Brain Hive has made available a new e-book lending service for K-12 school libraries, THE Journal reported this week. The service offers unlimited access to 3,000 fiction and nonfiction titles. Libraries pay only $1 for every title checked out (a spending limit can be set so that budgets aren’t ruined), and students can read the e-books on computers or mobile devices. The service is being piloted in 20 schools and will fully launch this fall.
This week marked the 152nd anniversary of the first publication of a “dime novel” in the United States. Why is that important, you ask? According to the Library of Congress, it marked the first time that Americans had access to inexpensive, serialized fiction. The library has a collection of nearly 40,000 of these books, and staff members there have put together a little online collection of covers that might be fun to use as discussion prompts in class.
Author Ray Bradbury—who is credited with legitimizing science fiction as a literary genre—died this week, as many of you may have already heard. The New York Times has a short piece that focuses on Bradbury’s “fecund storytelling” that you might want to check out. Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman also wrote a lovely remembrance piece about Bradbury for the Guardian in England.
The 17th annual Audie Awards were announced this week at a gala in New York City. Winners of interest to the K-12 community included The Wake of the Lorelei Lee (Listen & Live Audio) in the teens category; Heart and Soul (HarperAudio) in children’s titles, ages 8 to 12 category; and Django: World’s Greatest Jazz Guitarist (Live Oak Media) in the children’s titles for ages up to 8 category.