Why do some parents believe when they find a book that they dont want their child to read, they decide that the book is bad for all children? Books bring so many experiences and varying view points - they provide opportunities for sharing and discussion. Who would expect that children's books are so dangerous. Sendak's response to parents concerned about Where the wild things are

Francesca Simon's top 10 anti heroes. No wonder her Horrid Henry is so popular. He's so Denis the Menace. Why isnt he on the list?

Down in the stacks

How weird is this? I have been updating records on some of the books, the most recent is "Julie of the wolves" by Jean Craighead George. Then I see via SLJ that she has just had her 90th birthday. We didnt have a copy in our Children's Literature Collection which is a Reference collection for students of children's literature, so I ordered copies. Luckily there were some still in print. We also have a lovely copy of her "The wounded wolf" illustrated by John Schoenherr.

This author has written an earlier series: Atherton, which had its own website about the 'world' he had created. This time he's written a very scary book for teens where we have 2 characters - the boy who has written a journal of his experiences and the girl who has video links embedded into his story. It really is quite incredible and will be interesting to see how readers react to this format.

Skeleton Creek
By Patrick Carman.
"Although housebound following an eerie accident, teenaged Ryan continues to investigate the strange occurrences in his hometown of Skeleton Creek, recording his findings in a journal and viewing email video clips sent by fellow detective Sarah. The reader may view Sarah's videos on a website by using links and passwords found in the text." - from the book's summary.
According to one reviewer, Sarah’s video is even more frightening giving a Blair Witch element to the whole experience for the reader. A fascinating mix of story by book / text and visual / video. The two blend together to heighten the reader/viewer’s experience of the building fear for the characters as they are drawn to a derelict dredge and the secret it holds. Check out the publisher’s website for a preview of what this book has in store: http://www.enterskeletoncreek.com/

Finding what titles and what order in series

It can be difficult to know the answer, when asked what are the books in a series and in what order they are written. I found this site which helps when looking for books in a series:

Gaslight Books

Go to the 'Four-Part Trilogy' to find the author or series you are looking for.

Week 9

I made it! For a while there when work had to take priority I thought I'd never catch up. But once I resolved to complete the exercises I began to really appreciate what Web 2.0 has to offer and am very grateful that ACL Learning encouraged and promoted this programme to its staff. Thank You.

What an amazing place the internet has become! I can so appreciate that there is something for everyone. This course has made me aware of tools that are going to be useful in my workplace; Bloglines will keep me uptodate with library matters, LibraryThing and BookBump are going to be useful with sharing book reviews, Google Docs is going to be a great tool for creating documents and spreadsheets for personal use. The best of all for me has been the photograpy sites. Flickr got me motivated to find out about digital cameras and into using my own. I can take all sorts of photos which can be put into albums and used to create great little pieces of my own artwork.

I will be keeping my Blog ongoing and developing in directions as yet I have not decided.....

Week 9

ebooks: Well I've setup my own account and had a look around. Netlibrary has a clean, clear and easy to navigate page setup. I searched for children's and teens books with little success. It was better just to scroll through the lists to find suitable titles. The content page for each title is very useful - certainly helps before deciding to select an item. When I checked the title "Children of Micronesia" I was surprised to find that it was published in 1994. So when I decided to add 'favourites', I chose items that wouldnt 'date' such as "Best Birthday Parties ever!" and "The care and feeding of dinosaurs".