May Readathing idea: Children's Book Week

I just noticed that Children's Book Week is May 10–16. I know this doesn't float everyone's boat, but we'd been talking about doing genre reads anyway. What about reading a children's book?

It'll be light and fast reading, which will appeal to those without a lot of time or brainpower to devote to a readathing, and to those with kids. There are old favorites you could revisit, or this could be your chance to read this year's Newbery winner.

We could do Saturday, May 15th.

This could be fun! My class is actually watching a Scholastic webcast this Friday about trying to set a world record this summer for number of minutes read. Perfect chance to do a practice run with them. They're used to read-a-thons that we've done during the day, but not for tracking their minutes on their own.

i'm totally down! i love children's books!

Works for me!

Good incentive to dig out some old faves and re-read them (and get them entered into LT).

How is 'childrens' defined for this? I have quite a few books tagged Childrens - from The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes to Redwall to Anne of Green Gables to Little Women.

This is perfect for me - a) I can read some of my children's books that I haven't gotten around to and b) I'm working census. By Saturday May 15 I won't have enough brain to read anything more complicated...

Great idea!
I will try and get my daughter involved, let's see if I can read aloud to her for about an hour.

Ah yes, I see nice opportunities of teaching her about time zones and far away countries... hmm and how about stories from different countries?

Count me in!

I love that idea, Sonya. Ironically, I probably will not be able to join you as I'm working a book festival all day on May 15th for BookCrossing at the Gaithersburg Book Festival in Kensington, Maryland, USA. In the future, wouldn't it be fun to do a tie-in to this festival? I can't really do anything in that regard this year as it's the first year we're doing this, and I don't have a laptop that runs on wifi.

If this is something you (or anyone else) could work out and/or would like to work on, though, here is the page of contact information for the book fair organizers. This is the first of what is to be a large annual event.

An idea:
What I think would be great would be a list somewhere (a wiki would be best, since it could be done alphabetically) of the books that are read for this ReadaThing. Each reader could then list author (last name first), book title, reader, and a (very) few words about the book. If you just make it a straight list (rather than a table), it would be easiest to maintain and less frightening for participants (new wiki users, specifically) to update. It's lots of fun to find out that one is reading the same book as someone else. Obviously, this would be done in addition to the talk thread where readers to talk more in depth about the books they read.

7> Well, there's already a tag per Readathing (like March's ltreadathonbeta or April's: readathingapril2010)

I'm game for a May Readathing. Although I'm not sure how long the two month Spawn will sit for some Doctor Suess

I can always read kids' books and so far May 15 is clear. I could haul up and reread the old picture books and decide which ones to pass on and which to keep for the so far (and I hope for several years yet) hypothetical grandchildren. Or grab a novel - Diana Wynne Jones? Arthur Ransome? Sooo many choices!

It's putting the garden in season though, so I'd have to select an hour after dark.

I'm in my son will love this. Even if i can't get him to sit still for an hour to listen I've still got my youngest that can't get away.

--> 8

Yeah. I guess that's really the easiest way to make a book list.

>8 romula: But I've never seen a group or event tagging project with a 100% participation rate, because tags are something that stays in people's catalogues and everyone has their own way of doing it. With the Take It Or Leave It challenge, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure everyone uses the wiki. I'm not sure why other groups/events are always so reluctant to try it.

Personally, I got tired of tagging my books with useless tags, such as what challenges I'm in. Sometimes I use those tags, but not always. They're really of very little help in what tags were meant to do, that is aggregate subjects for others to use in finding relevant books.

People are *afraid* of the wiki. No kidding! They think they'll mess something up by using it. I think it's a great feature that LT members should be strongly encouraged to learn how to use.

Tag: if we got to a tipping point of some sort, we'd have more participation. Perhaps we could link to the tag for each readathing in the group description, which would promote its importance

Wiki: I agree -- it's not exactly easy to use a wiki if you haven't before, or if you don't use it very often. We're making people use it to sign up for the readathing, but it's rigidly formatted and we're not asking for that much information.

Perhaps the tags would be more useful if all the Readathing tags could aggregate in some way. (Not really sure what I'm suggesting here ...)

it's not exactly easy to use a wiki if you haven't before, or if you don't use it very often

I think it's mostly just a matter of clear and explicit instructions. Madeline has managed to work wonders.

Madeline has managed to work wonders.

Not without threatening potential users! ;)

Hey, whatever works! ;)

For the sign-up, I think as long as a member can come and say "ahh! I can't figure out how to add myself", and someone can help them format the wiki, then it's fine.

Doing a loosey-goosey page with formatted parts (name, book) and unformatted parts (what I thought, where I read) might be too much for some members to try.

That's not to say that I think a wiki page for keeping track of books is a bad idea -- it's just the wiki formatting that is a hurdle.

Why not allow a wiki list just for those who want to try it? There's something to be said for having such a list, even if incomplete.

1. First of all, its presence encourages people to learn to it (as it's really not hard at all).

2. It's a much underutilized part of LT simply because people fear it.

3. It give a quick synopsis of books read and comments about those books without having to scan the entire thread.

4. If done alphabetically by author's last name (or by book title, if you so choose), it organizes the list.

5. It makes a handy reference for any future ReadaThing using the same genre.

6. It encourages people to read the same book at the same time. (More on that later!)

7. My list barely uses any formatting (except for the hash tag).

8. Books can be added or deleted at any time.

Sonya, here's a quick example. As people get more comfortable with the wiki, they can be taught to add links to the work pages, etc.

As a side comment, I wouldn't look at any list of books that lists the author first. I scan titles not authors and it's too hard to find the titles in the midst of the text.

There's no reason why we can't list titles first. I do so with the TIOLI challenge in the 75 Books Challenge group. See example. It's whatever Sonya or other participants want. My point is that using the wiki can be easier than it seems at first.

I edited the bottom of the wiki page to show book titles first. I agree that's more intuituve. By the way, please use this wiki to just play and try it to see how it works. This is a TEST AREA! You CANNOT mess it up.

If people don't like this idea, well that's a horse of a different color. However, if they do like it, it's simple enough to create and use.

Seems easy enough. I added a book.

I prefer title-first too.

But I'm not seeing Morphidae's addition on the list?

Me either. She probably didn't save it.

I prefer title first as well.

ETA: Save your additions, folks. See if we can convince Sonya that the wiki is easy enough to use. :)

Thank you, SqueakyChu!!

Should we define what we mean by "children's books"? Is "young adult" included?

--> 28

You're welcome, skittles.

Fixed it. I got the error message the first time but thought it was okay.

The point that the wiki is optional, and there's no reason not to have it is a good one.

Squeaky, would you mind setting up the participation page, like your test one? I set up the page:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/ReadathonMay2010participation

I think that YA books are fine -- it's hardly a black-and-white line between kids and YA, or YA and adult books for that matter.

I'll be happy to set it up, Sonya, but I won't be here for the readathon itself. I'm working a real life book festival that whole day. Someone else needs to volunteer to man it and make corrections that day as books are added.

Volunteers?

Thanks SC! Can someone be the tech/wiki volunteer?

Oh, we had talked about having a general volunteer coordinator for each readathing -- who is interested in coordinating this one (May 15th)?

I think the main responsibility is to tend to the thread (which should get created soon).

I'm going to be out of town and out of touch for this one, so I won't sign up. Happy reading, all.

News Flash!
Participants may now begin to list books they'll be reading for this upcoming ReadaThon:

Book List for May 2010 ReadaThon.

Don't worry about that long list of directions at the bottom. Those are for instructional purposes only and will fall from the participants' sight after many books are added to the Book List.

That's it for me. I'm outta here! :)

Thanks, SqueakyChu! Yes -- start adding the books you're going to read!

The beauty of a wiki is if you end up reading something else, you can change it after the fact.

Sounds like fun! Thanks Squeaky & Sonya!

My pleasure!

The wiki is up and running, ready for YOU to add your books! Thanks, staffordcastle and PaperbackPirate, for getting it started. Everyone else, don't be shy. Let's get this ReadaThon off to a roaring start!!

Sonya - can you add a link to the wiki in your first post above? That would make it easy to find at a glance. Or is there an easier way to find particular wikis?

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to sneak an hour to read. I'm reading A Wrinkle in Time at the moment and will read the next three, so one of those may be my book for this Readathing/

Until Sonya does that, just bookmark it. That's always the easist way to find anything.

Of course! Thanks Squeaky :o)

Helpful links:

ReadaThing Sign-Up - place to sign up for your time slot

ReadaThing Book List - books you're going to read

ReadaThing Group with the information - main group heading

I just noticed Sonya has added the links to the ReadaThing group page. Don't know if they've been there all this time...

Thanks, Sonya!

I'm in. I just started Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass so that's what I'll be reading. I still have to plan my schedule, but I'll definetly be participating.

i'm going to take the opportunity to read my recent ER book The Enchanted Buffalo. it's really short, so my plan is to read that one with my 7 month old niece and then read something else once it's finished and she's lost interest, but i don't know what yet.

>41 sandragon: Yeah, I put the info on the main page, figuring it would catch more people's eye. I'm also about to blog about it.

Should we still sign up for a time slot if we won't be able to access a computer that day?

I like the blog post - neat and attractive.

49> Why not? Multiple people can read in a slot, so it's not like you're blocking it from anyone. You can list what you plan to read ahead of time, and tell what and how you did read when you get back to a computer.

>49 PaperbackPirate: Unless you don't know if you'll be able to participate or not, sign up now. That way we'll know if we have our 24 hours covered or not.

If you're not sure what to read this Saturday, I just saw this Guardian article:
The best children's books ever

It's broken down into age groups, so you could start by deciding how much of a reading challenge you'd like :)

I think I might read aloud some Pippi Longstocking to my unborn.

I'm trying to decide between The Tower Treasure and Henry Huggins. Both are books that I'd like to read aloud to my class of boys next year. I always preread my read alouds, so this will be a perfect chance to get one of them in.

>52 sonyagreen:
The suggestions of what was left out are even more interesting than the lists! I think I found more of my childhood favorites in the comments.

I find my Friday and Saturday too full to sign up for an official slot this time around, but I will squeeze in a bit of reading in solidarity with you all, and I will read The Mystery of Pelican Cove, which is an old kids' mystery that I bought at a recent used book sale.

I've signed up, now just have to decide what to read.

I just swapped my hour because I made plans for the evening - so anyone who's interested in 7PM ET can nab it.

#57: just because an hour is taken (or not) doesn't mean that someone else can sign up for it.

Hours can be 'tagged' by any number of readers!!!

So, while you've moved your reading time, someone can 'share' your new reading time with you or can read during any other timeslot.... even mine!!

58 - oh, well yes, that's true too. Forgot about that. :)

I tried to fill in an empty slot, but I ended up having to double up in a time slot. All set to read Many Waters. I just finished A Swiftly Tilting Planet which precedes it.

My daughter and I are picking out our books to start off the readathon in just a few hours! We're looking forward to it. Sad to see so many open slots though - but we'll start it out strong.

OK, starting my hour with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

Well, I've gone over the hour by a bit, but since no-one was signed up after me, I'll take my book to bed and probably read until I finish - I'm on page 109, and there are only 159 - so only 50 to go.

added this time slot and am reading as I type;)

It's a pity about the earlier unfilled slots but at least I made a good start on Peter Pan and will finish it sometime during my next slot. As I hadn't intended to be reading for two hours I think I am going to see if I can find another children's book on my shelves - just in case.

I'll be back just before I start reading again, in time to put my next book on the wiki.

I woke up & read a good portion of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

What struck me about the book was more of what could be called the economic statement of the book. One outfit for school, one for church or good. Rebecca learned how to sew & baste a cotton gingham dress to wear to school. She was only allowed to play after she had done her chores or studied and then only at 4.30. "Recitations" on Fridays at school.

Wow.

O.K. decision made - when I finish Peter Pan I will start The House at Pooh Corner; there's just enough time to make some tea and snuggle in my reading chair before the hour starts.

I just finished Betsy-Tacy. It took slightly longer than my hour. The story is based on the author's childhood; Betsy and the Ray family are based on the author's family, and Tacy and the Kelly family are based on her real-life best friend's family. I loved the chapter when the girls played dress-up and went calling on the neighbors. Mrs. Benson invited the two "ladies" to have tea in her parlor and treated them just like grown-ups. How fun! I'm sorry I missed out on reading these books in my childhood.

I changed my mind about reading Many Waters and actually stayed in bed to listen to an audiobook for an hour. I started Gideon the Cutpurse by Linda Buckley-Archer, read by Gerard Doyle (lovely accents). First book in a trilogy about two 12 year olds from the 21st century Britain who stumble into an experimental antigrav machine and get sent to the 18 century. There are two stories being told: one of the kids trying to find a way home, and one of the parents and police trying to find out what happened to the kids. So far so good.

I just finished my hour+. One of the nice things about reading children's books is that I was able to read 80 pages in an hour. I read some of The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket outside and saw a lizard the exact color of our house.

Here is a quote which is an example of why I enjoy reading this series:
But I will take a page from the book of the Snow Scout leader, and skip ahead to the next interesting thing that happened, which was very, very late at night, when so many interesting parts of stories happen and so many people miss them because they are asleep in their beds, or hiding in the broom closet of a mustard factory, disguised as a dustpan to fool the night watchwoman.

Hope everyone has enjoyed/is enjoying/will enjoy their children's book today as I did mine.

Just about to start my hour - I'm cheating a bit with YA fiction, but I'm planning on starting Incarceron and seeing how it goes.

Hour over, but I'm going to keep reading for a bit. Good book so far, but I have no idea how to summarize it like folks have been on the reading list wiki. I'll try to come up with something, though.

Just about to start my hour -- book and chocolate at hand!

Chocolate!!!

I'm completely jealous because I forgot about chocolate!!

That's what I needed this morning!!!

Well, maybe I'll just finish the book off this evening with some chocolate goodness!!

Thanks, foggidawn, for giving me such a great idea!!

didn't get a chance to post earlier, but my daughter and I enjoyed kicking off the readathon. I started with D is for Dahl last night, and then I knew I had an hour drive today to take her to her class, so we logged onto the reading log for that hour - and finished Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Great idea. Sorry to see the open slots today, but looks like the rest of the "thon" is covered.

Hope everyone enjoyed their books.

I got halfway through A Gathering of Days in my second hour. I may finish it later this evening if I'm not too tired after I finish some things I need to do.

I finished reading Odd and The frost Giants tonight. I really enjoyed the pace of the writing and how Gaiman characterized Loki and the Asgardians. A very good book.

I'm squeezing in an hour at the last minute - I'll be reading from 3 am GMT (8 pm here). I just got two children's books from Bookmooch, so I'm reading The High Deeds of Finn Mac Cool and if that runs out before my hour's done I'll read Whatever Happened to Janie - I love and have read multiple times The Face on the Milk Carton, so I'm delighted to get this sequel. But first I need to eat dinner!

Just brewing a cuppa to go along with Boxen - C.S. Lewis said that you couldn't find a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough for him, so it seems right to have tea while reading this!

Checking back in - ran over a bit! I read the first 53 pages of Boxen; definitely a precocious work for two boys. I was rather reminded of the Brontës' stories of Angria.

I read nearly 50 pages in The Marvelous Land of the Snergs in my time slot--I should have made it a bit farther, but I was sleepier than I thought I would be and was having a really hard time of it by the end! :-)

Sorry I haven't posted earlier but it was a busy weekend... I finished Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I was also sleepier than expected so it was a very slow read for me.

Is there a specific tag to mark the books with this time?

Oh, I missed it; and in the time zone we're in, I could have covered some of those empty slots - sorry!

I had a look before, but I wasn't sure how the Readathon works. Do we just pick a time slot, sign up and then at that time, sit down and do the relevant reading?

I found a piece of paper that my 6 year old had brought back from school with some computer graphics on, and "I love my mum because she reads to me" (I've improved the spelling); he'd have loved the Readathon. Next time around.

#83: yes, that's basically the routine.

#1: check calendar & time slots on sign-up page & then sign-up.

#2: at appropriate time, read until either your time period ends, time runs over & you continue reading... or an emergency stops your reading.

#3: (optional) tell us about what you read, where you read it, what you were eating/drinking while reading (really not optional) & tell us what you thought about your book, experience.... and lastly, how did it work for you & how we can improve the ReadaThings.

NOTE FOR ReadaThingers: Sonya hasn't checked in because she's been a bit busy this weekend.

Check this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/91196

Ahh - thanks, skittles. Will try and join in next time, now I know.

Unfortunately 3 month Spawn and I only made it through 30min before he decided he was hungry. We did get though To Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street from our SantaThing book Six by Suess (thanks calm).

ETA: fixed touchstones

Didn't get a chance to check before, but I reconnected with an old childhood favourite, The Secret World of Og. I had forgotten all about it until I saw a copy in the used book shop a couple of weeks ago.

The Secret World of Og was one of my favorites too! I still have my original copy.

stupid internet was down ALL WEEKEND and just got fixed today. i read in my allotted time, but i hate that i couldn't post this then.

i read The Enchanted Buffalo by L Frank Baum, The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, and started The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I was reading to my 7 month old niece, in her bedroom, cuddled up in the glider with her. She was so much more attentive than i thought she would be, so we just kept reading after we finished The Enchanted Buffalo.

it was a lovely evening.