London Free Press: Today Section – Corus lists new fall programs
Very cool! Starting this fall, Canadians will have a new preschool claymation program based on the Dragon books by Dav Pilkey.

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Summer Reading List Blues
This Op Ed piece has an interesting take on modern children’s lit. One part really rings true for me and that is that kids are now given mandated summer reading lists that count as part of the following year’s grade. Sad. I always found summer the time that I could just read any books I pleased and many more of them than I would read during the school year.
While I don’t agree with her take on modern realistic novels for children being too heavy for kids. I do agree that there is a power to fantasy novels that is freeing and perfect for summer reading. I do see it as problematic that summer reading lists depend on Newbery winners to make up their lists. I would hope that teachers begin to point kids to some of the wonderful books out there that will never win awards like that.
Tha article concludes with:
“We seem to have lost sight of what children can actually process, and more important, of their own innate capacities. Instead of our children being free to roam and dream and invent on their own timetable, and to read about children doing such things, we increasingly ask our children to be sober and hard-working at every turn, to take detailed notes on their required texts with Talmudic attention, to endure computer-generated tests. And the texts we require them to pore over have become all too often about guarded, world-weary, overburdened children, who are spending their childhoods trying to cope with the mess their parents left them.
Strangely, it seems that in such stories the only people who get to break free are the missing parents: these characters seem to have found their lives too stressful and boxed-in, and have fled — right out of the books.”

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town
“Although you do not know his name, Siegfried (Zig) Engelmann is one of the most talked-about authors in the country right now. His most prominent work, which you have not read, is a story for second graders. It begins, “A girl got a pet goat.”
Engelmann’s book is the one that President Bush was reading to a class of children on 9/11. Engelmann is the developer of Direct Instruction, a controversial teaching method.
“We don’t give a damn what the teacher thinks, what the teacher feels,” Engelmann said. “On the teachers’ own time they can hate it. We don’t care, as long as they do it.” Engelmann claims that Direct Instruction is one of the few teaching methods that have been consistently shown to improve student achievement, especially among disadvantaged children. “Traditionalists die over this,” he said. “But in terms of data we whump the daylights out of them.”

ACHOCKABLOG: Danziger Appreciation
Thank you to ACHOCKABLOG for another great children’s lit link. This is a must-hear for those of us who grew up appreciating Paula Danziger’s work.

Vandergrift’s Special Interest Page
Amazing how even though I have been online since 1995, I still manage to miss some of the most important children’s literature sites on the web. This site has been around since 1995 and has an immense collection of children’s and YA literature information and links to related sites.

Guinness World Records
This is a definite site for children’s librarians and teachers to have on their bookmarks. I found myself eagerly turning from one picture to the next to see the biggest lollipop and largest custard-pie fight.

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.”