Reading Aloud & the 'Necessary Musicality of Text'
"I was taking my first uncertain steps towards writing for children when my own were young. Reading aloud to them taught me a great deal when I had a great deal to learn. It taught me elementary things about rhythm and pace, the necessary musicality of text. It taught me that books, not just their characters, have voices, and that some are more trustworthy than others. Although I now spend most of my time writing novels for teenagers and adults, 'readaloudability' is still a criterion I try to adhere to. A sentence that clots in your mouth is unlikely to flow in your mind."
--YA fiction author Mal Peet in the Guardian, where he chose his top 10 books to read aloud.
Is Liberty Media's bid for Barnes & Noble proceeding as planned or has it hit a snag? The Wall Street Journal reported that "people familiar with the matter" said Liberty "is working to line up financing" and "is moving from the due-diligence phase of studying the bookseller's financial data and other information to 
In a Scholarly Kitchen blog post headlined "
Independent bookstores in Arizona are doing what they do best while 
Janet Geddis has found the "perfect location" in Athens, Ga., for her much-anticipated 
Michele Filgate of 
Wondering whether "we're poisoning our kids with too much screen time too early," the Los Angeles Times reported that this month a pair of companies are introducing 
Don't try this with a Kindle. Summer reads will take on a whole new meaning next year when 
The adoption started the usual way: the adopter wanted to do more.
Tucker has taught creative writing at the Taos Writers Conference, UCLA, and the University of Pennsylvania. "This is the first time I've taught in a situation where anyone from the community can join in, and it has been great," she said. The classes at Towne Book Center have drawn a diverse group of attendees, among them a lawyer, a nurse, an English teacher, a new mother and a soon-to-be ninth grader. 
Ernest Cline has a thing for 1980s pop culture the way James Joyce had a thing for the Dublin of June 16, 1904. But you can't re-create a cultural landscape in fictional prose the way you can an actual city, so Cline's come up with a clever workaround: he's created an imaginary online universe programmed by an equally obsessive '80s fan, and then gives his characters (and readers) a compelling reason to explore it.
Let's face it.--kids love to grab our iPads and iPhones. As publishers of books for kids, we'd like to think nothing can replace a child's love for a picture book, or the connection a parent and child make when sharing one. But honestly, in this world of babies knowing how to swipe an iPhone and toddlers playing Angry Birds, we are being given a run for our money. So when we set out to create an iPad app for one of our bestselling picture books, How Rocket Learned to Read by Tad Hills, we knew we wanted to make something that parents would feel good about handing to their children. We wanted to make something that was true to the experience of reading the book, that was developmentally appropriate for new readers, that fully used the technology of the iPad and that was fun for kids.
When we worked on the app with Tad and the advertising agency Domani Studios (which happens to be run by Tad's brother), we approached each page with the same question: "What can the unique device that is the iPad bring to the experience of reading this book?" And so, in addition to simple interactive animations on each page, we developed pages where kids could draw in the snow--just like Rocket does--or learn new words that don't appear in the hardcover book by using the letter banner, or finger paint with mud. And since letter identification and sight words are crucial to learning how to read, we added two games that help kids learn while playing.