America

Publishers have donated $250m worth of popular and award-winning titles, which will be made available for a three-year period on a specially designed app, produced with the New York Public Library. Public domain titles, spruced up with new art and typography, will be accessible for students from all backgrounds.

The app will have to be pretty enticing to lure teenagers off Snapchat, but it's certainly a laudable scheme: the White House talks of reading for pleasure, learning outside the classroom and "encouraging kids to become lifelong readers".

Seattle leads Amazon’s 2015 list of America’s “most well-read cities.” My hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, with a population of around 150,000, is no longer #1. Amazon now compares only cities with populations of half a million or more, not the previous 100,000. Thank goodness. Alexandria’s #1 showing distracted the media and others from genuine literacy […]

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Paolo Bacigalupi’s new speculative fiction novel titled “The Water Knife” is a genre-busting, genre-dissolving novel that is set ten minutes into the near future of America, and it ushers in a new chapter in the Colorado author’s career. In a recent blog post for the New Yorker magazine, staff writer Dana Goodyear surveyed the current […]

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After the earlier withdrawal by six authors from a presentation hosted by PEN America of its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo, some new authors have stepped up to the plate – including Neil Gaiman and Art Spiegelman. The award itself will now be presented by French-Congolese author and Man Booker International Prize […]

The post Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman, others take PEN seats to stand up for Charlie Hebdo appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

“Free” eBooks Don’t Help Poor Kids (Book Riot) Poor kids don’t have access to internet or devices. It’s a fact, and it’s backed up time and time again. *** 2015 Edgar Winners Revealed (GalleyCat) The Mystery Writers of America have revealed the 2015 Edgar Award winners. *** What Apple is Featuring in the Kids Section […]

The post Morning Links: Free ebooks don’t help poor kids. 2015 Edgar Winners appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

April 30, 2015-Today, at the Anacostia Branch of the District of Columbia Public Library, President Obama announced two new efforts to strengthen student learning by improving access to digital content and to public libraries. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is supporting several library and non-profit partners to develop the Open eBooks initiative and the ConnectED Library Challenge. These efforts leverage the extensive resources of the nation's 16,500 public libraries to help kids develop a love of reading and discovery by making e-books and library services broadly available, particularly to students from low-income families.

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