CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

There’s a terrific conversation happening right now over at the ccbc-net listserv about reviewing. Audience, rationale, the whys and wherefores. And while we don’t have the permission of the contributors to quote them verbatim, here are some ABCs arising out of the thread:

• Audience. To whom is the reviewer accountable? Author?  Publisher? Readers? All of the above? None of the above? If for a print journal, then the scope of the publication will be clear, but the rise of reviewing blogs has made the water murky.
• Balance. Negativity for its own sake or to show how clever the reviewer is for noticing a problem is not helpful.  As one person said if only a small proportion of the book is unsatisfactory for whatever reason but the majority of the review is about pointing this out, that’s unfair to the book.
• Close reading. Some reviewers read a book three or four times before submitting a review and only then after rereading and revising it.  The author deserves slow, considered engagement: (paraphrased) ‘a fast food opinion isn’t fair to a slowly cooked book’.

And, we are urged to remember, it’s much harder to write a book than review one.

It feels as if this thread has arisen spontaneously so it might not be archived on the website as one of its formal discussion topics, but you can certainly access the email discussion if you sign up to receive posts. Posts from ccbc-net are generally considered and therefore worth receiving.

From the GetGraphic site…

Get Graphic: The World in Words and Pictures is a community-wide two year project designed to introduce teens, parents, librarians and teachers to the exciting and extremely popular literary format of graphic novels.

The Teachers and Librarians pages include resources and extensive links to online materials to support units of work on graphic novels.

A comprehensive List of Graphic Novel Titles is available.

Check out the rss feed page for available feeds and information about how to subscribe using rss readers.

Useful links to online resources are availabe at our CMIS delicious account – Graphic_Novels. [These sites were tagged during September 2008 to provide links to resources to support teachers, teacher librarians and library staff involved in the selection and integration of graphic novels in classroom programs and school library collections.]

The CMIS Resource Bank contains reviews of over 60 graphic novels

In The Guardian today.

“The job of a science fiction writer, historically, has been to understand how technology and social factors interact,” he says, “how technology is changing society. An activist’s job is to try to direct that change.”

This time his message is aimed at the teenage readers who wear the kind of skater jeans and T-shirt combination Doctorow is sporting today. “If you don’t read the Anarchist’s Cookbook when you are 16 you have no soul,” he says. “If you are still reading it when you are 36 you have no brain.” (He himself is 37, but if he’s abandoned anarchism, he’s clearly not settling into a conservative middle age.)

It’s time to renew Fiction Focus subscriptions for 2009. The journal is produced three times a year as a project of CMIS Evaluation, within the Department of Education and Training, Western Australia.

All public secondary schools within the state receive two copies of Fiction Focus free, but there are many interstate and international subscribers who also enjoy reading our reviews of Young Adult fiction. Our reviewing network covers all states of Australia, and includes a sprinkling of international teachers and teacher librarians. Feedback indicates that the classroom focus of Fiction Focus reviews is what makes this journal particularly useful for educationalists.

Details of how to subscribe for 2009, along with a downloadable subscription form are now available.

… about the books on the shortlist for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2008.

Boys and books have been on the reading agenda for a while now. James Roy is one who has been an articulate advocate of the cause. Here are some blogs dedicated to boys and books, well worth you and the boys in your school keeping an eye on:

• Boys, Blokes, Books, from the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria
• Guys Lit Wire, a new YA blog from the US
• Boys Blogging Books, a blog for boys by boys
• Books and Boys, another US site

And then there’s Guys Read, the site of US Ambassador for Children’s Literature, Jon Scieszka.

If you are aware of any others, let us know.

Yesterday we posted details of two sites where students can engage with others about reading. Overnight, news has come through about the latest OzProjects initiative, Beware of Books, an online reading group. Teachers and teacher librarians can now do some cherry-picking in order to match their readers with a site that will really work for them.

Beware of Books is pitched at the 15-19 age group. Although it is possible to browse as a guest, why not register yourself and some students and actively participate in the project? Make a start by posting some reviews or reading recommendations and become a Beware of Books pioneer.

The OzProjects Middle Years Book Club, for students aged between 10 and 14, has been running for just over a month and already has a number of registered teams, including one from Singapore.

Here at Fiction Focus, reviewing is what we are all about. Not only do we read many book reviews in order to select titles for our journal, we depend on our wonderful network of reviewers to comment on the books we send out. We are told that Fiction Focus is held in high regard because all reviewers have experience as teachers or teacher-librarians, so the classroom-cred has been established. Our reviewers are not paid and without them, Fiction Focus would not be the journal it is. Our volunteers are great and the rest of this entry does not pertain to them in any way!

With reviewing so much on our mind, particularly as we are in the final stages of editing Issue 1 for the year, this article on a New York Times blog caught our eye. ‘Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing’ has unleashed a flurry of comments from peeved readers of reviews. The 227 comments (so far) are just as entertaining as the original blog entry. If you have a pet-hate overworked book review word or phrase, we’d love to hear it.