BBC NEWS: Toys have lasting impact on brain
Tests of baby owls show that things learned in youth transfer to adulthood. The study shows that “learning new skills very early in life prompts neurons in the brain to build new connections that still work into adulthood.”
Goodness, think what reading to kids at an early age is doing! Let’s go out and build more neural connections in the children we work with.

Quidditch.com’s Incomplete Guide to Lemony Snicket Allusions offers an in-depth look at dystopian references within the Series of Unfortunate Events.

News from Reading Today Daily : Gr8 news! Texting “no bar to literacy” The claim that kids using text messaging abbreviations destroys their written literacy skills has been proven unfounded.

Books for Children Portraying Aging and Older Characters in a Positive Light contains books for preschoolers through sixth graders. It is a joint project between the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and Societal Education about Aging for Change (SEA Change).
You will need Adobe Acrobat to read the pdf file.

Ypulse has a posting about the top magazines read by college women. Interestingly, there were some teen titles on the list, including Seventeen, CosmoGirl, YM and Teen People. There is also a list for the top magazines read by college men.

Space Art in Children’s books 1950’s to 1970’s offers some great scans of vintage space travel illustrations from children’s books.
Via Boing Boing.

Lissa Explains it All offers HTML help specifically for kids. The site offers information on CSS, frames, tables, color, and javascript.

A Fast and Brutal Wing by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson.
Niki and Emmet are siblings who were caught naked in the woods on Halloween night. That same night, a famous author who lived nearby disappeared. Through the kids’ writings and newspaper articles, readers slowly begin to learn the truth about what happened.
In Niki’s writings, she claims that she and her brother can change into animals at will. She can become a cat and Emmet becomes a hawk. This fascinating book lets readers find their own truth.
I couldn’t put this one down. I just had to continue to work out the puzzle of the book. It was quick moving and lots of fun, but filled with mystery and suspense. Recommended for teens who enjoy fantasy and/or mysteries.

News: Harry Potter 6 release date: July 16, 2005
Woo hoo! We will have to plan a Harry Potter party that Saturday. Our last one was very well attended by those elusive preteens. We did a treasure hunt, trivia contest, and mixed magical potion drinks. I would definitely do the potion drinks again. The kids had a really fun time with those. I’ll have to come up with some other ideas…