From: griffisc at bc.edu <griffisc>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 11:00:15 +0000

I still think the personal touch with a book--whether it be with a student or a Robin Smith's words were the most encouraging I found as I looked through what people had to say in response to Ginny's query, "Do Teachers Read Reviews?" The review delivered in person is the one I find most influential with the teachers in my children's literature classes, and, perhaps, more important than the one read in private in a review journal at the end of a long day.

Teachers regularly need to add new (not necessarily recently-published) titles to their repertoires so they do not need to "keep up" in the same way as a librarian does.

The kind of review focused on in this discussion is a tool for disseminating information about the qualities and quality of new books but its only one tool conversations in person, electronic discussion lists, browsing in book stores, teachers as readers groups, book review columns in professional journals and attending conferences are other tools. It is important to have someone(s) in a community of readers who is in touch with the "just-published" (and it is an exciting way to be involved in the children's literature world); in schools, by job definition, this person is usually the librarian, sometimes a teacher. What seems most important is that the news about books and the stories themselves come off the page and into our conversations and imaginations.

Susan C. Griffith Lesley College Cambridge, Massachusetts
Received on Mon 21 Sep 1998 06:00:15 AM CDT