What are your thoughts about Arne Duncan, the Chicago Public Schools superintendent, who has been tapped as the next Secretary of Education?

Links:

Time article

Chicago Tribune article

Washington Post coverage

New York Times article

Education Week article

Associated Press coverage

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Judy Freeman’s BER Seminar on the best books for K-6.  Over lunch, Judy caught me up on two of her projects:- NPR! She was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition (today!) about great holiday reads!  Listen here.  Here is an excerpt:

 But some parents feel self-conscious when they read aloud, says Judy Freeman, the author of a guide to read-aloud books called Books Kids Will Sit Still For. Freeman says they should get over their inhibitions.

 

“Your kids don’t know the difference. They just want to be warm, and they want to hear your voice, and they associate the words with you,” she says. “It turns them into readers. If you want your kids to read, you have to read to them.”

 

Reading aloud to kids is a good idea no matter what time of year, says Freeman, but the holidays can be an incentive to get started.

 

“When you start a family tradition by reading the same books every year … it’s just fun. It’s warm. It makes you say, ‘Oh it’s that time of year again, let’s do this,’ ” Freeman says.

- Reviews for Read Kiddo Read, a James Patterson Web-based project and online community to promote reading in reluctant readers.   Patterson will be a keynote at the 2009 AASL Conference.Â

The Washington Post posits that theory in an article today.   Reporter Valerie Strauss writes:

 The Newbery Medal has been the gold standard in children’s literature for more than eight decades. On the January day when the annual winner is announced, bookstores nationwide sell out, libraries clamor for copies and teachers add the work to lesson plans. 

 

Now the literary world is debating the Newbery’s value, asking whether the books that have won recently are so complicated and inaccessible to most children that they are effectively turning off kids to reading. Of the 25 winners and runners-up chosen from 2000 to 2005, four of the books deal with death, six with the absence of one or both parents and four with such mental challenges as autism. Most of the rest deal with tough social issues.

 

An article in October’s School Library Journal — “Has the Newbery Lost Its Way?” by children’s literary expert Anita Silvey — touched off the debate, now in full bloom on blogs and in e-mails. It is the new flashpoint in the struggle to draw children into the delicious world of books at a time when theNational Endowment for the Arts says fewer Americans are choosing to read than they did 20 years ago, risking social and economic consequences.

The organization that awards the Newbery — and several other book prizes, including the Caldecott Medal for best American picture book for children — defends its methods and its record.

“The criterion has never been popularity,” said Pat Scales, president of the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association. “It is about literary quality. We don’t expect every child to like every book. How many adults have read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning books and the National Book Award winners and liked every one?”

 

I have to admit that the recent Newbery books haven’t been very elementary-friendly, whereas the Caldecott books are beloved.  What’s your experience?�