CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

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.