September 20th, 2010
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Reading is such an important and rewarding skill for children to learn. The library and, of course, book stores offer a wide selection of children’s books, but it isn’t always convenient to make a trip to these places.
One great alternative is to find free children’s books on the internet. Children will enjoy the stories just as much and the parent will be happy about how easy it is.
Some websites even offer books read aloud and animated illustrations. There are many positive rewards to be gained by finding children’s books online.
Websites offering free online children’s books:
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September 18th, 2010
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As someone who gets through a minimum of 5 books a month, I am ideally placed to describe how to write a book review. Not only am I a good reader but I am highly opinionated and I am not afraid to show it. That makes me an excellent candidate to review books.
These days the best place to review books is on Amazon. It is the number one place in the world for buying and selling books of all descriptions and it is the huge traffic that goes there which will give you a very visible online platform to air your views about one of their products.
Read the Book Before Drawing an Opinion
But before you go rushing in to start your first review, some ground rules apply. First it is absolutely essential that if you are going to review a book that you read the whole book first in its entirety. Don’t stop after ten pages then assume that makes you an expert on the work. Don’t read ten pages then start mocking the plot. For all you know, the plot might twist in an entirely different direction on page 11 and throw your entire review totally off track, making you look like a bit of an idiotic uninformed fool.
Hear that flushing sound? That’s your reputation going down the toilet – and don’t expect to get it back. So that’s rule number one – no matter how much you dislike the book, if you are going to review it afterwards, read it all so you can make an informed opinion about it.
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September 17th, 2010
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As a former journalist and now blog editor, I have seen, and continue to see, my fair share of press releases. Some of them are good but the vast majority of them are mind-numbingly bad. And the ironic thing is that everyone seems to be making the same old mistakes, as if there is an erroneous standard template out there that everyone is using.
When I worked as a consultant to an online e-commerce company a few years back, the first thing they asked me (which endeared them to me) was how to write a proper press release that wouldn’t be ignored or deleted by journalists. Here’s what I advised them to do – stop waffling and get to the point.
You see, journalists are very busy people and the more high profile their newspaper or magazine is, the more press releases that get sent to them on a daily basis. When I worked at a newspaper, they would get hundreds of press releases every day and it would be one of the sub-editors who would have the thankless job of reading through them all, putting to one side all the vaguely interesting ones for assigning to the staff later, while binning the rest.
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September 16th, 2010
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For three years, I earned my living as an English teacher, teaching English as a second language to Germans. A lot of my clients were corporate guys, wanting to learn English for their next trade negotiation with investors.
One even told me that she wanted to learn English because she was determined to topple her rival in the company, the boss’s assistant, whose English was terrible. So I may have been responsible for a mini coup d’etat in Germany!
Some of my clients though were children and they were a challenge all by themselves. As I discovered, children thought and felt differently than my adult clients. They weren’t concerned at all about boardroom coups or the upcoming speech that they would have to give in English to a group of Japanese businessmen.
Children just thought about how much they hated their parents for hiring an English teacher for extra-curricular lessons, and how could they get out of this hellhole as soon as humanely possible so they could get back to their computers or games consoles.
Therefore it wasn’t easy but the money was good, so I persevered. And throughout, I developed some ways to get them to engage. If you are teaching students English as a second language, in the interests of saving you from a heart attack, I am going to share my hard fought for tips.
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September 15th, 2010
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Writing children’s books requires authors to understand children. If the story grabs the attention of the children it is written for, it will also grab the attention of the publisher. Publishers know what will interest children—they have a lot of experience with this.
You need to write for the correct audience and keep this audience in mind at all times. With that said, there are many pitfalls experienced by children’s book authors. The following is a list of five common mistakes:
1. Children understand. Underestimating children’s ability to understand difficult topics– Children have very active imaginations. To them, the more twists and turns a story takes, the better. Topics such as abandonment, death, fear of the unknown, sacrifice and love are examples of subjects that will get readers’ attention.
Some examples of books that cover these topics are: Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. All of these books are very well known and they effect readers in a personal and emotional way.
2. Weak characters — Children like strong characters. Characters they can relate to and empathize with are the most popular. The central characters should be children—and, even better, children that save the day. One book that exemplifies this is, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. The three children in this book are regular kids who find it within themselves to overcome many obstacles.
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September 14th, 2010
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One of my pet fascinations is banned books. There’s something rebellious about finding out what is banned and then doing it anyway. As kids, we were always told what not to do, and then we went ahead and did it regardless, as an act of youthful defiance.
Even as adults, that defiant attitude has never changed. If someone, especially government, tells you not to do something, you are inclined to stick two fingers up at the Establishment and do it anyway to show them you won’t be pushed around.
Banning books has been going on ever since man learned to put ink to paper. Whether it be the Church or the government, man has been forbidden throughout the ages from reading things deemed not suitable for them. And almost immediately, underground printing presses have sprung into action to cater to the hunger to see and read those banned works. This could be anything from the Bible to a spy’s memoirs, or books by a particular author that the state despises.
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September 13th, 2010
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If there’s one thing I enjoy doing every day when I rise, it’s reading the newspapers. In years past, I would run out to the corner newsagent and spend a small fortune on print newspapers, but these days, all the news is online and free.
This has personally encouraged me to spread my wings a bit and start reading newspapers which I normally wouldn’t have read if I had to pay for them.
The quality of British newspapers varies a great deal but there are three which are guaranteed to inspire story ideas and inspiration in general.
1. The Guardian – Generally considered to be leaning to the left politically, the Guardian has long been dismissively looked upon as the newspaper for liberals, intellectuals and professor-types with patches on their jacket elbows. But to say that would be to ignore the well written, engaging, interesting stories that the Guardian consistently puts out.
And contrary to some of their rivals, the Guardian has not hunkered down behind a pay wall, only letting people in for a fee. In fact they have gone in the other direction, embracing the Internet and social media, and bringing out their own smart phone apps.
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September 13th, 2010
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Reader’s Theater is a fun and imaginative way to teach literacy in the classroom. Students study a book inside and out from different character’s perspectives to eventually act out the book in front of their peers. This process makes books exciting for the children and at the same time it increases their fluency.
Reader’s theatre in its entirety can be one of the most beneficial modes of literacy learning for teachers to use in the classroom. There is no set-in-stone way to use reader’s theater, however, the following steps provide one example of how it can be done.
1. Read the book first. Read the book aloud to the children in a lively manner, giving attention to the illustrations. Once the book is read, ask the students if there are any questions or comments and encourage them to discuss freely. This is a very important step in the process as it supplies the students with a first impression of the story that they will carry with them throughout.
2. Journal about the book. Allow the students to read the book quietly and possibly give them time to journal or free write about it. The children can write about characters, setting, plot and their reaction to the book as a whole. At this point they will be comfortable with the story and able to remember the storyline without the aid of the actual book.
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September 11th, 2010
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As the editor of a very busy website, my email inbox is close to exploding. Just when I think I have got on top of it all, along comes another 20-30 emails to wreck my cunning plans for total email dominance.
As you can probably imagine, I don’t intend to send myself into a total nervous breakdown because of emails, so I have gradually worked out some email personal productivity tactics to try and maintain the semblance of being in control of it all.
1) Switch to Gmail (if you already haven’t) – Gmail is the most superior email service out there. It lets us test experimental insanely useful features like Priority Inbox and also gives us a fantastic spam control system, labels and filters.
Nothing else comes close to beating what they offer – and it’s all free (provided you don’t mind seeing some adverts next to your emails – but trust me, eventually you don’t even notice they are there). Using Gmail, you can pretty much kiss goodbye to 95% or more of spam and if anything does slip through, you can zap it with a single mouse click. The labels and filters they provide also help you to arrange everything into their own special folders, making everything highly organized.
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September 10th, 2010
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Are you interested in improving writing skills? Working as an editor for two large websites, I can tell you that I’ve seen writing that runs the entire gamut - from the most skillfully written prose to the most horrid and grammatically terrible writing I’ve ever seen. The interesting articles and blog posts to edit are those from writers who are supposedly “good writers,” yet they use passive voice throughout their writing like it’s going out of style.
What is Passive Voice?
Before you can avoid this writing faux pas, you have to know what it is. Let me set the record straight. Passive voice is not a grammatical error, no matter how many editors try to tell you that it is. It is a stylistic choice that has a significant impact on the clarity of your writing. Are you “allowed” to write in the passive voice? Yes. Whether you should is a whole other matter. When it comes to improving writing skills for either non-fiction or fiction writing, passive voice is the most important thing you should look at.
Passive voice is when your verb is acting upon the subject of the sentence. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, then take a look at this sentence.
John was hit by the truck as he crossed the highway.
You’ve probably even seen lots of sentences written like this in professionally written novels that you read. That’s because it’s such a easy stylistic mistake to make that professional writers slip up and do it to. The amount that you can keep passive voice out of your writing will determine how “professional” your writing appears - because good style makes your writing much more clear.
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