Comments on: We Belong Together http://www.hbook.com/2012/05/choosing-books/horn-book-magazine/we-belong-together/ Publications about books for children and young adults Tue, 14 May 2013 13:27:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: Julie Larios http://www.hbook.com/2012/05/choosing-books/horn-book-magazine/we-belong-together/#comment-16108 Julie Larios Fri, 04 May 2012 21:29:52 +0000 http://www.hbook.com/?p=12242#comment-16108 My heart lurched at that news, too, Roger. When I was little my dad worked for Encyclopedia Britannica Films - basically educational material for classroom use - and we were awfully proud of his work. He brought home many films for us to watch (and we watched it sometimes melt in an overheated projector!) We even tried to teach our parakeet to repeat EBF's motto - "Bring the world to the classroom!" (Our parakeet, who was quite bright, never learned to say it - though he could say, very articulately, "Pretty bird.") We had a whole set of Encyclopedia Britannica on our bookshelves and I loved lying on the rug turning a volume's delicate pages with all their tiny print.. I remember feeling a tremendous disloyalty in middle school when I used the World Book encyclopedia to get shallower but more easily retrievable information for my Social Studies reports. Here is one thing that I think online reading of reference material can do better that the print version of information (in addition to the speed with which information can be retrieved and its currency, both of which obviously help): Online material of one kind can link quickly, to interesting sideline sites, which allows kids to spiral deeper and deeper into the material. Kids looking up the Principal Imports and Exports of Portugal (that kind of information constituted about 99% of my Social Studies reports when I was 13) can be pulled by a link into reading about the commercial process of getting salt from the sea along the coastline of Portugal, and thus toward a link to the history of Portugal's domination of sea trade during the Age of Exploration. Suddenly it's not just about Import//Exports, but about Ferdinand and Isabella and sailing the ocean blue! All by clicking on those addictive links. If you're an obsessive reader, as kids who use encyclopedia resources can be, then the world suddenly opens up via the strangest and most unexpected doors. Librarians can be the gatekeepers who show kids how to keep the spiraling under control - and how to choose the most interesting doors. But oh, those wonderful, delicate pages of Encyclopedia Britannica - they were almost like onion skin. Turning them carefully added to my sense that information was something to be in awe of. Maybe it's good that kids now feel it's friendlier but also more suspect - not just delivered by experts, but delivered by sources that can be measured and judged....? "Don't believe everything you read online" could never have been said about the Encyclopedia Britannica which might as well have been wearing black robes and provided with a gavel - it was the Judge and Jury of information, which is why in my family we approached them as if they were law books! My heart lurched at that news, too, Roger. When I was little my dad worked for Encyclopedia Britannica Films – basically educational material for classroom use – and we were awfully proud of his work. He brought home many films for us to watch (and we watched it sometimes melt in an overheated projector!) We even tried to teach our parakeet to repeat EBF’s motto – “Bring the world to the classroom!” (Our parakeet, who was quite bright, never learned to say it – though he could say, very articulately, “Pretty bird.”) We had a whole set of Encyclopedia Britannica on our bookshelves and I loved lying on the rug turning a volume’s delicate pages with all their tiny print.. I remember feeling a tremendous disloyalty in middle school when I used the World Book encyclopedia to get shallower but more easily retrievable information for my Social Studies reports.

Here is one thing that I think online reading of reference material can do better that the print version of information (in addition to the speed with which information can be retrieved and its currency, both of which obviously help): Online material of one kind can link quickly, to interesting sideline sites, which allows kids to spiral deeper and deeper into the material. Kids looking up the Principal Imports and Exports of Portugal (that kind of information constituted about 99% of my Social Studies reports when I was 13) can be pulled by a link into reading about the commercial process of getting salt from the sea along the coastline of Portugal, and thus toward a link to the history of Portugal’s domination of sea trade during the Age of Exploration. Suddenly it’s not just about Import//Exports, but about Ferdinand and Isabella and sailing the ocean blue! All by clicking on those addictive links. If you’re an obsessive reader, as kids who use encyclopedia resources can be, then the world suddenly opens up via the strangest and most unexpected doors. Librarians can be the gatekeepers who show kids how to keep the spiraling under control – and how to choose the most interesting doors.

But oh, those wonderful, delicate pages of Encyclopedia Britannica – they were almost like onion skin. Turning them carefully added to my sense that information was something to be in awe of. Maybe it’s good that kids now feel it’s friendlier but also more suspect – not just delivered by experts, but delivered by sources that can be measured and judged….? “Don’t believe everything you read online” could never have been said about the Encyclopedia Britannica which might as well have been wearing black robes and provided with a gavel – it was the Judge and Jury of information, which is why in my family we approached them as if they were law books!

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