October 2013

Catcher In The Fry? McDonald’s Happy Meals With A Side Of Books

Fast-food giant McDonald’s is set to become a publishing giant as well — at least temporarily. For two weeks next month, McDonald’s says it will oust the toys that usually come in its Happy Meals and replace them with books it has published itself.

An estimated 20 million children’s books, which will feature nutritional messages, will be distributed in McDonald’s kids’ meals from Nov. 1 to Nov. 14, the company says. To put it in perspective, AdAge notes, that’s more than the 15 million print copies of the best-selling Hunger Games trilogy that were sold in 2012.

Full piece on NPR

**LAST WEEK** to enter your local public library for a chance to win $5,000 for their children’s programs.

Click here to enter.

Contest ends 10/15. Check out the Lego/Duplo page on Facebook.

The Register reports that Sue Gardner of the Wikimedia Foundation issued a statement noting that cash is going to fund bureaucrats in chapter organizations instead of individual editors modifying Wikipedia. Apparently three particular chapter organizations dominate the process of receiving funds.

Are reality shows turning our brains to mush?

The Washington Post reports: Policymakers and politicians who wring their hands about the mediocre performance of U.S. students on international math and reading tests have another worry: The nation’s grown-ups aren’t doing much better.

A first-ever comparison of adults in the United States and those in other democracies found that Americans were below average when it comes to skills needed to compete in the global economy.

The survey, released Tuesday, measured the literacy, math and computer skills of about 5,000 U.S. adults between ages 16 and 65, and compared them with similar samples of adults from 21 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The Americans are “decidedly weaker in numeracy and problem-solving skills than in literacy, and average U.S. scores for all three are below the international average and far behind the scores of top performers like Japan or Finland,” said Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the data collection arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

A lovely tumblr, linked in today’s New Yorker blog.

Another entry:

“I use hand sanitizer any time after handling Twilight, 50 Shades, any movie with Mel Gibson or Tom Cruise, High School Musical, anything by Michael Moore, Richard Dawkins, Phillip Pullman, Rush Limbaugh, or Ann Coulter. I feel disgusting every time I have to touch these things.”

Post at Librarian.net — unfashionable libraries

I think her comments about Little Free Libraries are worth noting.

This is not one of those rants about missing the texture, touch, colors, whatever of paper contrasted with the sterility of reading on a tablet. No, the real abomination of ebooks is often overlooked: Some are so ingrained in the product itself that they are hiding in plain sight, while others are well concealed beneath layers of commerce and government.

The real problem with ebooks is that they’re more “e” than book, so an entirely different set of rules govern what someone — from an individual to a library — can and can’t do with them compared to physical books, especially when it comes to pricing.

The collusion of large ebook distributors in pricing has been a public issue for a while, but we need to talk more about how they are priced differently to consumers and to libraries. That’s how ebooks contribute to the ever-growing divide between the literary haves and have-nots.

Full article

Your ability to “read” the thoughts and feelings of others could be affected by the kind of fiction you read.

That’s the conclusion of a study in the journal Science that gave tests of social perception to people who were randomly assigned to read excerpts from literary fiction, popular fiction or nonfiction.

Full article

The website Scribd, online for several years now as a document storehouse, is beginning an e-book subscription service that will offer unlimited e-books for a flat monthly fee. Lynn Neary reports that Scribd is working with HarperCollins, which is the first major American publisher to take part in this kind of subscription service.

Full story

Who could refuse? Workman Publishing, via Early Word is offering a FREE COPY of a new book by Chip Kidd, GO, an introduction to graphic design for kids, but also a wonderful primer for adults. Be one of the first 50 librarians or instructors to respond!