Recopilación de algunos ensayos, artículos y conferencias de Aidan Chambers sobre la literatura, el rol de los adultos como intermediarios. ( )

May 30 - So far not so promising - I wish someone else had reviewed it so I'd have an idea what I'm getting into. It seems as if it maybe be another treatise on *L*iterature, rather than a simple appreciation for sharing stories.

June 1 - Done. I'm going to break my tradition here, and refer to my bookdarts first - as if I'd been posting status updates the way many of you do.

In speaking of Story in the Child's Changing World" Chambers does admit this: "Some people, I'm sure, will be thinking that I am saying that the literature of our past is dead. Not at all. What I do say is that writing now as if were still living in the past is a dead act. Rembrandt is still wonderful, astonishing, we can still learn from him, but to paint as he painted would be simply to copy.... Children's authors are - or ought to be - in the van of those who help children, the new community, to reach beyond the tired limits of the community in which they happen to be born.

Would that all these essays were as lucid!
Most of them have way too many big words and too much jargon, however.

Chambers is angry at teachers who refuse to accept children's responses to books that speak of boredom. He says: "[O]ne of the most useful and stimulating questions anyone can ask a group of readers is this: Tell me about the parts of the story that bored you. For what has happened when we grow bored? We are reading along, deep in pleasure, wanting more. We find... that we are no longer deep in pleasure, but have 'surfaced'. We are now easily distracted. Why? ... our intra-book life has a rhythm. And if we look again at what we have just read we might find, for example, that the story's structure has made a shift. There is a new tune to attend to, or a development of an earlier tune has taken over, or in some other way the story has changed."

Would that all these essays were as helpful!
Many of them are about abstract principles of interest only to academicians, however.

I did get some wonderful ideas about how to get more out of books (both for children and for adults, new & classic) that seem weird or *L*iterary to me. And I got a big list of children's books with which to try out some of those active reading strategies. And I can transfer some of those strategies to the act of reviewing my books.

But I think this book would be most helpful to those in a field most directly akin to his. If you're a professor who trains school librarians - this is a wonderful book. If you're training to be a school librarian, I recommend it (but actually I would like to know what else you're reading, please!). If you're a community librarian, a teacher, a home-schooling parent, or an auto-didact of children's literature, you might find bits interesting.

I do own it and will ship it gratis to goodreaders in the US, if you request it before I release it via www.bookcrossing.com.
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