Reading Spaces

What many of us have been saying at least since the NEA 2004 report: Young People Are Reading More Than You by Hannah Withers and Lauren Ross, in McSweeney's

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/young-people-are-reading-more-than-you

Patrick Ness wins Carnegie Medal for Monsters of Men

The Chaos Walking series by expat American YA author, Patrick Ness, is among my favourites. I don't have time right now to give all the reasons why I highly recommend it, and I'm still mulling over the conclusion, but I'm happy to see the books receive this kind of recognition. The writing is at times, truly, breath-taking. He can certainly turn a very nice phrase. The Carnegie medal is awarded by a committee of librarians, and Ness gives a quote-worthy defense of libraries in his acceptance speech. To read more about the Carnegie, library cuts and Patrick Ness see this article in the Bookseller, this BBC article, or this Guardian article.

Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel wins CLA Children's and YA Book Awards

The author reports on his double award on his blog. Half Brother is an excellent book -- challenging, interesting, timely, beautifully written and suitable for all ages. I loved it. But, I can't decide how I feel about the same title being granted both awards. The cons for me: 1) it makes it seem as though the field of production is so small, that we need to double up awards, 2) it takes away the uniqueness of the young adult field if books that are suitable for all ages can be nominated and win the YA award. For what it's worth, Half Brother for me, is solidly in the YA camp, but that wouldn't stop me from recommending it to strong younger readers. The pros: 1) really good books float to the top, regardless of age category, 2) the resistance of age categories suggests the kind of wiliness that is such a big part of reading -- you just can't pin readers down.

"Anonymity in a World of Digital Books"

A new article by Elizabeth Jones and Joe Janes, in the latest issue of Policy & Internet:

Anonymity in a World of Digital Books: Google Books, Privacy, and the Freedom to Read

New article on book trailers: ALAN Revew

ALAN Review Fall 2010: feature article on booktrailers: from the ALAN blog:

"The first featured article “Not so innocent: Book trailers as promotional texts and anticipatory stories”, written by Denise Davila, was published in the Fall 2010 issue of The ALAN Review.  In her article, Davila proposes that book trailers, produced as part of the official promotion of a published YA book, “can be viewed as a texts and cultural artifacts” in and of themselves.  Her article also includes the findings of three different research studies in which college undergraduates respond to promotional book trailers."

 

From School Matters blog, a note from Stephen Krashen on the most recent Kaiser study findings:

"The Kaiser study described in the Post article reported that 15-18 year olds averaged 21 minutes a day of book reading. Back in 1946, Link and Hopf, in their book People and Books, reported that those ages 15 to 19 averaged 22 minutes a day of book"

Emma Donoghue reading at FIMS November 15



The Faculty of Information & Media Studies and The Book Store at Western, are honoured to host a reading event featuring London, Ontario literary sensation, Emma Donoghue on Monday, November 15 at 4:30 pm.

Donoghue's recent book, Room, has been nominated for a number of prestigious literary awards this year including the Man Booker Prize, (for a novel written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland and published in the United Kingdom), The Governor-General's Literary Award (for Canadian English-language fiction) and the Roger's Writers Trust Fiction Prize (for the year's best Canadian novel or short story collection). For more information about Emma Donoghue and her writing please visit her website at http://www.emmadonoghue.com.

The reading will take place at The Faculty of Information & Media Studies, North Campus Building, The University of Western Ontario, in room 117 at 4:30 pm and will be followed by a question and answer session and book signing. Seating is limited.

Copies of Room will be available for purchase at the event. All are welcome. This is a free event.

Questions?
Please contact: Paulette Rothbauer at prothba2@uwo.ca

Book Trailers Go Viral

From The Daily Beast: A fun article on the elusive viral book trailer. Emily Romero, vice president of marketing for Penguin Young Readers Group, on trying to reach the teen audience for the new paranormal romance series Nightshade by Andrea Cremer:

"Teens are savvy, they can tell when they’re being marketed to,” Romero says. “We wanted to create something that was more meaningful for our audience. Sure, a print ad, a banner ad campaign, a TV spot, those are pretty traditional ways to market a book, but we just wanted to try something completely different. We wanted something that spanned multiple platforms since that is how this target audience consumes their media.” What they created was a six-week, interactive campaign that kicked off September 1 with webisodes and a robust Facebook presence for one of Nightshade’s main characters, Shay Doran."

Book Trailers Go Viral.

Interdisciplinary conference on "dark novels" for YA

Noted critic of children's literature, Maria Nikolajeva pulled together a conference of neuroscientists, education, media and literary specialists to discuss whether books such as Twilight and Hunger Games are "affecting children's brains in a worrying way" -- see the report by Lucy Tobin in guardian.co.uk. Much of the rhetoric here sounds familiar re: the dangers of gothic, escapist fiction...Here's more information from the Cambridge/Homerton Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature at Cambridge about the conference: The Emergent Adult: Adolescent Literature and Culture.

Nollybooks: encouraging a culture of reading with chick-lit "bookazines"

An interesting publishing/promotion scheme from Nollybooks a Division of MME Media. Apparently Nollybooks are light romances in a hybrid format that combines elements of magazines with books. -- designed to encourage reading among young Black South African women. I tried to sample a chapter but the links do not appear to be working, although you can get summaries and reviews from the Nollybooks site.You can read more about them in this Mail & Guardian article