Two sides of the same coin

In the news we find two items, both related to reading and passingly to the Brontës. Which do you want first: the good one or the bad one?

We'll go for the bad first:

The 16-year-old junior at Denver School of the Arts is no fan of Brit lit. "Waaayyy too descriptive," she says.
Brigitte is weathering Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights," these days - and leaning on the Web for help. She reads summaries of the classic novel online, courtesy of SparkNotes, a division of book retail giant Barnes & Noble and archrival of time-honored CliffsNotes. For about $5, SparkNotes lets students download its distilled versions of literature, math and science onto their iPods so that they can read or listen to lessons on the run.
"I only use SparkNotes when I can't finish the book in time or I don't like it," Brigitte says.
And how often is that?
"Pretty often," she says. "British literature is pretty boring."

This is pretty shocking:

"There's so much competing for our leisure time and attention," said Troy Williams, founder and chief executive officer of Questia.com, the Web's largest library with more than 1 million titles. "Students don't read cover to cover. They read three or four paragraphs before moving on because they have grown up in an environment where snippets mean something."

(Incidentally Questia is loaded with Brontë-related books, articles, etc.)

But on the other hand there's this sweet article about third-grade poets. One of them is absolutely on the right track:

"I use a lot of Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Tennyson in my class. Langston Hughes is one of my favorites," she said.
She recently read "Jane Eyre" aloud to the class.
"That was really a good book," said third-grader Logan Stuart.

So cute! And such great work being carried out :)

Categories: In_the_News