It’s always good for kids to be following news and current events, but around a presidential election, it’s especially important. The election also provides a great opportunity to teach kids about how the government works and to get them excited about the role they’ll soon play in it.
Here are a few great places for election coverage (and news in general) aimed at kids:
Happy Banned Book Week, the American Library Associations awesome annual event used to draw attention to the banning of books.
Now in its 27th year, Banned Books Week will be kicked off in the American Library Association’s hometown of Chicago on Saturday, September 27 with a Read Out! event, featuring popular banned or challenged authors and local Chicago celebrities. This year’s theme, “Closing Books Shuts Out Ideas,” provides a great launch pad for the discussion, so make sure you have materials to support discussions of censorship.
Also, check out this video of the 100 most banned books from 1990 to 2000 [via HipWriterMama]:
Last weekend’s New York Times book review had three interesting children’s book reviews worth checking out.
First up, a review of two new picture books about Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her work helping to plant 30 million trees around Africa.
There’s also a review of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother:
MY favorite thing about “Little Brother” is that every page is charged with an authentic sense of the personal and ethical need for a better relationship to information technology, a visceral sense that one’s continued dignity and independence depend on it: “My technology was working for me, serving me, protecting me. It wasn’t spying on me. This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.”
I can’t help being on this book’s side, even in its clunkiest moments.
And finally, a review of two different children’s books about New York.
HarperCollins announced that it’s planning to publish two novels aimed at teens by Sex and the City writer Candace Bushnell. The novels, called The Carrie Years, will chronicle Carrie Bradshaw as a teenager. The Guardian reports:
Publisher HarperCollins promised that The Carrie Years, aimed at teenagers, would give “an inside look at Carrie’s friendships, romances and how she realised her dream of becoming a writer”. There was no promise that the book will explain how Bradshaw manages to afford an apartment on the Upper East Side by writing one column a week about her sex life, nor that the books will cover the scene discussed by Carrie and Charlotte in the television series, in which Carrie reveals she lost her virginity to Seth Bateman in 11th grade. “His smelly rec room. Half a joint, three thrusts, finito … And PS - it was on the ping pong table.”
Bushnell said she had always been interested in exploring Bradshaw’s teenage years. “Carrie in high school did not follow the crowd - she led it,” she said. “It was there that she began observing and commenting on the social scene.”
The books are scheduled to be published worldwide in fall of 2010.
This sounds like it could be a very bad idea, but I think they’ll sell like hotcakes….
Cheryl Klein, a Scholastic editor and the continuity editor for Harry Potter, posted her four favorite books on writing along with the notes from a recent speech she made on things writers can learn from Harry Potter. She talks about character, voice, theme, and plot, and looks at what JK Rowling does in each of these areas to get readers to care so much about her characters and their stories. Worth taking a look at if you’re a writer or a Harry Potter fan, and definitely worth taking a look at if you’re both.
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It’s admitting a lot about my new life of full-time freelancing to even mention this, but daytime TV today has a few exciting highlights.
Martha Stewart’s show is all about blogging today, and briefly featured my favorite food blog.
Also, Stephenie Meyer is on Ellen today. Be sure to check the show’s site for clips and more info.
The guardian reports today that Eoin Colfer, Irish writer and author of the Artemis Fowl series, will be writing the sixth book in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.
The project was initiated by Adams’ widow, who also chose Eoin Colfer to continue the series. The sixth book was planned by Adams, but he died before it was written. The article elaborates:
Adams himself had plans for a sixth Hitchhiker book, saying in an interview: “People have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book. And it was a bleak book. I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note, so five seems to be a wrong kind of number, six is a better kind of number.”
But his death in 2001, aged 49, meant the book was never written, and “legions of Hitchhiker fans were left with their hearts beating a little too quickly for all eternity,” said Colfer.
As a fan of the Hitchhiker’s series himself, Colfer is certainly taking the opportunity seriously, and sounds absolutely thrilled, comparing the offer to “suddenly being offered the superpower of your choice.” He continues, saying, “For years I have been finishing this incredible story in my head and now I have the opportunity to do it in the real world… It is a gift from the gods. So, thank you Thor and Odin.”
The publisher is also making it clear that this book will be Colfer’s, not Colfer trying to write as Adams.
The book will “make no claims for Eoin being Douglas”, according to Prior [Penguin's marketing and publicity director]. “It’s not Eoin Colfer writing as Douglas Adams, as was the case with Sebastian Faulks,” she said, pointing to Penguin’s successful publication of Faulks’s new James Bond novel Devil May Care earlier this year. “It’s absolutely about him being himself – Eoin the author, but with the cast of Hitchhiker.”
Definitely exciting news for Hitchhiker’s fans and Colfer fans alike. Do you think he’s up to the task?
The National Book Festival in Washington, DC is being held on September 27th this year. You can read the full press release here. They’ve also put together a Young Readers’ Toolkit, with reading lists and kids activities.
There are a ton of great children’s and YA authors attending, including David Shannon, Neil Gaiman, Steven Kellogg, Matthew Reinhart, Robert Sabuda, Jon Scieszka, and R. L. Stine. A full (and very impressive) list of authors after the jump.
The previews for the movie version of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist have me really excited. I’m a huge David Levithan fan, and it looks like they might have made a teen movie that’s legitimately cool. Fingers crossed, but they’ve got Michael Cera and Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo), so they’re off to a pretty good start. I’m curious what the soundtrack’s going to look like…. Trailer below.
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