Top 50 books for children

The Independent published an article on the top 50 books every child should read in response to the British Secretary of Education saying every child should read a book a week.  The Independent asked three leading British children's authors and two of their in-house experts to each pick ten books for 11-year old children.  This suggestion was made after visiting a Harlem school in New York.

Digital Reading

I found this blog post very interesting:  What if reading on the computer means we don't get it?  My reading comprehension is certainly better when I have a printed copy  of whatever on my desk.  I think I take more time to read rather than hurrying to read the computer screen quickly so I can get on with my clicking!

I chose three different articles that are about the level that I would normally assign for current events, two of them from the New York Times. For Grade 6, this can be a fairly challenging reading level. Each article was followed by five questions related to comprehension of the key information from the article. The subject of each article was familiar but the information was ‘new’ to the students. I did the experiment with both of my Humanities classes – about 40 students.

For article one, students read entirely online. They could take notes on paper or using an online tool.

For article two, students read a pdf version stripped of all ads (using the ‘READER’ function of Safari). They could then take notes on paper or using Preview (which allows them to take notes and highlight the text easily).

For article three, students received a paper copy of the article and could write on it if they needed to. If I am being honest, this article was in fact the longest and most complex.

The results?

For the first article (reading online), the class average was 68%, a D+.

For the second article (a pdf version that allowed note-taking), the class average was 72%, a C-.

For the final article (a paper copy), the class average was 89, a B+.

Were you a fan of the television series, Diagnosis Murder?   If so, you will love the Diagnosis Murder website created by Lee Goldberg, "who was an executive producer and writer on the long-running show and is also the author of the exciting novels based on the series."


The site has scripts and outlines from the series along with book information, interviews and a forum.  All you want to know about Dr. Mark Sloan!

Top 100 Authors downloaded from Project Gutenberg

Top 100 Authors last 30 days

1. Dickens, Charles (78364)
2. Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir (75838)
3. Twain, Mark (74747)
4. Shakespeare, William (56503)
5. Austen, Jane (54921)
6. Wells, H. G. (Herbert George) (51128)
7. Verne, Jules (39705)
8. Johnson, E. Pauline (36709)
9. Wilde, Oscar (36663)
10. Carroll, Lewis (36462)
11. Poe, Edgar Allan (34060)
12. Burton, Richard Francis, Sir (32715)
13. Dumas, Alexandre (29373)
14. Vatsyayana (27241)
15. Indrajit, Bhagavanlal (26731)
16. Bhide, Shivaram Parashuram (26731)
17. Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville) (26706)
18. Burroughs, Edgar Rice (26297)
19. Tolstoy, Leo, graf (25772)
20. Stevenson, Robert Louis (25529)
21. Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank) (24840)
22. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (21664)
23. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor (20747)
24. Joyce, James (20594)
25. Christie, Agatha (20503)
26. Plato (19481)
27. Grimm, Jacob (19028)
28. Grimm, Wilhelm (19028)
29. Doré, Gustave (18864)
30. Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (18594)
31. Aesop (18280)
32. Swift, Jonathan (18265)
33. Kipling, Rudyard (18240)
34. Kafka, Franz (17874)
35. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (17498)
36. Melville, Herman (17378)
37. Dante Alighieri (17150)
38. London, Jack (17033)
39. Conrad, Joseph (16794)
40. Jowett, Benjamin (16736)
41. Defoe, Daniel (16636)
42. Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud) (16567)
43. Benedict, Elsie Lincoln (16501)
44. Benedict, Ralph Paine (16501)
45. Garnett, Constance (16280)
46. Sunzi (6th cent. BC) (15922)
47. Homer (15920)
48. Hugo, Victor (15869)
49. Potter, Beatrix (15736)
50. Giles, Lionel (14620)
51. Leonardo da Vinci (14388)
52. Stoker, Bram (14170)
53. James, Henry (14019)
54. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (13946)
55. Richter, Jean Paul (13839)
56. Alcott, Louisa May (13512)
57. Brontë, Charlotte (13102)
58. Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de (13060)
59. Dick, Philip K. (12707)
60. Balzac, Honoré de (12686)
61. Sterndale, Robert Armitage (12605)
62. Wyllie, David (12567)
63. Lang, Andrew (12519)
64. Pope, Alexander (12506)
65. Widger, David (12294)
66. Maude, Louise Shanks (12016)
67. Russell, Bertrand (11948)
68. Vernon Jones, V. S. (Vernon Stanley) (11814)
69. Maude, Aylmer (11755)
70. Haggard, Henry Rider (11737)
71. Hawthorne, Nathaniel (11536)
72. Whitman, Walt (11464)
73. Bierce, Ambrose (11279)
74. Giese, W.F. (11170)
75. Voltaire (10707)
76. Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew) (10408)
77. Hardy, Thomas (10399)
78. Cary, Henry Francis (10098)
79. Darwin, Charles (10098)
80. Townsend, F. H. (Frederick Henry) (10092)
81. Berens, E.M. (10010)
82. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (9970)
83. Machiavelli, Niccolò (9908)
84. Scott, Walter, Sir (9802)
85. Milton, John (9707)
86. Brontë, Emily (9631)
87. Burnett, Frances Hodgson (9512)
88. Eliot, George (9503)
89. Maupassant, Guy de (9490)
90. Collins, Wilkie (9481)
91. Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian) (9340)
92. Gibbon, Edward (9301)
93. Thoreau, Henry David (9266)
94. Milman, Henry Hart (9189)
95. Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (8898)
96. Henty, G. A. (George Alfred) (8776)
97. Marriott, W. K. (William K.) (8749)
98. Hapgood, Isabel Florence (8651)
99. Shaw, Bernard (8635)
100. Trollope, Anthony (8589)

The Google lawsuit has generated a lot of publicity the last few days.  The Scholarly Kitchen summarizes the lawsuit and decision with a few added suggestions.

Lendle gone, Lendle back!

Lendle is back.  The Lendle webpage states the following:

"Amazon revokes Lendle’s API access (Update: We’re back!)

Update, March 22nd, 2011: We’re thrilled to report that Amazon has reinstated our API access, and Lendle is back up and running. Welcome back, Lendlers!"  For more information, go to Lendle.

Making Books video

Oh my, how times have changed in so many ways!    How books were made in 1947 -- a video from Encyclopedia Britannica:  Making Books


I love the fashion and vocabulary.