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Happy New Year to you!  I had a pretty awesome 2011 but am really excited about the promise of a brand new year and loving that 2012 is the National Year of Reading. Also really excited about my role as local ambassador for Bunbury, WA. I had toyed with the idea of a reading meme for the National Year of Reading, but there are so many other really good ones already that I hesitated to add

Last Wednesday, the 16th of November, was the Public Librarians of Victoria Network Conference.

The main topic up for discussion: what to do for the National Year of Reading? Here are some great ideas that the participants on the day workshopped together!

SHP BASED TOTALLY AROUND BOOKS AND READING, WRITING AND ILLUSTRATION, WORKSHOPS, AND BOOK GIG!

Intensive festival/ Holiday program:

• Book gigs/ theatre – use local theatre groups of Vic Youth Theatre
• Writing Workshop (examples Paul Collins)
• Illustration workshop (examples comics, manga)
• Book Production (examples cover designs)
• Book Selection evening
• Competitions

Mini festival

READING TREE

Families:

• Members of the family’s favourite books
• Favourite books on display for each person in a family tree

Make a tree/ Use a tree in a pot:

• Find an author you like
• Than other books you like that are similar (series, authors, books)
• Use a leaf as a star review system

Children’s Area:

• Wall pictures/ image of a tree
• Branch for different books
• Children put up authors on the tree, pictures of favourite characters, etc
• Write on a leaf why they like/recommend a book
• Different size leaves for grades/ genres or themes
• Make a special reading corner

Favourite/ comfortable reading areas:

• Use tree to start conversations about ‘where do you like to read?’

Use the image/ symbolism of growth, strength to start creative writing from a seed to a story:

• How does it develop?
• Grow?

What a tree does:

• A forest, filled with: crime tree/ mystery tree/ romance tree, etc

Environmental issues:

• How we need trees, different species of trees, uses of trees, etc

THEATRE IN THE LIBRARY

Theatre:

• Students from local secondary schools
• Workshops over the school holidays
• Culminating in a performance for the public

LOCAL SOURCING

Contacts:

• Database of local contacts
• Using local contacts
• Database contacts for state-wide access
• Finding contacts

AUTHORS/PRESENTERS

Issues:

• How to entice writers/presenters to travel
• Issues for regional and outer suburbia
• A database of author’s who a willing to travel regional

BRANDING

National Year of Reading:

• Using National Year of Reading branding to make activities more visible and use this as an enticement
• Would add funding
• Also a draw card for the presenters

COMMUNITY POST SECRET

Art and Writing community project:

• Originated with an idea from an American artist, Frank Warren, who asked for ‘secrets on a postcard’.
• A secret (funny, sad, moving, happy secrets, etc)
• Have the community do their own post secret
• Have them displayed in the library
• Alternatively there is ‘six word memoirs’

YA READERS VOTING FOR FAVOURITE BOOK/ SERIES (WITH WINNERS IN A FEATURE DISPLAY)

Suggest books:

• Have an already established shortlist
• Creative ways to vote- posters, old fridge, car doors, etc
• Cork Board – with suggestions/ questions and post-it notes for people to make direct response/ dialogue
• Utilise skills/ skilled people in the community
• On-line pdl/ questions of the day (multiple choice, yes or no)
• To suggest books/ series or not

Favourite Aussie authors

Encourage diversity in reading by asking reading question ‘where do we find Dogmatix’?

Come on in and join the National Year of Reading in a celebration of books.

http://www.love2read.org.au

The National Year of Reading 2012 is about children learning to read and keen readers finding new sources of inspiration; respecting the oral tradition of storytelling; rediscovering the magic of books and about Australians becoming a nation of readers.

I am proud be be a NSW Ambassador for The National Year of Reading with Richard Glover writer and ABC personality.

The National Year of Reading 2012 is a collaborative project joining public libraries, government, community groups, media and commercial partners, and the public. We’re a family – and we’re represented by every State:-

I love promoting reading and sharing my books and have been on the road for the past two months speaking to 1000′s of kids.

I have had the best writing tour ever travelling across Sydney, NSW, Queensland – thankyou to the welcome from schools from

De la Salle Caringbah; Sackville St Public School Ingelburn, St Mary’s Primary Toowoomba, Towoomba Grammar Junior College, Holy Rosary Roblane Windsor (Brisbane), Marymount College Burleigh Waters, St Jerome’s Primary Punchbowl, St Brendan’s Carter’s Rd Lake Mumorah. Rose bay Convent College, Randwick Primary  … and many, many more. LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!!

* Yolanda Miller asks, “What Are Fathers For?” She begins with a great quote from Gloria Steinem, “Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.” About midway she writes:

By manhood, I do not mean the stereotypical beer-belching, video-game-playing, sports-fanatical behavior often attributed to men—I mean something deeper. I am talking about the core essence of a male identity that has gone missing. As gender roles have morphed, women have preached and proven their self-sufficiency. The end result is that we have implied (and sometimes stated) that men are no longer wanted or needed and that their contributions, outside of sperm and salary, are no longer desirable.

* Here’s an entertaining site for to-the-point book reviews from a retired guy’s perspective: “My Dad Reads Too Many Books.”

* This “Dedicated Dads Program” invites fathers into the school:

Watch D.O.G.S. (Dads of Great Students) is the parental involvement initiative of the National Center for Fathering that organizes fathers and father figures to provide positive male role models for students and to enhance school security.

At Anderson-Livsey Elementary, which opened in the Shiloh cluster at the beginning of the school year, officials launched the program in the school to ensure students would have male role models.

“The whole goal of Watch D.O.G.S. is to attract and get positive male role models into the education system,” said Darren Boyce, the school’s parent instructional support coordinator.

* Anna Richardson reports: “Kids prefer gossip mags to books.”

A National Year of Reading study [based in Australia] has revealed that children are reading celebrity gossip magazines such as Heat and Bliss instead of books, especially if the novels stretch to more than 100 pages, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Boys and girls as young as 11 said they preferred absorbing the exploits of pop stars and models such as Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss to reading books by Jacqueline Wilson or Philip Pullman.

The study sparked debate on whether children were damaging their development by reading such magazine, or whether children should be encouraged to read what they liked, as long as it was reading.

* Over at my other blog, Jamespreller.com, I had t

We want to take a minute to post about the Class of 2k7. If it weren't for them we certainly wouldn't be here, doing this insane thing as a group. It was their crazy idea that got this ball rolling.

Thanks guys!

We'll never know how much the "class" concept helped, but it's astounding what these authors accomplished last year. We should only be so lucky...

Sara Zarr was nominated for a National Book Award!

AND

Melissa Marr hit the NYTimes list!

And that's just a few!

But that brings us to the point of today's post... which is that some of the members of the Class of 2k7 might not be books you've heard about.

One thing we want to mention, going into 2k8, is that we're aware that we won't all debut on the NYTimes list. And of course we realize that all 28 of us also can't be nominated for the Newberry or the National Book Award.

This makes things tricky, because of course we'd all love to "win" and we all admire and respect each other, and feel that we all deserve to "win".

And it can be hard when someone shoots into the stratosphere, because success begets success. So if Class member X gets a Printz nod, they'll be much more likely to get MORE attention, and MORE awards. Leaving those of us with "quieter" books to pat each other on the back, and dream of the kids out there who love our poor awardless books.

With that in mind, we're all going to do our best to support each other. But as a few of our books take off (and we hope they will) we're going to do everything we can to share the glory around a little. To remember that although we might not all be famous, we're all authors, and classmates... and by the end of the year we really hope to be friends.

We thought it might be of interest to readers of this blog to imagine this odd aspect of the Class of 2k8. That by definition, some of us will sell more books, get better reviews. And so that means that, by definition, some of us will get less.

And now... today... before that happens, we want to say this out loud...

THESE BOOKS ARE ALL GREAT! Whether they make the front page or not... Read the rest of this post