LISNews: Librarian News

smh.com.au Has An Article on a a rare interview broadcast on Swedish SVT public service television on Friday with Novelist J. M. Coetzee, winner of this year's Nobel Literature Prize.
Coetzee believes television has replaced books as a source of imagination for many children.
"I did have a sense that there was a certain devotion to the book in the family.

"A lot of children go through a phase of reading in a literally voracious way. It is their primary imaginative activity. Maybe that's an experience which is not so common any more with the presence of television in every home," he said.

Fang-Face writes "There's an article at the American Library Association web site about a nine year-old patron encountering sexually graphic images on a computer in the children's section. The staff seems to have responded poorly. It was reported that a staff member had assured the boy's grandmother the image in question had been removed, but the boy found it again within hours. Raising the spectre that maybe kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for."

The "Children's Choices for 2003" annotated booklist, the latest in the annual series compiled jointly by International Reading Association (IRA) and Children's Book Council (CBC), is now available. A single copy for personal use may be downloaded for free from IRA. See the site for information on purchasing multiple copies, as well as guidelines for using the list.

Over 700 books published in 2002 were evaluated by approximately 10,000 school children, ages 5-13, across the United States. Votes were tabulated earlier this year, resulting in this list of the 103 top books according to the kids who read them. Annotations were provided by the members of the regional review teams: children's literature specialists, teachers, and librarians.

Lists from previous years are also available on the IRA site. Coming next month: the Young Adults' Choices and the Teachers' Choices lists for 2003.

Lee Hadden writes "The New Scientist for July 5, 2003, has an interesting article by
Stanislas Dehaene, "Natural Born Readers," pages 30-33.
"Reading presents a real paradox to neurobiologists. It was only
invented a few thousand years ago, so there has not really been enough time
for our brains to evolve specialized ways to do it. How do brain circuits
produced by millions of years of evolution in a world without written words
adapt to the specific challenges of reading? We know we have to learn the
skill- each language or script comes with its own unique patterns and
rules- but how does the brain learn to read?"
Read more about it at the New Scientist, with a subscription.
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