PD posting- book review

Book review- it’s a book by Lane Smith

I chose to review a children’s picture book in this instance because it provides a very funny insight to how young people may think today.

It is a children’s picture book with a short sentence structure, mainly relying on illustrations to tell the story. The characters are a monkey, a jackass and a mouse, who is sitting in a lounge room and the monkey is reading a book, with the jackass asking him questions about the book. The back cover has a summarized version of the content, which gives an indication  of what the book is about – “Can it text? Blog? Scroll? Wi-Fi? Tweet?  No… It’s a book.” (Smith, L. 2010). I liked the book and found it entertaining and funny. It provides a humorous look at modern day children and youth and how they are perceived. Other books such as the “goodnight moon” modern parody “goodnight ipad” by Ann Droyd also indicate this shift away from traditional resources by the children and youth of today. One particular part I found amusing was when a section from Treasure Island was read and then the jackass replied “Too many letters. I’ll fix it.”(Smith, 2010) And proceeded to turn an exchange between Long John Silver and Jim into “LJS: rrrr! K? lol! Jim: L ! J” (Smith, 2010). While not providing any new perspective on the possible future of children and youth library services, It’s a book does provide a very appropriate example of the shift in attitudes where the children reading this book are every bit as likely to be familiar with the technological terms as they are a book.

This has a dramatic impact on the delivery of children and youth services and the extent to which library services can be delivered via traditional methods. While not strictly speaking lessening the impact of traditional services and methods of delivery, we can view this as an opportunity to increase the methods of delivering traditional children and youth programs. An example of this would be story time and homework help, where podcasts of storytime can be uploaded onto a library’s website and homework help can be delivered via an instant messaging function on the website. Book reviews can be shared via library blogs, twitter, facebook and other forms of social media; children are able to attend gaming nights which refer to gaming consoles rather than traditional board games. The list of possibilities is a very long one and if books such as It’s a book can be aimed at children and they are able to understand it then the future development of their understanding. Emerald Management Xtra Complete (EMX) editor Margaret Adolphus in her profile on author of the “shifted librarian” blog Jenny Levine states “Just as libraries provide safe and neutral spaces for people to learn about new technologies, so they can offer a social space to play computer games in a team situation, which encourages interaction”. This highlights the fact that whilst technology can be used to deliver children and youth services to remote participants it can also encourage social interaction.

Reference List

Adolphus, M (n.d.) Jenny Levine on Library 2.0. Retrieved 21^st May, 2013 from http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/librarians/info/viewpoints/j_levine.htm

Smith, L.(2010) It’s a book. Newtown, NSW: Walker Books Australia.