Volume 33 Nº 1 - February 1997

Professional reading

Shae Shelton

Bauer, Caroline Feller 1996, 'Magic in the classroom', Book Links, November, pp. 60 - 2.

Bauer explains how to introduce young children to literature through magic tricks and provides detailed instructions for making your own magician's change bag.

For more of Bauer's persuasive techniques, ask your bookseller to order her Leading Kids to Books Through Magic (128 pages, American Library Association, 0-8389-0684-2).

Dwyer, David 1996, 'A response to Douglas Noble: We're in this together', Educational Leadership, November, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 24 - 6.

While evidence is slowly mounting to support technology's positive impact in schools, it is already clear that digital technologies are well on the way to becoming a permanent part of the educational arena at all levels and in countries around the world.

In disputing Douglas Noble's assertions made in the special 'Networking' edition of Educational Leadership, Dwyer claims that we are experiencing one of the great transitions in human history and that, despite the uncertainty it engenders, a global community is emerging, born largely of jet-powered transportation and digital communication.

Jacso, Peter 1996, 'The hardware helper', School Library Journal, vol. 42, no. 11, November, pp. 30 - 3.

At last, all that awful jargon associated with choosing a CD-ROM drive has been demystified!

Kerby, Ramona Nolen 1996, 'Happy seventy-fifth birthday, Newbery Award! Newbery authors share their thoughts', Journal of Youth Services in Libraries, Fall, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 25 - 34.

Ramona Kerby wrote to all living Newbery winners, requesting their reflections on what the premier US award for children's literature has meant to them.

Nancy Willard's drawing (opposite) shows the elation that she - and every recipient except William Armstrong (who had never heard of the award before winning it!) - felt upon receiving 'that telephone call'.

Paula Fox and Beverly Cleary share bittersweet memories. Elizabeth Yates and Lloyd Alexander speak of responsibility. Cynthia Rylant, in one short, powerful sentence - 'It was very precious!' - captures the essence of winning the Newbery Award.

In a way, the Newbery has come full circle: in 1943, Elizabeth Janet Gray (at 94, the oldest respondent to Kerby's request) received the award for Adam of the Road, a story of an English boy in the Middle Ages; in 1996, Karen Cushman received the award for The Midwife's Apprentice,a story of an English girl in the Middle Ages.

The Fall 1996 issue of the American Library Association's Journal of Youth Services in Libraries is devoted to celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the John Newbery Award. Don't miss it!

Lanes, Selma G. 1996, 'Civil people, uncivil times', Horn Book Magazine, vol. LXXII, no. 5, September/October, pp. 555 - 8.

In this succinct article, the author expresses her puzzlement at how children's books fit into the world we know. Although the USA is now at peace, its society has come to accept a terrifying level of violence as a component of everyday life. This same numbness to violence has infiltrated children's books and her example of Eve Bunting's Smoky Night (Harcourt) with illustrations by David Diaz is given consideration. She goes on to ask 'What can civil people do for children in this decidedly uncivil world?'

McKay, Eirian 1996, 'Newry Library: Promoting equal access for the under-fives', Youth Library Review, Autumn, no. 22, p. 22 - 5.

McKay explains how the children's librarians in a Northern Ireland border town became aware of disparities in the provision of resources in different areas. They realised that there were some children who, had the library staff not gone out to visit them, would not have the chance to use the library. To help attract the youngsters to the library, a teddy bears' picnic was organised and advertised in all the preschool centres. Playschool leaders rounded up busloads of their children to come over to the library with their teddies. The children's librarians organised food, drink, games, a video, songs, rhymes and stories. The author concludes: 'Every time these kids walk past the library now, they will associate it with the great time they had'.

Mickelson, Jane L. 1996, 'P.L. Travers: 1906 - 1996', Horn Book Magazine, vol. LXXII, no. 5, Sept./Oct., pp. 641 - 4.

This is a wonderful article about Pamela Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins, who is quoted as saying that the Mary Poppins stories were not written for children but for everybody - or, maybe, 'to ease my own heart'.

Many of the themes and characters in Travers's works were derived from classical and early mythology - how else could she have transformed that most prosaic of characters, the British nanny, into a woman of power!

Noble, Douglas D. 1996, 'Mad rushes into the future: The overselling of educational technology', Educational Leadership, November, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 18 - 23.

A sharply critical documentary of three decades of corporate technology's ventures into schools. Can we really trust the improvement of education to corporate giants and their expensive new technology as government officials seem so ready to do? Noble concludes that getting schools to leap on to the information highway is just the latest in a series of corporate forays marked by ignorance, marketing madness and avaricious self-interest. The information 'hypeway' is but the latest, and potentially the most costly, package sold to schools.

Before drawing your own conclusions, read David Dwyer's response in the same issue of Educational Leadership (see above).

Todaro, Julie, 1996, 'The new tools of the trade: 48 essential Net resources for librarians', School Library Journal, vol. 42 no. 11, November, pp. 24 - 9

Todaro lists URLs (those 'universal resource locators' of the Internet which start http://) which should be of interest to librarians. Included are pointers to ways of 'using the Internet professionally', networking opportunities, literature sites, education sites and 'children's resources'.

Union, Bunni & Williams, Sheila 1996, 'Focus on young adult programming'Journal of Youth Services in Libraries, vol. 9, no. 4, Summer, pp. 378 - 86.

Three 'young adult' programs organised by youth services librarians are described.

• Pizza and Politicians attempted to answer students who claimed that 'nobody ever listens to us'.
• Reading to Seniors was a voluntary co-operative venture in which a group of teenagers went into the local nursing home and read to old people.
• The Making Books program taught journal and assignment-writing skills to junior high school students who designed and handbound their own journals. The one-on-one nature of this activity fostered relationships between the librarians and the students that continued after the class had ended.

Van Essen, Susanna 1996, 'Denying extinction? The thylacine in children's literature', Reading Time, November, pp. 12 - 15.

Despite being extinct in the wild, the thylacine is alive and well in Australian children's literature. 'A recurring theme emerges when the thylacine appears in children's fiction - the tiger still survives in rugged bushland but its existence must be kept secret from science and the general public... The recurring theme of the tiger surviving in rugged bushland with the protection of people who keep its existence secret, seems to fulfil a need in our society. Most of us would like to believe the thylacine still exists. Perhaps these stories help to lessen our remorse that such an extraordinary creature was so ruthlessly exterminated. But perhaps, by indulging in the romantic myth of a few surviving thylacines, people are not only relieved of guilt but also of responsibility.'

Novels published between 1953 and 1996 are examined. Authors include Nan Chauncy, Hesba Brinsmead, Barbara Bolton, Mary Small, Michael Salmon and Erle Wilson.

Williams, Barbara Osborne 1996, 'Tapping teen talent in Queens: A library-based LSCA-funded youth development success story from New York', VOYA, vol. 19, no. 3 August, pp. 143 - 7.

This is a great story about how the Queens Borough Public Library System developed a program to attract young adults and provide them with 'growth opportunities'.