LISNews: Librarian News

From the Cincinnati Enquirer : a story about Kenton County (KY) Public Library's 'courtly manners program', held last Monday evening, giving 34 teens and pre-teens practice in saying "please" and "may I be excused?" during a free five-course dinner at the Madison Banquet Center.

Sara Howery, youth librarian and middle school coordinator for the Kenton County Public Library, said the world would be a more pleasant place if everyone had a refresher course in etiquette now and then.

Of course, some participants were just hoping that they behaved well enough to get dessert.

NPR has Getting Kids to Read. All the vacation book lists and reading games in the world aren't enough to get some kids to pick up a book over the summer. Children's authors keep trying new tactics to entice young readers -- but is it working? We look at the whys and hows of getting kids to read.
They also have Summer Reading Picks from Local Bookshops.

gsandler writes "Here is a provocative essay at Slate
on contemporary Young Adult fiction. "The real trouble with such issues-oriented contemporary fiction is that it encourages what you might call (in Jeanne Kirkpatrick style) literary equivalence: The genre, as teachers have discovered with the help of accompanying guides, lends itself to trendy and tidy didacticism. And so the books can end up as assigned reading for older kids precisely when these students deserve to be discovering the difference between real literature and the melodramatic fictional equivalent of an Afterschool Special."

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Anonymous Patron writes "The Minneapolis Star-Tribune (Registration MAY be required) carried the story In chick lit, girls rule, a piece which relates the explosive popularity of books for teen girls:

"Since the late 1990s, teen chick lit -- think Bridget Jones in high school -- has been gaining popularity, reaping profits for publishers and booksellers, prompting established adult authors to target younger audiences and giving teens and tweens (9- to 12-year-old girls) their own heroines.

"Chick lit "is still growing each year by double digits," said Joe Monti, national young-adult buyer for Barnes & Noble. "I can't see a ceiling yet, and I can't even gauge when that ceiling will be hit."

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