Book News
Returning the fun to reading
He’s got a serious new title: the first officially declared U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. But author Jon Scieszka is on a mission to get schools and parents to lighten up when it comes to selecting books for children.
It’s time, he said, for reading to be fun again.
Scieszka was picked by Librarian of Congress James Billington to fill the role, designed to raise the profiles of reading and good books for young people.
Legions of children know him from his award-winning books, including “The Stinky Cheese Man.”
Scieszka wants to:
• Give children freedom to choose what they want to read rather than what adults think they should read.
• Expand the definition of reading to more than novels. “Nonfiction, graphic novels, comic books, magazines, online, audiobooks — I think all that works.”
• Stop demonizing other media. “Don’t make computers and TV and movies the bad guy. Those things aren’t going to go away.”
Scieszka calls himself “a fan of stupid reading.”
The Washington Post
First Line
The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom, by Martin Amis
“It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment. Until then, America thought she was witnessing nothing more serious than the worst aviation disaster in history; now she had a sense of the fantastic vehemence ranged against her.
“I have never seen a generically familiar object so transformed by affect (“emotion and desire as influencing behavior”). That second plane looked eagerly alive, and galvanized with malice, and wholly alien. For those thousands in the South Tower, the second plane meant the end of everything. For us, it’s glint was the worldflash of a coming future.
“Terrorism is political communication by other means. The message of September 11 ran as follows: America, it is time you learned how implacably you are hated. United Airlines Flight 175 was an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, launched in Afghanistan, and aimed at her innocence. That innocence, it was here being claimed, was a luxurious and anachronistic delusion.”
BookSense hardcover
BestSellers
FICTION
1. The Appeal, by John Grisham
2. Change of Heart, by Jodi Picoult
3. Lush Life, by Richard Price
4. A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
5. World Without End, by Ken Follett
NONFICTION
1. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, by Michael Pollan
2. Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction, by David Sheff
3. The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne
4. The Dangerous Book for Boys, by Conn Iggulden
5. The Daring Book for Girls, by Andrea Buchanan
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