Web Sitings - Scholastic Corp.; Los Angeles Public Library - Brief Article

Instructor, Oct, 2000 by Julie M. Wood

Favorite book and author sites enrich the reading experience

Connecting With Children's Writers

For those of us who came of age somewhere between Sputnik and Tranquillity Base, children's authors were often faceless, shadowy figures who, hunched over typewriters, created the books we loved. Pippi Long-stocking. The Hardy Boys. Peter Pan. For today's youth, by contrast, writers often have a breathtaking immediacy. They are flesh-and-blood personalities with compelling personal stories to share--and thanks to the Internet, they're connected.

Consider Scholastic's Web site, where the legion Harry Potter aficionados can read interviews with author J.K. Rowling (www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/author/index.htm), then enter the "Discussion Chamber" to answer such questions as, "If you had Harry's Invisibility Cloak, what would you do with it?" Or an author-and-illustrator Web site that lets kids search for their favorites alphabetically--from Verna Aardema to Charlotte Zolotow--to learn about their books and their lives (www.dalton.org/libraries/fairrosa/cl.authors. html). By clicking on Virginia Hamilton's name, for example, they can read her photojournal about a visit to South Africa.

Another great site for young readers is The Los Angeles Public Library's Books and Authors site (www.lapl.org/kddsweb/coolsites/bookauthor-0p.html). This virtual library is chock-a-block with lively information, cartoons (including my personal favorite, "Calvin and Hobbes"), and author biographies, such as the fascinating life story of Brian Jacques, who writes the popular Redwall Abbey books. But what makes the site really exceptional is the option to read everything in Spanish.

One more example (from many possibilities!): Check out the Internet Public Library's author page (www.ipl.org/youth/AskAuthor/Bio graphies.html), where kids can access answers to their favorite authors' frequently asked questions. (Did you know, for example, that Daniel Pinkwater's infamous Fat Men from Space will be back in a new story, Slaves of Spiegel?

Encourage students to get to know their favorite writers via the Web. You'll help create a lively, literary classroom in which authors seem present as real people whose words help us understand ourselves.

Julie M. Wood, Ed.D., is a lecturer at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and director of America Reads at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.