There are many ways of looking at character: flat vs rounded, static vs dynamic and stylised versus natural. These distinctions are explained below. FLAT/ROUNDED Is this character more ‘flat’ or more ’rounded’? This distinction was first made by E.M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel, who said that a round character is one who is…
Chapter books are better able to be defined than other types of books because they are for quite a narrow developmental process.
This one goes out to all those mushroom lovers out there.
Why don’t boys read books about girls? Well, first of all, many boys do read books about girls. As for the ones who won’t? They understand that gender is a hierarchy, and their position at the top is tenuous. Also, the adult book buyers in their lives probably aren’t buying them books starring girls, under…
“The written word will remain” Which words will we leave as our legacy? What we have published in books and magazines, or what we have published on blogs and ezines and Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook…? A few years ago I set about inputting all of our known family data into a family tree program.…
Skeuomorphism is a word from the world of graphical user interface design. It describes interface objects which mimic real-world counterparts in how they appear and/or how the user can interact with them. I’m starting to hear it outside tech blogs: Has Morality Become A Skeuomorph? from The Society Pages. Skeuomorphism is also useful when talking about picture…
“We’re not trying to make stories that are going to be read, we’re trying to make stories that are going to be read a milliondy billiondy times.” Mo Willems While children’s books need to be re-readable, books aimed at an adult audience do not: As anyone who has ever read books to a child knows, young…
Breakfast eating has changed a lot over time, at least in the West, which in turn has influenced other cultures. These changes have of course been reflected in children’s literature.
Children don’t tend to like green vegetables. Picture book creators know this, and often, greens are used as proxy for any yucky thing: Stock yuck.
This morning Cosmopolitan reports that UK authors are pushing for children’s literature to include sex in fiction for kids. That’s quite a headline grabber. Of course, reading the actual article offers a less sensationalist request: They’re not asking too much, are they? Bear in mind that in the publishing world, ‘children’s literature’ includes the young…
UPDATE: Here is the latest hand-wringing on boys and books, this time from Jonathan Emmett. The New Statesman has published an article by Jonathan Emmett who points out that the picturebook world is dominated by women. I’m simplifying here, but basically he argues that this is one problem with picturebooks today, and the feminisation of…
App developers would do well to remember that when it comes to providing a reading experience that is developmentally valuable for young children, it’s as much down to what the app doesn’t do, as what it does. a commenter on the Guardian article: Alarm Bells and Whistles Many of the first digital picturebook apps (‘storyapps’…
“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” C.S. Lewis The publishing world can’t run properly unless books are connected to the right readers and when it came time to upload the app onto iTunes we had to decide what age the ideal reader…
Listening to a folktale — or a children’s book — is more like listening to a musical piece than reading a modern novel. It is normal to listen to musical pieces more than once, under different circumstances, and performed by different musicians.
First up, Larry Ferlazzo has a great list Close Reading: Am I Getting Close? from Learning Is Growing Does Background Knowledge Matter to Reading Comprehension? from Russ On Reading What, exactly is close reading of the text? from Grant Wiggins. Part two is here. The first chapter of the book Notice and Note by Beers and Probst…