Books
Of late I’ve been reading:
I started reading The Right Girl by Ellie O’Neill. If you asked me to define it in a few words I would say dystopian romance. It is definitely “chick lit” but with a dystopian edge. A kind of modernised, chick lit version of 1984. The concept was fascinating but I found the pacing quite slow (maybe it’s just me) and I did something I’ve never done before – I read the first half a dozen chapters then skipped to the end and read the last few chapters.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman, graphic novel edition by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba.
Cicada by Shaun Tan. The Guardian did a great write-up about this book, including information about how the illustrations were created.
Web
Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro talk about the artificial boundaries created by genre. This article is a few years old now (2015) but it’s quite interesting and really relevant to our studies with regards to genres in ETL402. It particularly looks into what is considered fantasy and what is not.
For the Love of Libraries – a response to the recent Forbes article saying libraries should be replaced with Amazon stores.
Adults (aka millennials) are reading YA books, a trend that is identified as starting with the Harry Potter series. It’s an interesting read although I dispute their categorisation of Goosebumps and Babysitters Club being YA books! These are read by primary school aged children, not teens and young adults!
This is a lovely how to guide for using picture books for older readers in your classroom – this is a year seven class. It’s a really valuable read and I’m envious of her extensive classroom library.
The Most Astonishingly Unconventional Books of 2018 is an amazing list of children’s books that just don’t quite fit the normal conventions of literature. Would be great if you’re investigating postmodern children’s books.
HT to Tehani who posted this on Facebook, the Best series books for Tweens, although as always discretion should be used as to suitability. I would definitely put Rick Riordan’s series and Mortal Instruments for 12+, and Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Hunger Games older again!
Teachers take on the department as a new report comes out suggesting that phonics instruction is the best way to teach reading. They say that exclusive focus on phonics ignores reading for meaning and should be combined with a whole language approach.
NSW Government commits millions of dollars to a program to encourage teachers, boost morale and improve outcomes. The pilot program in 2014 was well received and hopes to improve retention rates as well as student performance.
A funny comic from XKCD about the peer review process. Make sure you hover your cursor over the image for the alt text which is also funny.
An article from a few years ago (2013) about some research conducted in Canada regarding why members of their community weren’t using the library. For people who advocate the library as an equitable resource for everyone, the answers might be surprising.
This post discusses the challenges when archiving born-digital objects when the file formats are no longer supported.
Podcasts
History Lab, by the same team that bring us GLAMCity. They’ve just finished up series one but it’s a fascinating listen if you have the time.
On Tamson’s recommendation I’ve started listening to the ABC’s new History Listen podcast. I will warn you, though, that the “Sister Kate” episode is quite distressing.
I’ve also recently finished listening to the Unravel True Crime podcast.
And, of course, Turbitt & Duck, which is now on hiatus.