World Book Day is a "a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and (most importantly) it’s a celebration of reading. In fact, it’s the biggest celebration of its kind, designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries all over the world. Thanks to the generosity of National Book Tokens Ltd, publishers and booksellers, we can send millions of book vouchers to children and young people (more than 14 million, in fact: that’s one for nearly every child aged under eighteen in the country)." You can find all the information about World Book Day on their website, including Nursery Resources, Primary Resources, and Secondary Resources.
Do your students judge a book by its cover? Do you? Book designer Chip Kidd's TED presentation is very funny and if you are a page-sniffer (that new book smell..) you'll really enjoy this talk. If you would like to see a sampling of Chip's artwork, TIME did a spread on The Book Jacket Art of Chip Kidd here.
“Much is to be gained by eBooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness — a little bit of humanity" -Chip Kidd
I am fortunate to have a blind young man working for me in the media center. His positive attitude and spirit lift me daily, and he never ceases to amaze me with his ability to navigate the computer lab and library. There are so many things that the sighted world takes for granted, and Matt reminds me of these things every day. Today I learned about Bookshare®, (2012 Reader's Choice Award winner from eSchool Media) a site which is an online library of digital books for people with print disabilities. It operates under an exception to U.S. copyright law which allows copyrighted digital books to be made available to people with qualifying disabilities. I can't wait to share the site with Matt, as well as our special education teachers, as I know our students will find it invaluable. As described on their site, "members with visual impairments can listen to books with using a text-to-speech synthesized voice, read books in Braille, or access the material in large print. Members can read books on a computer or a variety of portable devices, either visually and with text-to-speech as desired. Members with severe dyslexia typically benefit from access to the full text of books in digital format, for multi-modal reading with both visual and audio.(through synthetic text to speech)." Here's a video of blind student Steffon Middleton using a portable Braille device to read digital books on Bookshare® :
Currently there are about 127,000 digital books, textbooks, teacher-recommended reading, periodicals and assistive technology tools.
Bookshare® has a long list of major donors, including Adobe Corporation, Mozilla Foundation, (their browser is FireFox) Microsoft Corporation and the U.S. Department of Education - Office of Special Education Programs.
I know that there are many teacher-librarians and media specialists who do not feel that graphic novels have a place in the school library. I've heard comments such as "They're the same as comic books!" and "High school students shouldn't be reading picture books". Today's digital learners are constantly preoccupied with visual stimuli, including video games, computers, TV, movies and cell phones that it's no wonder that our book circulation statistics have shown a decline in the last few years.
Problem #1- Dealing with kids who say they hate reading
That always hurts to hear, but I'd rather they were reading a magazine or a graphic novel, because then they would at least be reading, right?
Problem #2- Special education students who have various problems
I have students who not only have ADD, they dislike reading. (see problem #1) Cool pictures in a graphic novel can possibly keep their interest, especially if the artwork is awesome. The books I have purchased include a few Twilight Zone stories, classic novels (Beowolf, Frankenstein) and Anime.
A great way to motivate your students to read this summer is to introduce them to DailyLit. Once they sign up on the site, students will receive their book installments via email or RSS feed. Reading can be done on a computer or any mobile device, including Blackberry, iPhone or iPad. Thanks to Kristen Swanson for posting on her site.
