Monica Edinger's Blog, page 84
March 7, 2012
On Reading Aloud on World Read Aloud Day
Today is Litworld's World Read Aloud Day. As someone who has always read aloud to her class it is a celebration I can totally get behind. Right now, in preparation for Jack Gantos' visit to our school in May, I'm reading aloud to my fourth grade class his Newbery winner Dead End in Norvelt. Earlier in the year I read aloud Carman Agra Deedy and Randall Wright's The Cheshire Cheese Cat with great success so I'm delighted to see it as a finalist for the E. B. White Read Aloud Award. Here are a ...
March 5, 2012
March 7th is World Read Aloud Day
From LitWorld:
Celebrate the Power of Words and Stories and Take Action for Global Literacy with LitWorld
Worldwide at least 793 million people remain illiterate. Imagine a world where everyone can read… On March 7, 2012, LitWorld, a global literacy organization based in New York City, will be celebrating World Read Aloud Day. World Read Aloud Day is about taking action to show the world that the right to read and write belongs to all people. World Read Aloud Day motivates children, teens...
March 2, 2012
Coming Soon: Mary Losure's The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Frances Fool the World
I've long been besotted with the Cottingley Fairies story even going so far as to use it to frame a talk I gave on literary fairy tales. Thinking I might write a kids' book about it one day I went on to do a ton of research, but now along comes Mary Losure who has done even more research than me and written that very book, The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Mary Fool the World. Darn you, Mary! Just kidding as this is one terrific book (that I reviewed in the March Horn Book — starred no less).
The s...
March 1, 2012
What do Downton Abbey and Book Thievery Have in Common?
While there may not be a single book lover among those populating that great house of the BBC and Masterpiece Theater (and thievery there seems either to involve hearts or extra food to feed returning WWI soldiers), Brian Percival, director of a number Downton Abbey episodes, is taking on one of the great book lovers of literature with the film adaptation of Marcus Zuzak's sublime The Book Thief.
via Vulture
February 28, 2012
Fall Books I've Got My Eye On
The following from PW's Fall 2012 Sneak Previews caught my eye:
Splintered by A. G. Howard from Abrams. I've been mostly unimpressed by creative efforts to go into new directions with Lewis Carroll's Wonderland (say the recent film by Tim Burton), but there are occasional successes (most notably Neil Gaiman's Coraline) so I'm curious.Hereville Book Two by Barry Deutch also from Abrams. YAY!!The Boxcar Children Beginning: The Aldens of Fair Meadow Farm by Patricia MacLachlan from Albert...February 25, 2012
Some Sites Worth Visiting
I follow all sorts of blog, sites, twitterers, many familiar to all of you too, I'm sure. Here are a handful that may not be.
Brain Pickings I kept coming across cool posts from this site and so began following. I'm clearly late to this party, but maybe some of you are too. From the About page:
Brain Pickings is the brain child of Maria Popova, a cultural curator and curious mind at large, who also writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Design Observer, among others. She gets occasional help...
February 22, 2012
Germans and their Fairy Tales
Thanks to Heidi Heiner for alerting me to this video that Jack Zipes showed at the recent Grimm Legacies conference (that I so wish I could have attended).
February 21, 2012
What About Fact Checking?
I just received a copyedited version of my forthcoming book, Africa Is My Home, and one of the things the copyeditor did is a whole lot of fact checking. I had no idea that was part of her job, but boy am I glad it was. Having seen serious errors in other books I've been fretting a great deal about the possibility of some in my own. Thus my fascination with Dan Kois's "Facts are Stupid" in which an "essayist and his fact-checker go to battle over the line between true and false." I...
February 19, 2012
More Awards
The Cybils were announced on February 14th, Valentine's Day and a grand bunch they are. Given by the children's literature blogging community in a wide range of categories, this award is intended to provide another selection of great books for parents and children and all who love children's books. This year I was tickled that two of the books I nominated ended up winners: Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright's The Cheshire Cheese Cat and Candace Fleming's Amelia Lost.
This year's British...
February 15, 2012
Theater for One: The Incredible Book Eating Boy
The Guardian alerted me to the British company Bootworks delightful-sounding theatrical version of Oliver Jeffers' The Incredible Book Eating Boy where:
..each five-minute show has an audience of just one person, who watches it from inside a small black box, with the puppeteers dancing round the outside.
Doesn't that sound wonderful? Here's a video that gives a teeny taste, but I'm sure hardly even begins to do justice to this remarkable sounding production.
