ALSC has some great Summer Reading book lists that are available free of charge, you just need to print them. Nicely, the books selected should be in all libraries. If you don’t have the books, it’s probably a good idea to get them anyway!
The lists are broken into three age groups: K-2nd grade, 3rd-5th grade and 6th-8th grade.
Print some out for a quick and easy way to welcome summer into the library!
A poll to help celebrate International Children’s Book Day sees some intriguing results. Both children and parents were able to vote:
Children selected Harry Potter as their favorite character with 38% of the kid vote. The Gruffalo got 34% and the Cat in the Hat received 28%.
But Rowling did not get selected as best ever children’s author, Roald Dahl won that category for both children and parents. In the children’s vote Rowling came in second with Beatrix Potter taking third. Something I am completely charmed by. The parental vote had Enid Blyton second with Rowling third.
Perhaps my favorite result of the survey are that more than half of the parents polled said that their children are reading the same books as they did as children. Now that’s a great family tradition!
TES Magazine in the UK surveyed teachers to find out what their favorite books are. 500 primary and secondary teachers participated in the survey and the result is a list of 100 top books. It’s a very intriguing mix of classics and popular fiction.
As with any list, there are ones I love and others that I sigh at in despair (Twilight is number 77). Enjoy! And let me know which ones you delight in or sigh at!
THE TOP 100
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
4. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
6. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
7. The Lord of the Rings (series) J.R.R. Tolkien
8. The Book Thief Markus Zusak
9. The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien
10. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
12. The Hunger Games (series) Suzanne Collins
13. The Time Traveller’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger
14. The Chronicles of Narnia (series) C.S. Lewis
15. Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
16. Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
17. His Dark Materials (series) Philip Pullman
18. The Gruffalo Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
19. The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
20. Life of Pi Yann Martel
21. Tess of the d’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
22. Rebecca Daphne du Maurier
23. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon
24. Lord of the Flies William Golding
25. Matilda Roald Dahl
26. Catch-22 Joseph Heller
27. Millennium (series) Stieg Larsson
28. Animal Farm George Orwell
29. The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
30. Persuasion Jane Austen
31. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
32. Kensuke’s Kingdom Michael Morpurgo
33. Goodnight Mister Tom Michelle Magorian
34. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
35. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
36. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas John Boyne
37. Little Women Louisa May Alcott
38. One Day David Nicholls
39. We Need to Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver
40. The Twits Roald Dahl
41. Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel
42. A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini
43. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
44. Frankenstein Mary Shelley
45. Great Expectations Charles Dickens
46. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis de Bernieres
47. George’s Marvellous Medicine Roald Dahl
48. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
49. Room Emma Donoghue
50. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
51. Atonement Ian McEwan
52. Emma Jane Austen
53. Middlemarch George Eliot
54. The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
55. The Color Purple Alice Walker
56. The Very Hungry Caterpillar Eric Carle
57. Brave New World Aldous Huxley
58. Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
59. The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
60. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
61. Charlotte’s Web E.B. White
62. Dracula Bram Stoker
63. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury
64. A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving
65. The Secret History Donna Tartt
66. The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery
67. Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
68. The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
69. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
70. Skellig David Almond
71. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
72. Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
73. Game of Thrones (series) George R.R. Martin
74. David Copperfield Charles Dickens
75. Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
76. Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak
77. Twilight (series) Stephenie Meyer
78. Beloved Toni Morrison
79. The Help Kathryn Stockett
80. Sherlock Holmes (series) Arthur Conan Doyle
81. Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
82. Moneyball Michael Lewis
83. My Family and Other Animals Gerald Durrell
84. Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
85. On the Road Jack Kerouac
86. Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
87. Wild Swans Jung Chang
88. Anne of Green Gables L.M. Montgomery
89. Les Miserables Victor Hugo
90. Room on the Broom Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
91. Private Peaceful Michael Morpurgo
92. Noughts and Crosses Malorie Blackman
93. Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee
94. Danny the Champion of the World Roald Dahl
95. Down and Out in Paris and London George Orwell
96. The Magic Faraway Tree Enid Blyton
97. The Witches Roald Dahl
98. The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy
99. Holes Louis Sachar
100. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
I must say that it does my heart good to see Holes right next to The Picture of Dorian Gray. I think that summarizes the list quite nicely.
Top British authors will be read as part of the new Read for My School program in Britain. Aimed at 9-11 year olds, the program will run the first quarter of 2013. The project is designed to encourage reading for pleasure with 100,000 free books being donated by the Pearson Foundation. Additionally, almost half of the 90 titles on the reading list will be available to read online at no cost.
The 90 books are broken into themes that include Historical Hits, It’s a Mystery, Keep It Real, Laugh Out Loud, Out of the This World, Stars of the Screen, Thrill Seekers, and Wild Thing. The books are a mix of new and old, popular and classics. Visit the official site for more information.
ALA has released their list of the top 10 most challenged books in 2011. There were 326 challenges reported to ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. I’m intrigued about the changes in the list this year: no Harry Potter, no Tango Makes Three.
Here, just in time for the 30th Anniversary of Banned Books Week are the top ten:
4. Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; religious viewpoint
7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity; nudity; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit
8. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; sexually explicit
9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
Reasons: drugs; offensive language; sexually explicit
10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Reasons: offensive language; racism
This summer, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center did a survey about parents habits in sharing e-books with children. Their focus was specifically on families who had iPads, since that has emerged as the dominant device for books for children. The entire study is worth a read, but here are some facts pulled from it:
I think that children’s books will prove a tough nut to crack for publishers. Do you make the books interactive? Is a book filled with videos and things to click on still a book in parents’ eyes? Or do you convert over just the format of the print volume? Aren’t opportunities being lost there?
How do you feel about e-books and small children? Are you a parent who shares e-books or not?
Publisher’s Weekly has the results from Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age, an ongoing study from Bowker Market Research. The trends seems to be affected by the recent blockbuster films and series like The Hunger Games, but also goes well beyond those:
“Although bestsellers lead, there’s a long tail of rich reading that has interesting implications for the publishers of YA books in terms of discovery and consumer relationships,” said project editor Kristen McLean.
Adult readers of teen books appear to also have the most valuable of traits to publishers. They are early adopters of e-books but willing to purchase a book they want in either print or digital format. They are loyal to the authors they love and they are active on social networks and get reading recommendations from their friends.
Sounds like a lot of the folks I know online and in person who read these books.
UPDATE: Thanks to a tweet from @ScottWesterfeld, I realized that I misunderstood the study results. 55% of BUYERS of YA books are adults while 28% of sales are to adults. Of those, 22% are reading the books themselves. My apologies!
The National Literacy Trust conducted a survey of 21,000 children and teens in the UK about their reading habits. In 2005, four out of ten children read daily. That has fallen to three in ten.
What I find most troubling about the survey results is that one in five children said that they rarely or never read in their own time. 17% of the children even said they would be embarrassed to be seen reading by their friends. Scary that!
Even genres you might think would be continuing in their popularity are falling. Magazine reading fell by 20% since 2005 with only 57% of children reading magazines. Even more surprising is the comic reading dropping to 50% from the 64% in 2005.
Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, gives the following statement:
We believe we need to inspire a new generation to read in the same way that the Olympics is inspiring a new generation to take part in sport.
We need to make reading irresistible. We want to call on families and professionals working with children and young people to make ten minutes in their day for reading.
This is about carving out reading time yes, but it is also about getting the right books into the hands of children. It’s about allowing them to read about their own interests, taking them to the library to explore those interests, and getting out of the way. We have to let go of what books are best for them and just get them turning pages. Quality will follow. I promise.
The same is true of adults, who need to read what they love (even if that is children’s and teen books) so that they can model reading for the children in their lives. If reading is good for youth, it’s just as good for us!
The Guardian has news of a British survey by ICM and the Fatherhood Institute on behalf of Booktrust. The study was done with more than 500 parents of infants participating.
They found that 64% of parents were not reading to their babies at 7 months old and that 57% did not own a single book.
Booktrust provides families with a pack of free books via their Bookstart program. Happily, 75% of families started sharing books with their babies as soon as they received their free books.
The Booktrust program is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week. Booktrust gives books to 3 million children a year in the UK with 30 million titles having been given away since 1992.
No, this isn’t about me starting a system on my blog to rate the books I read with a series of stars. Instead it’s about the insidious suggestion by Brigham Young professor, Sarah Coyne, that books for teens should have rating labels on them. It’s enough to make my librarian skin crawl.
Coyne checked teen novels for profanity in five different categories. All but five of the books she looked at had at least one instance of profanity. (Though I must point out that “hell” and “damn” are included in her list of profane words.)
First, let me say that I’m opposed to labeling books at all. But really, profanity?? Not sexual acts, not violence? But instead the damns and the hells and the transient but powerful words we use to express emotions? What the…
Second, I have to relate my own story of reading a Judy Blume book. I loved Judy Blume as a pre-teen and read book after book by her in a single summer. I found Deenie and loved the storyline of a girl who wanted to be a model and had to deal with being in a back brace. But as a younger reader, I completely (and I mean completely) missed the section on masturbation. I missed it so thoroughly that when I later heard about that being in the book, I was confused and baffled. I reread it as a teenager, and by golly, there it was!
No labels necessary, no parent needing to intervene. Books are special that way. They are patient, waiting for you to be the right age and then they change along with you.
And for those of you who think that the four letter words are different, I was an voracious reader and still needed to have someone on the school bus draw what the F-word meant. Then I got to teach her the medical terms my mother used for those parts of the body. We all learned something that day.
Another wrinkle is what we do with the adult books that teens are also reading. I read Stephen King as a teen, hauling his huge tomes along with me. I read adult romance novels that my mother didn’t approve of at all and that the librarians in my small town library also frowned at but let me check out. I read Ivanhoe, Gone with the Wind, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and any book that caught my fancy. And I would have read them despite any labels, and perhaps even because of labels.
And what happened to me? I became a lover of books, a librarian, a book blogger, and a mother who would let her teenage son read anything that he wanted. Labels or not, he can read it. Just like I did. If it makes him into a reader, especially one who takes risks and learns about the way others think and feel, then I say: Hell Yes!
