Reading Between the Lines
Have you checked out Penguin’s relatively new online community for teenage readers, Between the Lines? We alerted Fiction Focus subscribers to the site in the last issue of 2007, but in the end of year busy-ness it’s easy to overlook such things.
Launched last September, the site is targeting readers aged between 14 and 18, and there’s plenty for them to get their teeth into. Interaction is encouraged through blogs, author chats, book discussions and competitions.
Book of the Month for April is Sarah Dessen’s Just Listen, and being discussed on the blog is Peeps, by Scott Westerfeld who will be joining the discussion at the end of the month.
Australian author James Moloney has a new title coming out soon. We will be reviewing Kill the Possum in Fiction Focus of course, but he will be chatting online about the book on 24 April. Schools need to register in order to participate.
It’s early days for this site but it is rich with possibilities to get your students engaged in reading, as is the wonderful, and more established, Inside a Dog, from Melbourne’s Centre for Youth Literature. Both of these sites are on the Fiction Focus blog roll. It’s worth taking some time to explore them.
