Today began with two new books: an autographed copy of Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci and a copy of Lauren Myracle's Rhymes with Witches—both from LiteratiCat, my winnings from the contest on teenliterature.

Not exactly children's lit, but I also got a copy of Literacy Moves On: Popular Culture, New Technologies, and Critical Literacy in the Elementary Classroom. Looks like a very promising book. Includes an excellent definition of multimodal literacy—very reader-friendly:

Previously a text was seen as being "a passage of print or a slice of speech, or an image" (Lankshear et al. 2002: 45); that is, texts were seen as things written down—books,magazines, and newspapers. They are now perceived as being much more than this. A text is now seen as a unit of communication that may take the form of something written down but also a chunk of discourse, for example speech, a conversation, a radio program a TV advert, text messaging, a photo in a newspaper, and so on. Many of these texts are drawn from children's popular culture and have changed the ways in which young readers expect to read, the ways they think, and the ways they construct meaning. (p. 8)

And thanks to Mike on Kairosnews, I found out about what looks like an short chapter book from 1958 that focuses on computers, Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. Illustrations are listed as by Ezra Jack Keats. I found a used copy online, and it's on its way!

Tags: children's literature | computers in fiction | technological literacy | technology | young adult fiction