Hope you have had a great week and enjoyed your secret shopper experience! I haven't gotten a chance to read many of them yet - I am looking forward to it. I got to go to a great Montana technology conference this week so it has wreaked absolute havoc with my normal schedule. I appreciate your patience - I'll be better at providing feedback this week, promise.
Speaking of feedback, I have heard from some of you that you would appreciate knowing some of your grades, which is understandable. I will get what you have done so far graded and in the Oncourse gradebook this week. From what I have seen you are all doing great so don't be overly concerned!
Due by the end of this week:
Adventure and Romantic Suspense Annotations
A Kirkus-style review of a book you loved or hated
Prompt Response
For this week, we are reading about the Adventure and Romantic Suspense and about book reviews.. I have posted a PowerPoint about the two genres in Oncourse resources. These are very fun genres that are really popular right now so please make sure to read those chapters!
For the book review reading I have asked you to look over several different book review websites and write a Kirkus-style review. Kirkus has two things that make it stand out from other review sources - first, it is anonymous. This means that an aspiring writer can publish a bad review without alienating a publisher, or a librarian can publish one without angering a popular author. The second thing Kirkus has going for it is format. Kirkus uses a very specific format that allows librarians and booksellers to quickly skim a review and find out if the book is one that they want for their collection. The first sentence or two is always a quick summary of the book, then the middle paragraph is a more thorough summary with criticism, and the last sentence or two sum up the reviewer's feelings about the title. I am posting some reviews in the Oncourse Resources, but please go to the Kirkus site or look up some reviews of books you have read in the library databases - many databases provide access to Kirkus, I believe Academic Search Premier is one.
I have also asked someone many of you may know, Erin Cataldi, to "guest lecture" this week by providing a presentation on reviewing books for professional publications. Erin just got her MLS last year, but she has been reviewing books professionally for years. She is an adult and teen services librarian at the Clark Pleasant branch of the Johnson County Public Library. She has a great blog, and if you dig back far enough, you may find some of her assignments from this class on it. I think she reads more books than anyone else I know, and that's saying something. She is a super fun, awesome young librarian who is going to do amazing things. Her presentation is in Week Five resources.
It may seem early, but you might want to start thinking about your midterm assignment. I have asked you to either write a paper on a topic related to readers' advisory (please email me the topic for approval prior to writing the paper) or to record yourself doing booktalks. We will be reading a bit about booktalks next week, also there is a great book at the Indianapolis Public Library called The Booktalker's Bible, by Chapple Langemack, that is a short and easy read and has all kinds of tips. I'll post some links to booktalks I think are good in the coming weeks as well.
I will post the prompt later this afternoon. Ok, you guys have your work to do this week, and I have mine. As always, let me know if you have any questions!
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