On winter break

This blog won't be updated until school resumes Monday, January 3, 2010.

Scientific Santa celebrates reading

Yesterday's session of Literary Lunches featured Kris Kringle. Take a look at one of the many highlights.

Oh those darned Brits

Quotation marks are used to set off speech or quoted sentences and words. Despite its simple role, people tend to get confused about the position of other punctuation in relation to the quotation marks. Should it go inside or outside the quotation marks?
It depends. If you are writing in American English, other punctuation should go inside the quotation marks, even if it is not part of the quoted sentence. Here is an example from the New York Times:

“When we have got a contractor city, say, of 180,000 people, and there hasn’t been a completed prosecution of anybody coming out of Iraq, not one,” he said, “what sort of city in America would be like that, where no one is prosecuted for anything for three years? It’s unthinkable.”

If you are writing in British English, on the other hand, punctuation that is not part of the quoted sentence should be place outside the quotation marks. Here is an example from The Telegraph:

A crisis in the US subprime mortgage market will affect Britain, he said, warning that the housing market is likely to weaken as a result. However, he insisted that the economy is starting from “a very strong position”.

The above text comes from Daily Writing Tips. Clicking on it will take you to a short piece on punctuation at Daily Writing Tips. To visit Daily Writing Tips, click here.

School Library Journal rocks

School Library Journal, is the leading print magazine, and now SLJ.com serving librarians who work with young people in schools and public libraries. The two resources give librarians up-to-date information needed to integrate libraries into the school curriculum, become leaders in the areas of technology, reading, and information literacy, and create high-quality collections for children and young adults.

If you think School Library Journal is just for librarians, think again. The journal's website includes blogs, book reviews....a staggering number of resources to keep you reading. Click here to learn more.  Click here to explore the section on adult books for teens.

Literary connections

Though the author Cathy Williams read from at yesterday's session of Literary Lunches may not be familiar, the local event that writer attended is familiar: the annual UND Writers Conference.
Williams read the work of Karen Russell, who participated in the 2010 Writers Conference for which the topic was wit.  Specifically, Williams read the title story from Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.

In an online interview at Book Browse, Russell talks about the importance of reading. Click the text below to read more.


What in your own life made you want to become a writer?
Reading, definitely. I loved reading so much; I mean, I still do, but not with that sort of illicit midnight intensity. I was such an anxious kid, and reading was a way out. At sleepovers, I would sneak away and lock myself in the bathroom and read the other kids’ books. Here was a way to step-out of your child’s body and into the mind of a Salem witch or a bunch of warring rabbits. It’s still amazing to me. It was spooky and intimate and totally intoxicating, to step into an author’s private rooms. I’d read the words and they became my rooms. Then I wanted to be a writer myself, to do to others what these authors were doing for me.

Check this out

TED (Technology, Education and Design) is a terrific resource, perhaps best known for its talks. The one above is a dazzler.

What education looks like in high-performing countries

U.S. leaders say we must learn from and emulate what high-performing countries do—the only issue is that what Singapore and Finland talk about is not what's discussed in Education Nation or even in the Klein/Rhee Manifesto. Rather than "more standardized testing" it's actually "more PE and the arts." (from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development blog)

Click the above hyperlinked text to learn more.