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Mark Twain Google Doodle
If you look at Google’s homepage on Wednesday you’ll find an old-timey, attractive and attention-getting homage to the great American novelist, Mark Twain. Yup, the Google doodle has gone literary. The image is ripped from the pages of his books and shows his iconic characters Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer trying to whitewash a fence with the Google logo on it. The wide spanned image is gorgeous and was inspired by Mark Twain’s illustrator, True Williams.
The Google Doodle coincides with Mark Twain’s birthday. How old would he have been? Continue reading »
What bedtime story did you read to your kids last night?
Babble Editors asked on Twitter for readers to share what bedtime story they read to their kids last night. My husband usually reads a chapter of the Hardy Boys to our kids every night. But on the evenings he is working late, I choose a story from the bookshelf or the stack of library books we accumulate each week. I enjoy obscure, never-heard-of titles to keep it interesting. A recent favorite that I read the other night is The Seal Mother. Magical!
Readers tweeted their bedtime stories; read on for 7 great suggestions. Have you read these books? We’d love to hear what story you told to your kids last night.
When Alice Ozma left home to go to college, the hardest part was giving up her bedtime stories. Her father had been reading to her every night for over 9 years, since her parents split up when she was in 4th grade.
At the beginning, the nightly reading was a way to find stability and togetherness during a rough period. They agreed to read together every night for 100 days. But at the end of that hundred days they just kept going. For the rest of her childhood. All told, they logged 3,218 nights of reading.
Now Ozma has written a book about the experience, called The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared. In it, she not only shares her own stories but offers tips to families on how they can start reading streaks of their own.
Do you read your kids' books?
One of the best things about parenting is the story times. It’s not just the snuggles that make it great, or the treasured routine between parent and child. It’s also the books.
Some of the best books in the world are written for kids. Picture books are often works of art, sneakily tucked between the mass-produced cartoon serials on the shelf. Young adult books tackle big themes in fresh ways, with great stories. Children’s literature from Alice in Wonderland up through Harry Potter offers us some of the best escapism ever committed to the page.
Young adult books are what I read when I go to bed; they’re the paperbacks stacked next to my headboard for those quiet hours of simple escape. Because they are a great escape, especially the ones set in fantastic worlds or imaginary times. When I want an intellectual challenge, I visit my library or bookstore. But when I just want to get away from my own mind for awhile, I raid my kids’ bookshelf.
Whether they’ve just graduated from Dr. Seuss or are deep into the Vampire Diaries, your kids have books you want. Here are six titles to steal off their shelves – or add to them – today.
Any child can learn to love books.
Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, has created a world in which the hero is a young boy who has ADHD and dyslexia. In the stories, those two characteristics are indicators of Olympian blood, meaning kids with ADHD and dyslexia stand a good chance of having been descended from the gods. But in the real world, kids with such learning differences can find it difficult to even read such a book, let alone be made to feel heroic because of it.
To give the main character of an action adventure book series ADHD and dyslexia might seem a little unusual, but the author had a good reason for doing so. His own son, 16-year-old Haley, also has ADHD and dyslexia and Riordan says the novels began as a desperate attempt to keep his child interested in reading.
Riordan says that as a 7-year-old, Haley hated reading so much that he would hide under a table to avoid it. But today, Haley is not only an avid reader, but he’s also the proud author of his very own six-hundred-page manuscript. How did Riordan manage that? Continue reading »
Why won't boys read?
If you have a son who is a reluctant reader, despite the fact that his sister will sit for hours paging through the books on her shelf, you’re apparently in good company. Considerably more boys than girls aren’t meeting proficiency level standards on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading report, according to a recent Center on Education Policy report.
“This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls,” Thomas Spence noted in the Wall Street Journal last week. “The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.”
Spence, the president of Spence Publishing Company, thinks he knows why boys aren’t reading enough to get their skills up to proficiency level. It’s not that we’re not giving them books that they’re interested. After all, the publishing industry is now meeting boys “where they are” with a whole gross-out genre of books aiming to appeal to elementary- and middle-school boys predilection for body humor, he argues.
Spence names this trend, charmingly, the “SweetFarts philosophy of education,” after a book, “SweetFarts” written by a self-published author who goes by the nom de plume Raymond Bean. “One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals,” Spence asserts. “If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.”
So if it’s not the reading material itself, why are so many fewer boys reading books – and mastering reading proficiency – than girls?
Of Thee I Sing, President Obama's new children's book
For Barack Obama’s new children’s book, the President puts politics aside and focuses instead on the people who have made our country great.
Written before he took office in January of 2009, Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters is a picture book billed as a tribute to 13 “groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped [the] nation.”
Obama’s inspiring Americans include George Washington, Georgia O’Keeffe and Jackie Robinson, among others.
A mere 40 pages in length, the book is illustrated by Loren Long and, according to Chip Gibson, president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books , promises to be “an inspiring marriage of words and images, history and story.”
As with President Obama’s previous literary efforts, this one is sure to be a best-seller. With a first print run of half-a-million copies, all author proceeds will be donated to “a scholarship fund for the children of fallen and disabled soldiers.”
Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters will be available November 16. Will you buy it?
Image: Amazon.com
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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