JUST ONE MORE BOOK - LIFE BEFORE HARRY POTTER

The following post came in by e-mail this morning and I am happy to reproduce it on my blog.

With all the fuss about Harry and what he does or doesn't do for literacy, we wouldn't want to forget the importance of life before Harry .

Building a love of reading starts well before our children are ready for the likes of Harry Potter. It starts with a daily, consistent and steady diet of high quality picture books.

From the very beginning, children need to be exposed to a huge number of well written, engaging, educational, entertaining books covering a wide range of attitudes, content, situations, storylines and to be invited to process, compare and contrast.

This is how we nurture that all important love of reading.The problem is that parents, though bombarded with the book-du-jour at the big box stores, often have a tough time finding good quality picture books. But now there's help -- a source of great children's reading recommendations right in your ears: the Children's Book Podcast Just One More Book ! -- a podcast about the children's books we love and why we love them.

Through this podcast and website, we are building a lively, interactive community linking children's book authors, illustrators, readers (parents and children) and publishers. Busy parents and educators can now discover great read-aloud children's books while they are busy doing the many tasks that would otherwise rob them of the opportunity to research great children's books in more traditional ways.

I hope you will stop by and give us a listen and, perhaps, spread the word. AndreaLink: http://www.justonemorebook.com/ Description: "Just One More Book!" is a thrice-weekly podcast which promotes and celebrates literacy and great children's books.

Each weekday morning, we take a few minutes out of our morning coffee ritual to discuss one of our many favourite children's books. We also feature weekly interviews with authors, literacy related discussions or audio reviews submitted by our listeners. Through this podcast and its website, we are building a lively, interactive community linking children's book authors, illustrators, readers (parents and children) and publishers. Episodes range in length from 5 to 25 minutes and can be played directly from our web page or downloaded to an ipod for listening on the go.

Each episode is an informal discussion of one of our family's favourite children's books. We also feature interviews with authors, literacy related discussions or audio reviews submitted by our listeners. Busy parents and educators can now discover great read-aloud children's books while they are busy doing the many tasks that would otherwise rob them of the opportunity to research great children's books in more traditional ways.

This podcast is powered by passion. We have no advertisers or sponsors and there is no financial gain to be had. Our goal is to link children with great books and help create happy memories for children and the adults that read to them…and to have fun!

For a downloadable brochure please see this link. For a 1 minute audio promo. please check out our About page . For a bit of background, you can check out this recent newspaper article and this interview about our podcast.

The "Just One More Book!!" podcast is featured on high tech, library, parenting and literacy education sites around the world (To see the many sites and directories that currently feature this site, please see this link) If you would like to share these conversations with others who are interested in connecting families and children with great children's books, please feel free to link to this site and to pass it along to parents and teachers.

-- http://www.justonemorebook.com/"A podcast about the children's books we love and why we love them -- recorded in our favourite coffee shop"