
- White bread for young minds, says university professor A university professor of media studies, Tara Brabazon, has claimed that Google is “white bread for young minds” and more should be done to equip students with the skills that they’ll need to properly interpret and sift through the information readily available on the Internet. (via LISNews)
- Library Arcade Carnegie Mellon Libraries’ have created 2 games that are, at the same time, fun and educational. One of the games requires you to help students with their enquiries and the other game is to learn how to shelve books correctly according to the Library of Congress Classification System. (via iLibrarian)
- A hunger for books Unless you have been leaving under a stone or kept away from all news, then you would know that Doris Lessing has been awarded the “Nobel Prize for Literature”. So, here’s her acceptance speech. Very inspiring reading.
- 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners (Flash plugin required) An online tutorial, created by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County, for their own patrons to teach them about the importance and how-to of lifelong learning and in the process, create a personal learning plan. Hmmm … an interesting way to communicate and engage with library users. (via LibrarianInBlack.net)
- Spell wears off as children ditch books Apparently, children in Scotland are going back to the PCs and consoles after the Harry Potter craze as a survey has shown. I wonder how many children in Singapore are doing the same thing. (via LISNews)
