Presents an interview with Will Hobbs, author of novels for middle school and young adult readers, wherein he discusses his books "Ghost Canoe,""The Maze" and "Jason's Gold." Includes a review of "Jason's Gold." (NH)

Presents an extensive domain analysis of information science in terms of its authors. Names of those most frequently cited in 12 key journals from 1972 through 1995 were retrieved from Social Scisearch via DIALOG. The top 120 were submitted to author co-citation analyses, yielding automatic classifications relevant to histories of the field.…

Demonstrates that the statistics of exceedances generates Lotka's Law--a widely-observed distribution of authors of scholarly papers and patents. The Frequency of production (papers or patents per year) and Lifetime (career duration) are exponentially distributed random variables. Empirical, phenomenological, and mathematical development shows…

Presents an interview with Chris Crutcher, the 2000 recipient of the Margaret A. Early Award. Notes that he was given the award for his contributions to writing for teenagers. Talks about his life and origins as a writer, and his early influences as a writer in terms of style. Discusses the use of Crutcher's literature in the classroom. (SG)

Describes an empirical study using publication data from Dutch physics institutes which shows that Lotka's law breaks down when articles with a large number of authors are included in the bibliography. Suggests that from a mathematical point of view, large groups of authors destroy the underlying explanations of informetric laws. (Author/LRW)

Describes activities associated with Teen Read Week in October, 1999 in which young adult author Adam Rapp was the first Author-in-Residence at Ridgewood High School, near Chicago, Illinois. Notes students in the English Skills class (for students who need extra help) seemed genuinely interested in the book and the author. Describes how funding…

Exploration of gender-biased language in two editions of learning disabilities textbooks found that the male author's work exhibited a 7:1 ratio of masculine to feminine pronouns, whereas the female author's text showed no significant differences in use of gender-specific pronouns. The male author had increased use of gender-neutral pronouns…

Presents an interview with Peter Catalanotto, writer and illustrator of children's books. Discusses Catalanotto's process in writing and illustrating books, and Richard Jackson's influence on his work. Reflects on the role that libraries and books have played in his life and how those experiences have influenced his thinking in creating the cover…

Addresses the perception that opposition, backlash, and debates about multicultural literature garner a great deal of attention and seem to threaten its continued existence. Investigates specific debates, dilemmas, and delights surrounding the effort to integrate multicultural literature into curriculums. Looks at definitions of racial and ethnic…

Discusses the value of international books as a source of literature for middle school students. Considers the benefits of international books, and instructional strategies including focusing on an international author and author pairings. Provides an annotated list of works by Robin Klein, John Marsden, Uri Orlev, Anthony Browne, and Jorg Muller.…

Reviews the history of the "International Social Science Journal," formerly the "International Social Science Bulletin," as on its 50th year. Focuses on the editorial history, quality control, multilingual production, the various types of authors, the language and style of the material, evolution of themes, and discussion of…

The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries' special collections department has organized an exhibit of Lee Smith's manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, awards, and memorabilia in honor of the Appalachian writer's upcoming retirement from NCSU. An NCSU archivist describes steps in processing the collection and organizing the exhibit.…

Reports on an exploratory study of the measurement of commonality in the use of variables or measures by authors and groups of authors who have reported on studies of information retrieval system users. There is some similarity to cocitation analysis: when two individual papers or two authors over several works, use the same variables, this…

Discusses the work of Helen Cowcher who writes and illustrates children's books dealing with conservation and ecology themes. Highlights include the use of color; involving teachers in the audience; career advice; and a list of titles with awards received. (LRW)

Discusses the popularity in Britain and America in the 1920s of texts written by little girls. Suggests the child writer offers a private experience that seems to speak only to the reader but in reality speaks to everyone. Claims the child writer is at once perfectly ordinary and utterly extraordinary. (NH)