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ASU is Offering ENG 500: Research Methods in English Education Investigating Reading and Writing Practices in Secondary Schools Spring 2012 Wednesdays 4:40-7:30pm Dr. Jessica Early Course Description: This graduate seminar is designed to explore research methods used to study the reading and writing practices of secondary students in classroom settings. Research methodology is a central issue for literacy researchers and this course will link methodological concerns with practical issues, acknowledging the ways research design has an impact on the classroom as well as the academy. In recent years, researchers examining secondary reading and writing practices have become increasingly interested in expanding their methodological options andRead More →

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The November issue of our newsletter is out now! Bringing book industry news, info on new releases and cool websites, book reviews, opportunities to win free books, grant tips and much more straight to your inbox! Not signed up for our email mailing list? It’s easy- just find the Join Our Mailing List link on the right sidebar of this blog. (Or, click here) In the meantime, just in case you didn’t get one, check out the newsletter here. Did we mention you could win free books? Update – This giveaway is now closed, the winner was Teresa M.. Thanks for entering!Read More →

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The Dead Gentleman, by Matthew Cody, is a fun new adventure that suggests other possibilities of what we might not see happening right in front of us in our world, especially in our closets. Tommy Learner is an eleven-year-old orphan who makes his living as a street thief in New York. When he goes for what should be a big money opportunity, he ends up with a seemingly useless metal bird and is thrust into a secret multi-world exploring society of portals, submarines, evil-doers, danger and eventually betrayal. Over one hundred years later, his ghost appears in front of twelve-year-old Jezebel Lemmon warning her ofRead More →

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Publisher’s Weekly (10/14/11) reports: “What if you’re writing a book and the audience already had a relationship with the content when the book came out,” said Alex LeMay, CEO of the Shadow Gang, a firm that creates on- and offline social communities. LeMay and Shadow Gang have partnered with YA novelist Michael Grant to create an immersive transmedia project called GoBZRK, around Grant’s next novel that does just that. “Publishing is more than books,” LeMay said during an interview at PW’s offices about BZRK, the title of Michael Grant’s new thriller, scheduled to be published in February 2012 by Egmont. “Storytelling is key, and aRead More →

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Seriously, this book tries too hard. It tries to be quirky, it tries to be funny, it tries to connect to 10-14 year old boys who liked Lemony Snicket, play lots of video games, and love karate, it tries to be a vocabulary builder, and it tries to teach the reader about imagination, courage, and thinking outside the box.  In the end it succeeded in making me skim read to the end to find out what happened, and then say incredulously, “seriously?” Perhaps I’m being too harsh.  Chris Raschka is a Caldecott medalist after all.  And there are some funny moments and some curious charactersRead More →

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What do 41,267 books look like, you ask? Well, they come nicely wrapped on 16 large pallets.  They barely fit in our back receiving area. Then when you cut the shrink wrap and start separating them, those pesky boxes fill the rows.  You have to fill the rows, unpack all the boxes, then fill up the row again.  It can be a little insanity-inducing.   Your only choice at that point is to dive right in.  (Simon’s Cat is inspirational for this kind of work, you know)   Since Monday night, the four of us have logged over 70 hours, countless squats, lifts, forward bends, and backRead More →

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Peter Parker, meet Steve Jobs. In a 21st century twist on the superhero genre, Kevin Brooks gives us iBoy.  Tom Harvey is a average teenager living in the lowerclass section of London, in a housing project rife with gangs, drugs, violence, hopelessness and poverty.   Not one to meddle in affairs that don’t directly impact him, Tom keeps his head down and muddles along.  On a day when he’s going to visit Lucy, a girl in the projects he’s known since childhood, Tom’s fate is sealed: an iPhone is thrown from the 3oth floor, hitting him in the head at 77 miles per hour, fracturing his skull andRead More →

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From The New York Times Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting  blog(Oct. 12, 2011): In the name of encouraging my kids to read, I’ve dumped my iPad’s Kindle app. In many ways, I loved it. Every bookshelf in our house is two deep, with stacks on nearly every surface. I liked the idea of having at least some books take a less intrusive form. But I realized that no matter what I said, when I sat down in the evening during what I’d dubbed “quiet reading time” with the iPad, my kids didn’t believe I was reading. And they were often right. . . . A bookRead More →

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22 year old Joel Bloom’s life is at a crossroads – literally.  He can accept the decision of the draft board and go to Vietnam, a war that he opposes, or he can flee to Canada, a fugitive with little hope to return home.  It seems that Joel’s destiny has been to go to war: he grew up in an industrial town in Massachusetts in the years following WWII, dreaming of fighting in the military or maybe winning the World Series for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  But there’s always been something about conflict, war, politics and violence that didn’t make sense to Joel, and no oneRead More →