Children’s Books and how to choose them

Serendipity works in amazing ways.  Last night I discovered via Twitter that Dublin has been designated a UNESCO City of Literature, just as Melbourne is.  I blogged about my excitement about this on my ANZ LitLovers blog because I am travelling to Dublin later this year when I’m on Long Service Leave. 

This morning a reader of my blog from Dublin shared a link to the Children’s Books Ireland presence on Facebook, an initiative designed to promote books and reading to children.  And there I found a terrific series about how to choose children’s books, of interest not only to children’s librarians but to parents as well.

Here are the links:

Children’s Books: How to Choose Them, Part 1 – Introduction

Children’s Books: How to Choose Them, Part 2 – Subjective Appeal

Children’s Books: How to Choose Them, Part 3 – Themes

Children’s Books: How to Choose Them, Part 4 – Illustrations

Children’s Books: How to Choose Them, Part 5 – Stories

Children’s Books: How to Choose Them, Part 6 – Humor

Children’s Books: How to Choose Them, Part 7 – Developmental Value

You can subscribe to Aaron Mead’s blog by RSS if you want to follow up with further articles.  Please note that Children’s Books and Reviews is an American online bookstore.  LisaHillSchoolStuff does not endorse their products nor their association with Amazon; LisaHillSchoolStuff supports Australian books and writing and recommends independent bookshops such as Readings and Boomerang Books.  

Enid Blyton for the 21st century? Why would you bother?

The SMH has an article –  Mercy me! Blyton gets an update – about Hodder & Stoughton updating the language in Enid Blyton’s books to make them more palatable to contemporary children.

But why would you bother?   Nostalgic adults, who ‘read the Blyton books and loved them’ in the 1950s when there wasn’t much else for children to read, are perpetuating the market, but from what I see in the school library, kids would much rather read Australian children’s fiction and contemporary authors – they like a bit of modern techonology in their adventure and mystery stories.  In other words, they are just like adults who (apart from a minority who like the classics) are mostly not the least little bit interested in books from the past, especially not ones set in British boarding schools which have no relevance to Australian school life.  (Even the Harry Potter books are starting to gather dust, now that the fuss has died down).  

Our students like Tashi, Zac Power and the Keys to Rondo series.  They like Deltora Quest, the Dragonkeeper series, the Saddle Club and If You’re Reading this, It’s Too Late.

Grandparents, I suppose, will go on buying the Blytons, and kids will dutifully read them, but really most of them would be much happier reading contemporary fiction…

National Year of Reading 2012

National Year of Reading 2012

This interesting initiative is still being organised, but this is the website to watch…

via National Year of Reading 2012.