With all the talk about the party conventions here in the United States, I thought it might be appropriate to check into what each candidates’ favorite books are.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy list out there.  However, one interesting fact did emerge: both John McCain and Barack Obama share a favorite book.  What is it?  For Whom [...]

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Nate, I confess, this started all because I wanted to prank you. I saw that one thread in the mod forum (you know the one) and instead of being a nice human being and comforting you, I had the craziest urge to give you the biggest prank that I think YWS has ever seen. The [...]

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If you’ve been listening to the news lately, then you’ve no doubt heard about a string of Supreme Court decisions that have proven to be somewhat controversial.  Of course, that’s how it always goes, but since the Supreme Court is in the news, it feels appropriate to go with a Justice theme for today’s post.
A [...]

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Note: The above picture has been edited so as to demonstrate the true nature of Penguins rather than what the hippie authors of the tale would have you believe. 
I know what you’re thinking.  In what way isn’t a penguin objectionable?  Indeed, out of all the species on the planet, penguins raise the most ire.  Fortunately, [...]

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In the words of Dubya, what is our children reading?
According to a survey of youthful reading in the United States, you all are reading quite a bit.  In the seventh grade, kids read 7.1 books a year.  In the twelfth grade, they are reading 4.7 books a year.  That’s a big drop, but my bet [...]

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This is just funny:
Their goal was an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing.
However, the wording in a draft by students at the University of Texas at San Antonio appears to match another school’s code — without proper attribution.
The student currently in charge of the honor code project said it was an oversight, but cheating [...]

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J.K. Rowling is currently involved in a legal battle with regards to an unauthorized encyclopedia of her Harry Potter novels.  While the case won’t be decided for weeks, this comment from the Judge is certainly interesting:
District Judge Robert Patterson Jr said that he had read the first half of the first Harry Potter novel [...]

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From the Financial Times:

The campaign, backed by the Arts Council and other worthies, recently clucked that Britain’s adults were too hard on their kids for not doing enough “proper reading”.
Of course British teenagers were reading, the campaign insisted: Heat magazine, online song lyrics, internet sites that helped you cheat at computer games. Reading was not [...]

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I thought that this was a good quote:
“‘Someone said if you take too much from one person, you’re stealing, but if you take a bit from a lot of people, it’s research.”
I can’t find the original source of the quote, so if you know, leave it in the comments.

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When Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” it was in response to a population surge and economic crisis in Ireland. His proposal was to cook and serve Irish children to the English gentry as a benign solution to this crisis. It was a joke of course. His real aim was in demonstrating [...]

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This is interesting.  From CNN.com:
Drawing on their expertise in theology, children’s literature, globalization studies and even the history of witchcraft, professors have been able to use Harry Potter to attract crowds of students eager to take on a disciplined study of the books.
Danielle Tumminio, a Yale Divinity School graduate student and the instructor for [...]

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Like sports, writing isn’t just a fun activity. It also has tremendous therapeutic value. Writing can be an outlet for venting, or to describe how you’re feeling. And as The Times of India reports, it can also ease the stress of cancer:
The simple act of writing down their deepest feelings can help [...]

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The Hugo Award is an award given to the best achievements in sci-fi or fantasy.  It is definitely one of the most well known, and even if you’re not a sci-fi fan, you usually can’t go wrong with a Hugo winner.
The 2008 Finalists are below:
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)
Brasyl by [...]

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I’ve been trying to avoid any Harry Potter news for a while now, but buried within a Bloomberg article about more extraordinary heights Harry Potter books are fetching at auctions is this:
Published in 1997, the first novel in the series that turned Rowling into a billionaire was considered to have such modest prospects that Bloomsbury [...]

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 Sir Arthur C. Clarke died March 18, 2008 from a cardio-respiratory attack in his adopted home of Sri Lanka.  Excerpt from Wired.com follows:
Arthur C. Clarke, the award-winning sci-fi writer and futurist most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, died Wednesday in Sri Lanka. He was 90.
His writing, both fiction and nonfiction, established Clarke [...]

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The New York Times has an interesting article today called Start Writing the Eulogies for the Print Encyclopedia.  Excerpt:
IT has never been easier to read up on a favorite topic, whether it’s an obscure philosophy, a tiny insect or an overexposed pop star. Just don’t count on being able to thumb through the printed pages [...]

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Each year, the Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) honor the most outstanding children’s books of the prior year, called the Golden Kite Awards.  Unlike other such awards, winners of the Golden Kite are chosen by their peers.
Fiction: Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate
Nonfiction: Muckrakers by Ann Bausum
Picture Book Text: Pierre in [...]

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The problem of students copying work from other sources is nothing new. In fact, I remember how a friend of mine in high-school would copy entire articles from the encyclopedia for our world history class. How he never got caught is beyond me, or maybe he did and he just never said anything [...]

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I almost forgot, but today is apparently National Grammar Day.  The group promoting this, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG), wants you to correct any bad grammar you find.  So go ahead and write to newscasters when they stumble over their words.  Never mind that, in the US at least, many of [...]

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Giving voice to those who no one will listen to is a great thing to do.  In fact, Dr. Suess did it in the Lorax.  Only thing is, Dr. Suess didn’t slap “Memoirs” on it.
In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, [...]

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In my last post, I talked about the National Endowment of Art’s new program called The Big Read. The program’s aim is to restore reading as the cultural center of America. I’m not quite sure if it ever was the cultural center, but that’s largely irrelevant. They got a pretty good reading [...]

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Recently the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) began a program called, The Big Read.  The idea behind The Big Read is to restore reading to the center of the American Culture.  Here’s a little excerpt from their Web site:
The Big Read answers a big need. Reading at Risk: A Survey of [...]

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http://nationalgrammarday.com/
From the web site:
If we don’t respect and honor the rules of English, we lose our ability to communicate clearly and well. In short, we invite mayhem, misery, madness, and inevitably even more bad things that start with letters other than M. (Seriously—sort of. But it is true that misplaced commas have [...]

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Well it seems like the Brits are owning the blog yesterday and today for the third time in a row.  Coming hot off the heels of what nation reads more, and the oddest book titles of the last year in the UK comes the release of a list of the 50 Best Children’s Books of [...]

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Thanks to Vernon for the heads up in this thread!
British industry magazine The Bookseller has announced this year’s shortlist for the oddest book title of the year, with a typical mix of the quirky and eclectic.
Visitors to the magazine’s website, www.thebookseller.com, can make their choice from six mostly non-fiction titles unearthed by publishers, bookstore workers [...]

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’cause then I could go to this:

 The Great Plains Zoo and Delbridge Museum will host a Dr. Seuss birthday party next month.
The event is scheduled March 7 from 10 to 11:45 a.m. for children ages 2 to 6.
Participants will make their own Cat in the Hat birthday hat, listen to Seuss’ Yertle the Turtle, meet [...]

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Since we’ve had a few blog posts about it, I thought it’d be good to mention that the writers’ strike is officially over now. Hopefully, this means that Scrubs will be back soon and Battlestar Galactica won’t be delayed any further than April!
This is a day of relief and optimism for everyone in the [...]

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Sometimes I wondered the same about my old high-school teachers…
 John Corcoran graduated from college and taught high school for 17 years without being able to read, write or spell.
Corcoran’s life of secrecy started at a young age. He said his teachers moved him up from grade to grade. Often placed in what he calls the [...]

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I’ve noticed some of my favorite shows are now back on television–well, at least House was on after the super bowl. I started wondering what was going on with the strike so I visited the Writers Guild of America site.
One thing that has happened is that congress is starting to get in on the fight.
“In [...]

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April 4, 1979-January 22, 2008
Read his Mini-Biography.
Read the News Article of his Death from NY Times.

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