Parents and teachers, I implore you!

[conuly]

Get to the library and take out a few books in your kid's age range that were printed in this century. Please, please, please expand your horizons past the same ten books everybody recommends all the time.

(This goes double for authors of children's books. If your main character likes to read, and was born in 1997, she's probably read something a bit more modern than Little House. If you're going to namedrop The Saturdays and Ballet Shoes and Five Children and It, you could at least allude to Harry Potter.)

***************

One Small Leap: The Enduring Appeal of Mexican Jumping Beans

Turning carbon dioxide into rock - forever

Six unidentified girls on Wall Street stoop (No points for identifying the stoop, the street still looks very similar today.)

Remembering the ‘Knocker-Ups’ Hired to Wake Workers With Pea Shooters

Exquisite Rot: Spalted Wood and the Lost Art of Intarsia

Communicating colours using black and white - a new app with a new perspective on language evolution

The decline of Snapchat and the secret joy of internet ghost towns

Mice With 3D-Printed Ovaries Successfully Give Birth

Robots grow mini-organs from human stem cells

Twins treated for genetic disorder in the womb

To regulate fecal transplants, FDA has to first answer a serious question: What is poop?

The Army’s First Black Nurses Were Relegated to Caring for Nazi Prisoners of War

In New Jersey, the top lobbying spenders are from the following industries: energy, healthcare, insurance, and... balloons.

Woman Nervously Reaches For Cell Phone As Suspicious Black Man Tells Her Today’s Soup Is Minestrone (It's funny because it's true...!)

Welcome to Asbestos

As D.I.Y. Gene Editing Gains Popularity, ‘Someone Is Going to Get Hurt’

Doug Schifter waged a one-man campaign to stop Uber from putting his fellow black-car drivers out of business. Then he decided to take his own life.

Congress takes food from 2 million poor people — and doesn’t even save money (Remember, SNAP is the biggest economic stimulus we've got! Pouring more money into SNAP gets us nearly double a return on our investment.)

Letter from Africa: Why is no-one talking about the Zamfara conflict?

Inside the Barbaric U.S. Industry of Dog Experimentation (Note: This article is extremely upsetting. I didn't make it all the way through. I had to take a break to snuggle my pets.)

Comments

[lilysea]

The Army’s First Black Nurses Were Relegated to Caring for Nazi Prisoners of War

Wow, those nurses really deserved better. They deserved patients who were less likely to hurl racist abuse at them.

[conuly]

Yes, but in order for that to happen the authorities would have had to not be embedded in a racist structure, and devoted to upholding it.

[dragonyphoenix]

My Dad wanted book recs for my niece. He seemed to be thinking along the lines of the Bronte sisters. I asked on my social media accounts and got a long, long list of modern books. ;-)

[conuly]

What a pleasant change!

[calimac]

When we visited Mexico when I was a kid, I got a little container with four Mexican jumping beans in it. I named them Mateo, Benito, Joaquin, and Francisco, and the trivia question of the day is: why did I choose those names?

[conuly]

Oooh, tell me, tell me!

[calimac]

San Mateo, San Benito, San Joaquin, and San Francisco were the Spanish-given saints' names of four counties close to where I lived. Yes, I was the kind of 9-year-old who could name all the counties in California (58 of them).

[landofnowhere]

Relatedly: teachers have to buy books for their classroom out of their own pocket money. If you're in a position to help donate newer books, consider doing so!

When a friend of mine graduated with a teaching degree, I hit up the local used bookstores and remainder sections to get books for her graduation present (with a hidden agenda of "read myself before giving"). I'm a little embarrassed to admit that it was mostly stuff that I remembered from my 90's childhood as being good, but I did throw in a couple Rebecca Steads from the remainder table.

[conuly]

Absolutely! And to that end, you can buy enormous book lots off of eBay, sorted by suggested grade/age.

[calimac]

That's a generous thing, but I'll say what I say as a librarian when people offer to donate books to the public library:

Ask the teachers first what books, or what kind of books, or what other supplies, they need.

[landofnowhere]

Yes, thanks for pointing this out! In this case my friend had previously sent out an e-mail soliciting used book donations.

[conuly]

Duh.

[calimac]

It may seem obvious, but I once had to interfere with a big project to promote a (worthy) book by buying copies and donating them to public libraries. I had to say how much of a spanner that would throw into the works of library processing policies, and how unlikely it was that the books thus donated, without having made arrangements, would wind up on the shelves.

Also, people keep donating miscellaneous canned goods to food banks, despite repeated pleas by the food banks that money is a lot more useful to them. Then they can buy in bulk, which is cheaper, and do not have to engage in the fantastically time-consuming process of sorting and moving around a lot of individual cans and packages.

[conuly]

Also, people keep donating miscellaneous canned goods to food banks, despite repeated pleas by the food banks that money is a lot more useful to them. Then they can buy in bulk, which is cheaper, and do not have to engage in the fantastically time-consuming process of sorting and moving around a lot of individual cans and packages.

And they keep insisting on sending garbage!

It's one thing for the grocery store to send bulk weekly shipments of their just-past-sell-by canned goods, or even for individuals to include one or two cans of "what was I thinking?" carrots that aren't very old - but who do they imagine wants soup from 2004?

And when you tell people, you get some combination of "beggars can't be choosers" and "well, if they didn't want my garbage they wouldn't accept it!" and it's... no, it's easier to hold canned good drives and accept that they'll have to sort that stuff and toss out a lot of it than to deal with the tantrums when they say no. "Oh, but if you send them money, they might use it to pay the lease or the electric bill instead!" Um....

[author_by_night]

And when you tell people, you get some combination of "beggars can't be choosers" and "well, if they didn't want my garbage they wouldn't accept it!"

Not to be super cynical, but - okay, we all know what "not to X, but" means. ;) Seriously, though. Even nice people who generally mean well often do or say things more to make themselves feel good than to truly help. So when you tell them "well, that's not actually going to help" or 'that group would rather you didn't refer to them this way", they get angry, because you're saying that their reason for feeling good about themselves is invalid. Which isn't the point. You can't use other people's lives and situations to make yourself feel like a good person. That's gross. Yet that's... kind of how we've learned to approach these things as a society. If you truly want to make a difference, learn HOW to make a difference.

"Oh, but if you send them money, they might use it to pay the lease or the electric bill instead!" Um....

And yeah, then you have that type. Sigh. Sometimes they're the same, but I do think there are also people who are more empathetic than that, yet still miss the mark.

[chomiji]

What are books that kids actually like to read now, as opposed to what parents, teachers, and librarians think they should read?

[conuly]

It depends on the child.

For every book that's panned by some critics as "obviously, no real child would want to read this!" there is a real child who loves it.

There are some kids who adore issues books. They're not happy unless somebody's dog dies, or they get taken away from their abusive parents, or they get a terminal illness.

There are some kids who can't get enough of contemporary realistic "slice of life" books.

And, of course, there's always the fantasy crowd. (Not much sci-fi for the middle grade group, and I've never known why.)

[archangelbeth]

So You Want To Be A Wizard? Millennium Edition, preferably. O:>

...huh, you're right. There's not much SF at that stage. Huh.

[conuly]

Other than the Young Wizards (and yes, the new editions), I can think of:

Mars Evacuees
Space Cases
Ambassador
Cosmic (sort of)
Last Day on Mars
The True Meaning of Smekday

and those are all very space themed. Don't get me wrong, I like space, but it's not the be-all and end-all of sci-fi.

It's really a large gap in the market. The only prolific sci-fi authors for middle grade that spring to mind are Pamela Sargent and H. M. Hoover, and neither of those are active and probably both of them are dead.

Edit: Oh, and Zita the Spacegirl.

Edit: Oh, and The Boy at the End of the World and also The Search for Wondla, but those are a little iffy if you ask me.

[larryhammer]

I'm not sure I'd call The True Meaning of Smekday "space-themed". It's a road-trip book with alien invaders.

[conuly]

It's the aliens, though.

[larryhammer]

Ah, gotcha.

[conuly]

New thought, right now YA is short on sci-fi as well. Oh, they've got their superheroes and their space operas and their dystopias and their superhero and/or space-themed dystopias, but there's nobody like Sleator writing really novel stories. (He never shoved a random romance in his books either.)

If you want to read sci-fi that's recently published, and not a dystopia, and has nothing to do with space or superheroes (wait, are superheroes even sci-fi?) well... it's slim pickings.

[archangelbeth]

Superheroes are their own genre, which can sometimes cross with SF, say I.

I should get some of my Kintaran stories laid out, I guess... >_>

[altamira16]

My child liked The 13 Story Treehouse series.

We got him to read some Encyclopedia Brown, and that was also acceptable to him though there are some dated stereotypes in there. That was useful in that it had short chapters that could be completed in short sittings.

We are going through the 39 Clues series.

We read The Mysterious Benedict Society, but that was a bit old for my child. The language was too difficult for him.

I am reading A Long Walk to Water with an adult student, but it is considered children's literature or YA. I think that my child may not be up for this type of realism though.

[conuly]

That was useful in that it had short chapters that could be completed in short sittings.

Tangent, this is a middle grade golden age in so many ways, but we're really lacking in two categories: books under 200 pages and what I like to call the "weird, but not very" genre. (Examples of this genre, which coincidentally fit both categories, include The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks, Mail-Order Wings, The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids, and Bunnicula. The YA equivalents would be Interstellar Pig and Downsiders.)

All the books have to be tomes, and I guess tomes don't work well with the quirky themes we used to see so much of in the 80s and early 90s.

Which is a pity, because not only are those subjects still appealing to kids but short books are less intimidating to por or reluctant readers!

We're also low on short stories for that age group.

[greghousesgf]

I'd like to see what anyone reading this would recommend for kids' books that were written more recently.

[conuly]

You have no idea how much I love making booklists. Just hold on a few, I have tons of things to do today.

[fred_mouse]

Ursula Vernon -- the Hamster Princess, the Danny Dragonbreath series, Castle Hangnail
Princelss (comics)
Princess Ugg (comics)
Under my hat : tales from the cauldron (ed: Jonathan Strahan) -- fantasy stories
Madame Pamplemousse and the Time-travelling Cafe (Rupert Kingfisher) [this is book 2, but I haven't seen book 1]
anything by Jackie French (she's been writing for decades, but the most recent of hers that I have is 'A Waltz for Matilda, p 2010)
The Rabbits (Shaun Tan, John Marsden)

everything in this list is something I own, tagged as children's, and published 2008 or later. I could probably find more to include if I did more than just check my Librarything!

[conuly]

Ursula Vernon is a genius, and I stand by that statement.

[fred_mouse]

Yup. I was feeling guilty about the amount of Vernon I was putting on the list, but the reality is she is current, prolific, and everything is worth reading

[conuly]

YES

[greghousesgf]

awesome, I've never even heard of any of these! thank you!

[fred_mouse]

:)

French, Marsden, Tan, and Strahan are Australians, but I'd expect Tan's work to be available outside Australia, given he won an Oscar (2011, Best Animated Short Film, 'The Lost Thing'). Strahan I think used to work for Locus.

ooh, books!!!!

[bibliofile]

(Wasn't Princeless some prose before they were comics? If so, more options, is all.)

Re: ooh, books!!!!

[fred_mouse]

Not that I'm aware of, and a quick google doesn't find me anything. If you find something, I'd love to know.

[silailo]

I feel like the story about Elinor and Frederick (or a similar story inspired by it) needs to be a movie. I hate romance films but I'd watch the heck out of that.

It's ironic that the German POWs were surprised by how black American personnel were treated by their white peers. Did they not know how bad racism was in the U.S.?

[gwydion]

I worked so HARD at keeping up with middle grade and YA across as many genres as possible when i was still teaching. It was so important to be able to hand them something contemporary that they would likely enjoy when they asked. I loved watching word of mouth of my recs spreading through a room. I loved when they'd bring a friend to me to get me to recommend a particular type of book. Sure, i'd point them at classics to, but i watched what they were reading and read it too; I constantly checked specialist booklists for new fiction.

It is very much part of the job to know what they are reading and watching and listening to and be able to discuss it with them. It is very much a part of the job to be able to pull cool new books off the shelf based on mental booklists at the drop of a hat. It's part of building trust and part of selling them on reading. :)

I don't keep up the way I used to, though I still keep an oar in.

[conuly]

It's part of building trust and part of selling them on reading.

I saw a librarian once give a boy I watched/tutored The Silver Chair to read.

1. It was too hard for him at that time.
2. It's the middle of the series.
3. It's one of the weakest of the series.
4. That was not a very enticing edition for a reluctant reader.

I took it away and gave him The Last Kids on Earth instead. When he finished that, I gave him Bone.

[greghousesgf]

hmm, I liked the Silver Chair a lot but then I liked almost all the Narnia books. the only one I really can't stand is the Last Battle.

[conuly]

Trust me, it wasn't the book for this kid.

[greghousesgf]

you know the kid and I don't, I'll definitely take your word for it.

[gwydion]

You have to know the reading level and tastes of the person your recommending for.

I am that person who hates reading books out of order in a series, though I am flexible enough to do this both from the order they are written in or the order in which they take place internally. (My preference is for internal order, but no way would i hand someone the Magician's Nephew ahead of Lion, witch, Wardrobe, though really I avoided handing anyone Lewis as it's out right christian in an exhausting sort of way, though I liked it well enough in forth grade when they handed us Magician's Nephew in English....) Anyway, I tried to start people on more modern, preferably diverse series, as I felt that was better for them. I felt it was a lot more useful to get boys super invested in say a female lead, or white kids really into a series with non-white protagonists than it was to hand them something they could barely parse. My feeling was we tended to push them on things like vocabulary, harder grammatically structures, and unfamiliar historical references in assigne reading. The point of SSR was to give them something they'd enjoy so they'd be reading connected narrative (boosts reading skills generally) and more apt to read for fun on their own. handing them something that they can barely parse and quietly loath as a result is the opposite of helping.

[kareina]

I can't help but wonder if the doctor who treated the twins for that genetic disorder was tempted to treat only one of them, so as to have a control "group" for comparison. That would be better science, but not so kind to the brother who then wouldn't be able to sweat or grow teeth...

[conuly]

That would be profoundly unethical.

Anyway, their big brother is the control group.

[bibliofile]

So, were you recommending taking books out from the library to read ourselves, or just to give good books extra checkouts? (Because that's a thing, too.)

[conuly]

I assume parents and teachers should be well versed in kidlit, and also should be encouraging their kids to read read read.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Note: This article is extremely upsetting."

Here iz me believing you; not even going to look. Y'know, my grandfather was a veterinarian, and I had meant to be one too, until my Freshman year of college, when our Pre-Vet class took a field trip to an animal-experimentation center. I endured about half of that trip; saw horrors that will haunt me till my dying day; spent the second half of the trip weeping in the lobby; changed my major to Early Childhood Ed. the very next day.

Animal experimentation is torture, plain and simple, and there is NO justification for it.