Tuesday, October 17, 2006

You. Yes, you.

Sometimes I wish I could pull aside GottaBook visitors and give them answers to the questions that got them here ("no, Fibonacci did NOT have 13 children.") ... or ask them questions myself. And I must say that one question I want to ask the most is "why do you need Cliff Notes for a picture book?"

Yes, almost every day "Cliff Notes xxxxxx" is a search term that gets folks here, and that xxxxxx is truly a variable, representing pretty much any well known picture book around. So who's searching? Are these college students in a children's literature class? Teachers trying to learn how they might teach a random picture book they don't know well? Parents forced to answer questions from children and remembering back to their high school days?

But, of course, the only way I can ask is by posting the question in general right here. So, uh, anyone?

3 comments:

Elaine Magliaro said...

Here is a possible reason why some people may be looking for Cliff Notes for picture books: I had heard a few years ago about some children's literature courses where students were required to write synopses of 50-75 children's books--a certain percentage of which had to be picture books. (Each student selected the books he/she summarized.) That was the assignment. No book discussion--just write the summaries. I guess the reasoning was that then the students would read lots of children's books. Well, some would and some wouldn't. And the ones who chose not to read that many books probably trolled the Internet and Amazon for information.

The Internet can be a great resource--but I have seen students at both the elementary school level and college level misuse it.
There's a lot of cutting and pasting going on out there in Educationland today. Alas!

Lisa Yee said...

What about Cliff's Notes for your blog. Do you have any of those?

Lisa
http://lisayee.livejournal.com

Don Tate II said...

I can't even repeat the most commonly used search term that gets folks to my blog.