For a change, schools are being encouraged to use comic books in their curriculums:

The state worked with Disney Publishing Worldwide and its educational division last year to develop a pilot project to put Mickey and Donald in eight third-grade classrooms. Disney took Maryland’s reading standards and created comics-based lesson plans, incorporating skills students needed to learn, such as how to understand plot and character.

The kids loved it, educators said.

Comic books and graphic novels should not replace other forms of literature, but they can be an entry point for some reluctant readers, Grasmick said.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Banco del Libro, a nonprofit Venezuelan network that has been distributing books to children for nearly half a century, is the 2007 winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Literature.

The award, which includes a cash prize of $710,000, was established by the Swedish government in 2002 and is the largest children’s book award in the world.

Banco del Libro, or the Book Bank, has helped distribute books in the South American country since 1960, and was honored as a pioneer in “disseminating books and promoting reading among children in Venezuela,” the award jury said in announcing the honor on Wednesday.

“The Banco del Libro has had very difficult moments, moments of strong economic crises,” Banco del Libro Executive Director Maria Beatriz Medina told The Associated Press in an interview from Caracas, Venezuela. The prize money will go to continue its efforts and “reach other corners of the country where we haven’t reached.”

She said the organization has won other international prizes but that “this prize is the most important, it is like the Nobel in the promotion of reading.” It was the fifth time the organization was a candidate.

Link to the Yahoo News article

The Hamas-run Education Ministry on Saturday rescinded its decision to pull an anthology of Palestinian folk tales from school libraries and destroy copies, reportedly over mild sexual innuendo, following a widespread public outcry.

Some 1,500 copies of the book [Speak Bird, Speak Again] were destroyed — the most direct attempt by the militant Muslim group to impose its beliefs on Palestinian society.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Another book has found its place on ban lists around the country on the basis of protecting the delicate constitutions of American children.

The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

The rest of the article can be read here, and the definition of ridiculous can be found here.

In the article, Amis asserts that there is little glam in the world of writing.

“Well, it is a sort of sedentary, carpet slippers, self-inspecting, nose-picking, arse-scratching kind of job, just you in your study and there is absolutely no way round that. So, anyone who is in it for worldly gains and razzmatazz I don’t think will get very far at all.”

He also addresses Manchester University’s decision to put him in the role of professor of creative writing.

“I may be acerbic in how I write but I’m not how I live. And I would find it very difficult to say cruel things to people in such a vulnerable position. I imagine I’ll be surprisingly sweet and gentle with them. One of the things I’ve learned about fiction - you really do lay yourself open in a way that no other so-called creative artist does. Most other art you’re just exhibiting a particular talent, even poetry up to a point, but by writing fiction you expose not only your talent but your whole being, your social, sexual and psychological being and you’re never more vulnerable than when you do that, and I’m well aware of that fact and will take it into account.”

The full article can be found at The Guardian.

For a month now, Dr. Eskander’s intermittent diary entries have been appearing on the Web site of the British Library (bl.uk/iraqdiary.html), and they detail the daily hurdles of keeping Iraq’s central library open, preserving the surviving archives and books and, oh yes, staying alive.

The New York Times article can be found here, and the journal itself is here.

…according to the British Library, government-imposed spending cuts may soon put the proud traditions of a national institution at risk. Ahead of the Treasury’s 2007 spending review, library officials have drawn up a briefing paper outlining measures they would have to take if the widely speculated cuts of between 5% and 7% come to fruition.

You can read the rest of the article over here.

Interesting Washington Post article by a high-school librarian about the decline in literacy among today’s youth:

I recently spoke with a junior who was stressed about her decreasing ability to focus on anything for longer than two minutes or so. I tried to inspire her by talking about the importance of reading as a way to train the brain. I told her that a good reader develops the same powers of concentration that an athlete or a Buddhist would employ in sport or meditation. “A lot out there is conspiring to distract you,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s your opinion about books. It doesn’t make it true.” To her, the idea that reading might benefit the mind was, well, lame.

Link (via BoingBoing)