Oo la la!  I adore the beta Lookybook site!  The site offers all sorts of children’s books that you can page through online!  And these are not books you have never heard of, they are top-of-the-line and recent children’s books.  The paging works seamlessly and smoothly with an intuitive interface, plus you can embed the Lookybooks onto your blog or website, even without registering for the site.

Registration gets you your own bookshelf, the ability to comment on books, and other bells and whistles. 

You can browse the books by highest rated and most looked at.  Here is an embedded book so you can see how it works:

 

http://www.lookybook.com/embed/1309-embed.swf

What do you think?

A Milwaukee Journal article offers hope that finally people are realizing that there is an art to creating books for children!  Amazing!

Here are some of my favorite quotes, but it is worth reading it in full:

“Most people have a warm and fuzzy and kind of inaccurate idea of what children’s literature is,” says John Warren Stewig, director of the Center for Children’s Literature at Carthage College.

….

In fact, the best writers for children are masters of illusion. They labor for years over their manuscripts, cutting out unnecessary words, boiling down descriptions to the finest, clearest images and immersing themselves in the worlds of childhood to make their stories authentic.

My only quibble with the article is their final section where they say that Hugo Cabret is “stronger on the graphics than the prose, which is rather plain.”  Guess it goes to make their point that all children’s books are being held to standards by readers.

The Associated Press has a wonderful article on the new trend of taking the art of children’s books seriously.  Children’s book illustrations are now being shown in museums, studied in art courses, and of course being purchased as investments.  I especially like the second page of the article where they tie children’s book illustrations to cultural and artistic movements of their times. 

The Daily Mail has an the intriguing results of a poll for the best children’s books in the UK.  Amazingly, Harry Potter came in SIXTH!  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis was voted into the top position and if you take a look at the top 50, you will see many other beloved children’s classics.  Here are the top 50.  I  started to bold my favorites, but it turned out that almost every one I have read, I have loved, so the ones in bold are the ones I have read:

1. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis

2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
3. Famous Five, Enid Blyton

4. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne
5. The BFG, Roald Dahl

6. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
7. The Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

8. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

9. Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
10. The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson

11. The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter

12. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
13. Matilda, Roald Dahl
14. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
15. The Cat in the Hat, Dr Seuss

16. The Twits, Roald Dahl
17. Mr Men, Roger Hargreaves

18. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
19. The Malory Towers series, Enid Blyton

20. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

21. The Railway Children, E. Nesbit

22. Hans Christian Fairy Tales, H.C. Andersen

23, The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

24. The Witches, Roald Dahl
25. Stig of the Dump, Clive King
26. The Wishing Chair, Enid Blyton
27. Dear Zoo, Rod Campbell
28. The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Judith Kerr

29. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jan Brett
30. James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl

31. A Bear Called Paddington, Michael Bond

32. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

33. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

34. Aesop’s Fables, Jerry Pinkney
35. The Borrowers, Mary Norton
36. Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
37. Meg and Mog, Jan Pienkowski

38. Mrs Pepperpot, Alf Proysen

39. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Michael Rosen
40. The Gruffalo’s Child, Julia Donaldson
41. Room on a Broom, Julia Donaldson

42. The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy

43. Miffy, Dick Bruna

44. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

45. Flat Stanley, Jeff Brown
46. The Snail and the Whale, Julia Donaldson
47. Ten Little Ladybirds, Melanie Gerth
48. Six Dinners Sid, Inga Moore
49. The St. Clare’s series, Enid Blyton

50. Captain Underpants, Dav Pilkey

Looks like I need to brush up on my Blyton!  Anyone have a favorite one to recommend that I haven’t read yet?

I have obviously been living under a rock, because I had no idea how many children’s lit bloggers were using Goodreads.  So far I have a handful of friends and I have asked for many many of you to befriend me.  I am obnoxiously adding books by the stack to my lists.  So, if you want a newbie, obnoxious friend on Goodreads, feel free to ask!  Here’s my profile.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is set to be made into a video game!  Can you imagine a more likely title to be converted to a game?

According to the Reuters article, it will be a downloadable game available in 2009.  It will hopefully be the first game in a series of them based on the book. 

BBC News is reporting that Three Little Cowboy Builders will not be considered for the Bett Award because “the use of pigs raises cultural issues.”  No, I’m not joking.  The concern is that Muslims will be offended by the use of pigs as main characters.  The story is based on the Three Little Pigs and the judges also expressed concern that it could offend builders as well.  How about cowboys?!

To see more of this obviously offensive book, head to Shoofly Publishing and their section on this 3D Popup Book.  Golly, couldn’t that format be offensive to Robert Sabuda?

VOYA has released their newest volume online!  This month has two great articles I want to point out. 

First is the Magazines for Teens article.  Any teen librarian knows that magazines for teens are HUGE.  The article has sections on anime/manga/comics, arts and crafts, entertainment, ethnic/multicultural, teen girls, teen guys, and humor.  Sure to round out your library’s magazine collection or to give you ideas for purchases for teens in your life.

The second article is part of what VOYA does best.  They have entire section in their book reviews about adult books that teens will enjoy.  The Clueless compilation offers the top adult mysteries that will appeal to teens.  A good place to broaden the scope of your teen materials, build a great cross-over brochure or bookmark, or just make sure your adult mystery collection contains them. 

The Times reports that British publishers are going to start putting age guides on children’s books.  Sigh.  Librarians have a love-hate relationship with age guidelines already.  Yes, they make it easier for patrons to find appropriate films, but they are also so very arbitrary and often strange.  Video games especially are oddly rated and because the ratings range so widely from one title to the next they are less than helpful. 

I worry that book ratings will be even more difficult to pinpoint.  The age range for books has very little to do with reading level, unless you are looking at the levels of beginning readers and any person who has tried to use numerical levels from one series to the next knows that there is no standard there either.  But what do they do with teen novels purposely written at lower reading levels.  There will be teen content but their ratings seem to have more to do with reading level than content, making it a completely different type of rating than anything else parents have dealt with. 

How about you?  Do you see book ratings as a positive move?