* A veritable spate of articles lately about how e-readers appeal to kids. C. J. Lovelace reports on a Chambersburg, PA, middle school that features a boys Kindle reading club:
“They spent all of last year with Kindle clubs with the reluctant readers and they had phenomenal results,” [district head librarian Joanne] Hammond said. “They tracked the progress of the students and so many of them read so many books by the end of the year because they liked reading on the Kindle much better (than) the print book.”
Not sure if this trend has legs or not, but it’s worth tracking. From an article by Julie Bosman for The New York Times:
“The young adults and the teenagers are now the newest people who are beginning to experience e-readers,” said Matthew Shear, the publisher of St. Martin’s Press. “If they get hooked, it’s great stuff for the business.”
It is too soon to tell if younger people who have just picked up e-readers will stick to them in the long run, or grow bored and move on.
But Monica Vila, who runs the popular Web site The Online Mom and lectures frequently to parent groups about Internet safety, said that in recent months she had been bombarded with questions from parents about whether they should buy e-readers for their children.
In a speech last month at a parents’ association meeting in Westchester County, Ms. Vila asked for a show of hands to indicate how many parents had bought e-readers for their children as holiday gifts.
About half the hands in the room shot up, she recalled.
“Kids are drawn to the devices, and there’s a definite desire by parents to move books into this format,” Ms. Vila said. “Now you’re finding people who are saying: ‘Let’s use the platform. Let’s use it as a way for kids to learn.’ ”
Cats like ‘em, too! Photo: Joyce Dopkeen for the New York Times.
* Virginia’s Reading Teacher of the Year, Ashleigh Fisher, a reading specialist in Roanoke, is determined to hook ‘em all. She plans to use the $500 prize money to establish a book club for boys:
“It is pretty devastating. Boys score lower than girls; they don’t see reading as a masculine activity. Boys aren’t as engaged in reading as girls,” she said.
Fisher is setting out to change that by launching a lunchtime book club for third-, fourth- and fifth-grade boys. She said she would like to begin with The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by local author and former Roanoke Times columnist Tom Angleberger. The only thing keeping Fisher from beginning immediately is a lack of funding to buy several copies of the book.
* Many young boys are missing out on quality time with their fathers.
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