The New York Times — Chasing Art, Sixth Graders and a Dream
A nice interview with Blue Balliett, author of the popular and highly regarded Chasing Vermeer. At the end of the article, it is confirmed that Balliett is working on a second book that will follow the same characters later in their sixth grade year.

Read at Your Own Risk – Has Dr. Seuss’ legacy hobbled America’s literacy crusade?
Slate offers this look at whether Dr. Seuss has helped or hurt generations of American readers. I don’t agree with several of the author’s conclusions, but the final paragraph truly captures my reasons for reading books.
“Truly absorbing, addictive reading of imaginative writing is intensely private and, in a social sense, escapist. “Serious readers aren’t reading for instruction,” as an anthropologist at work studying American literary habits told novelist Jonathan Franzen. Devoted readers are hoping for a chance to discover, in the narrated lives of other selves, what it’s like to be an individual confronting the unpredictable. Maybe it’s time to stop spreading fears about “reading at risk,” and try generating more excitement about reading at your own risk. How? I wish I could say you could look it up, but you can’t.”

An insider’s look at kid lit
Arthur Levine, from Scholastic, talks about misconceptions of new children’s book authors.
“”There is a great misapprehension that it’s easy to write a children’s book,” Arthur Levine said. “It’s widely held in all forms of literature — that it’s somehow easy to do — but it often seems that people read to their kids and make the leap that they could write something that connects in the same way as the book they’re reading.”
A few can, but writing for children is not any easier than writing for adults. It takes talent and persistence and an ability to connect to children without coddling or patronizing them. It’s not as easy as it might look, even with pictures on the page and fewer words.”