Name That Book! Questions and Answers on Outstanding Children′s Books 2nd edition

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (1999), "Name That Book! Questions and Answers on Outstanding Children′s Books 2nd edition", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 6, pp. 50-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.6.50.9

This resource guide takes the form of 2,367 questions on 789 “good” children′s books, 509 of which have been published since 1986 and added to the 280 Newbery Winner and Honor Books and the classics in the first edition from 1986 (again Scarecrow). It is intended to be used in school resource centres and media programmes by staff working with children from the primary grades to junior high and middle school. Three questions are asked of each book: examples include “In what book does the entire Gregg family shrink in size and grow wings instead of arms?” (answer: Roald Dahl′s The Magic Finger) and “What book would you be in if you knew a raccoon named Jessie Coon James, a weasel named the Baron, and a falcon named Frightful?” (answer: Jean George′s My Side of the Mountain). The book assumes you have the books, have read them, can get the books if they are in print (no bibliographical details are provided), agree with this approach to “reading is fun”, want to set up games and quizzes to ask such questions, and can integrate them with activities. Numerous crossword and bulletin board (not electronic!) games are also included. Name That Book! assumes also that you have read the books and know the answers ‐‐ it doesn′t provide them. Janet Greeson is an experienced school library media specialist living in Arkansas.

The choice of authors is wide‐ranging and suitable for the age‐groups (fourth and fifth and sixth grades etc). Works by Ahlberg and Hutchins, Keats and Lionni, Lobel and McCloskey, Scarry and Sendak, Gag and Hogrogian, Kellogg and Seuss, Steig and Thurber, Viorst and Yolen set the ball rolling. Later come Cleary and Stolz, Zemach and Blume, Byars and Estes, King‐Smith and Le Guin, Mildred and Theodore Taylor, E.L. Konigsburg, Mary Norton, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Danziger and Fitzhugh, Gipson and O′Dell, Seredy and DeJong, O′Brien and Doherty, Hentoff and Alcott, Cleaver and Fox, Hamilton and London, Tolkien and Cooper. Many of these are sure‐footedly international, despite an understandably American bias in the overall selection. Questions are an often mechanistic way of getting into imaginative fiction and may even be regarded by children as a sneaky way to test whether good reading has taken place in a media age. Conceptually, too, the questions follow lower order cognitive and recall principles, and tend to ignore deeper levels of narrative response. Effective librarians working with children and young people will probably have their own list of questions and answers, based on what they have and do, linked probably with leisure reading schemes and curricular activities. It′s certainly an important area of marketing for the library ‐‐ this is a good selection and something like it (not necessarily this) will make a valuable aid for the library. Give it a look ‐‐ the idea′s good, and there are author, title and subject indexes to help you.