Twittering Kids’ Literature

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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 10/2/2007 7:21:00 AM

A Web service for bibliophiles now has a version dedicated to children’s books. KidderLit lets readers guess the title of a book by providing its first sentence.

It’s the latest creation by Debra Hamel, who created TwitterLit, a popular blog of the same concept. While TwitterLit is dedicated to adult books, KidderLit, launched last month, focuses solely on works for kids and young adults.

With 2,500 subscribers to TwitterLit alone, Hamel hopes that KidderLit will attract school librarians and teachers looking to give a little twist to their students’ literature needs. 

While any children’s book is fair game for the site, Hamel does like topical themes. During Banned Books Week, a post read simply: “They murdered him.” It’s a reference to Robert Cormier’s disturbing novel The Chocolate War, a perennial target for book banners.

Readers can log on to the site to read the daily posts, scan the first line, and then click on a link to Amazon where they can find out the name of the book, and buy it if they choose. KidderLit fans can also subscribe to have the daily posts sent to them as tweets—messages sent via twitter, pushed directly to them.

With two kids of her own, Hamel should have a built-in focus group at home. But recent efforts to engage her children in her twittering affairs have gone unrewarded, she says. “They just think I’m crazy.”