The links below are to articles reporting on the renaming of iBooks to Apple Books. The site is also getting a reboot with iOS 12.
For more visit:
– https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/06/04/ibooks-renamed-to-apple-books-gains-reading-now-tab-bookstore-audiobook-section/
– https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/ibooks-has-been-rebranded-as-apple-books
The link below is to an article reporting on Michael Wolff writing a sequel to ‘Fire and Fury.’
For more visit:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/08/michael-wolff-fire-and-fury-book
Laura Lomas, Rutgers University Newark
You likely recognize that the depiction of Latin American immigrants in politics today – as a menacing mass of recalcitrant Spanish-speaking invaders – is overwhelmingly negative.
What you may not know is that stereotypes suggesting that Latin Americans represent a threat to United States culture are not just morally repugnant – they’re also historically inaccurate. Spanish-language literature actually predates the Puritans’ writing in English by nearly a century.
As my research reveals, many renowned Latin American writers actually produced some of their finest work while living in the United States. Latina and Latino writers have made exceptional contributions to American literary history.
For a fresh take on what it means to be a Latina or Latino in the U.S. today, check out these five literary luminaries.
For Cubans, José Martí is the equivalent of George Washington, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman combined. Born in 1853 in Havana, Cuba, Martí wrote the bulk of his 28 volumes of prose, poetry and speeches in late 19th-century New York.
Working as a diplomat, translator, Spanish teacher and journalist, Martí interpreted current events and cultural questions from his office on Front Street, in lower Manhattan’s South Street Seaport.
He witnessed immigrants arriving by the boatload to New York – except the Chinese, who were banned in 1882. He knew about the lynching of black Americans and of atrocities against Native Americans. These stories found their way into Martí’s thinking about Latin America and its diaspora in the United States.
Martí also wrote dazzling accounts of New York, his adopted hometown, likening the cables of the brand-new Brooklyn Bridge to sated “colossal boa constrictors” resting atop towers.
Upon the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, Martí alluded to the fact that his distant island home, Cuba, remained a Spanish colony: “Those who have you, O Liberty, do not know you. Those deprived of you must not merely talk about, they must win you.”
Martí died in 1895, fighting for Cuba’s independence. In 2018, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, alongside local luminaries Colson Whitehead and Alexander Hamilton.
Puerto Rico’s greatest poet also migrated from her Caribbean home island, where she was a teacher, to the isle of Manhattan. Julia de Burgos recounts this literary journey in one of her most famous poems, “Yo misma fui mi ruta” – “I was my own route.”
De Burgos’ inventive, daring poetry did indeed forge a new path for feminists, Latina and otherwise, in the early 20th century.
Against pressure to identify as white, the mixed-race de Burgos proclaimed her African heritage, calling herself “Black, of pure tint.”
In one experimental 1938 poem, de Burgos addresses the distance between her liberated identity as a writer and her constricted role as a woman.
“You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you; your husband, your family,” she writes in “To Julia de Burgos.” “In me only my heart governs, only my thought; who governs in me is me.”
In 1953, de Burgos was found dead, without identification, in uptown Manhattan and buried anonymously in a potter’s field on Manhattan’s Hart Island. A month later, her compatriots retrieved her remains and reburied her in Puerto Rico.
The New York Times featured de Burgos – a “poet who helped shape Puerto Rico’s identity” – in its overlooked women’s obituary series in May.
The poet and essayist Gloria Anzaldúa came from a family of Mexican-American farm laborers.
Her ancestors had for generations lived in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, near the border that Anzaldúa memorably defined as “an open wound where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.”
Anzaldúa’s work often celebrates her community’s bilingualism. She portrays it as an act of survival against the “linguistic terrorism” of the U.S. public school system, which required English-only teaching and offered “accent elimination” classes in a part of the U.S. that used to be Mexico.
Anzaldúa found such insults to her nonstandard way of speaking excruciating. “Until I can take pride in my language,” she once wrote, “I cannot take pride in myself.”
Anzaldúa is increasingly recognized as one of the 20th century’s most influential feminist and anti-racist essayists.
No list of Latino authors is complete without Sandra Cisneros, author of the beloved “The House on Mango Street,” which has sold nearly 6 million copies and has been translated into over 20 languages.
Why Cisneros has not received the same acclaim as Junot Díaz – a childhood sexual assault survivor who was recently accused of his own sexual impropriety – is perplexing.
My favorite of her novels is “Caramelo.” In this transnational coming-of-age story, a Mexican-American woman digs into her family history.
Learning from her abuela, Soledad, she discovers hidden truths about family tensions, border crossings and why her doting migrant papá, Inocencio, is not so innocent after all.
Cristina Henríquez, who was born in the U.S. after her Panamanian father went there to pursue graduate studies, is the best novelist you’ve never heard of.
Featuring first-person perspectives of Central and South Americans and Caribbean migrants, her books dramatically expand the popular conception of the U.S. Latino, long centered on Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans.
“The Book of Unknown Americans” tells the story of recent arrivals from Paraguay, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Puerto Rico and Mexico who live in a dingy apartment complex, enduring the back-breaking labor of harvesting mushrooms. Sometimes, after a 12-hour shift in the dark, they eat only oatmeal for dinner.
The teenage love story between the characters Maribel and Mayor – written in prose that The Washington Post says rises “to the level of poetry” – may help American readers appreciate the myriad reasons why Latin Americans migrate north, including dictatorships, a lack of specialized health care and violence.
That is, I think, Henríquez’s hope. As one Mexican character angrily states, in the U.S. he feels both invisible and vilified.
“I want them to see a guy who works hard, or a guy who loves his family,” he says. “I wish just one of those people, just one, would actually talk to me. … But none of them even want to try. We’re the unknown Americans.”
Laura Lomas, Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University Newark
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
A changing climate means the frequency of extreme weather events such as heat waves, flooding, hurricanes and wildfires has become a common occurrence. Temperatures are increasing on the land and in the ocean, the sea level is rising and amounts of snow and ice are diminishing, as greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations have increased. Unfortunately, children and young people are taking the brunt of climate change and this will continue into the future.
Doctors are seeing the serious effects of global warming on children’s health and are concerned that it could reverse the progress made over the past 25 years in reducing global child deaths. Not only that, children are at risk of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety due to natural disasters caused by climate change.
A UNICEF survey of children aged nine to 18 in 14 countries showed that children are deeply concerned about global issues affecting their peers and them personally, including climate change. Children across all countries feel marginalised because their voices are not being heard nor that their opinions considered.
Given the enormity of the climate challenge, it is surprising how limited coverage of our changing climate receives in current children’s fiction. The children’s publishing sector is booming. UK sales of children’s books rose by 16% in 2016 with sales totalling £365m. Globally, children’s book sales have risen steadily across all age categories.
Some picture books do explain climate change (such as The Magic School Bus and Climate Change by Joanne Cole and Bruce Degen). And there are plenty of young adult novels that feature dystopian climate futures (such as Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd). But few fiction books for eight to 11-year-olds discuss the issue.
In my view, the lack of “environmental diversity” in children’s literature is just as important as the debate about the lack of cultural and social diversity. After all, children will be responsible for the future protection of our fragile planet, and so their knowledge and engagement are critical.
Stories not only develop children’s literacy but convey beliefs, attitudes and social norms which, in turn, shape children’s perceptions of reality. They allow children to move from a position of powerlessness to a position of possibility. Through fiction, children are able to explore different perspectives and actions beyond what they know by living in the story world of characters for whom they care.
Through literature, children can develop a better understanding of global issues and engage in critical inquiry about themselves in the world. And so combining narrative structure with factual information has the power to take children beyond what is on the page. This could allow them to expand their understanding of difficult scientific concepts such as climate change.
As children engage in the printed word, they can be inspired to make a difference in the real world. This is what a group of Portuguese children is doing after watching their district burn because of the worst forest fires in their country’s history. The fires that occurred in June 2017 have been linked to climate change, and killed over 60 people. The children are now seeking crowdfunding to take a major climate change case to the European Court of Human Rights alleging that the states’ failure to tackle climate change threatens their right to life.
When I decided to write my first children’s novel, I never intended it to be an eco-themed book. But given that I am an environmental researcher, it seemed the most natural thing to do. The result is My Dad, the Earth Warrior, a funny story about the relationship between a boy called Hero and his dad who have grown apart since the death of his mother. Then one day dad has a freak accident and wakes up claiming to be an Earth warrior sent to protect Mother Earth. This plunges Hero into an increasingly bizarre and dangerous world.
Climate change can be a dark, apocalyptic issue to discuss in a story to overcome this, I did not make it a central topic but used the changing weather as an underlying theme throughout this book. The persona of the Earth warrior provides an alternative perspective on our relationship with the natural world. At the end of the book, I encourage readers to join the tribe and become Earth warriors. I hope by taking a humorous approach to a serious topic, I can not only engage and entertain children but also inspire them to think beyond the book. This is something that writer and illustrator Megan Herbert has done by teaming up with climatologist, Michael Mann, for their crowdfunded picture book The Tantrum that Saved the World.
We need children to care about the planet if they are to the tackle climate challenge that lies ahead. Storytelling can play a part in raising awareness and inspiring children and young adults to take action and become the next generation of Earth warriors.
Gary Haq, SEI Associate, Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Nicola Daly, University of Waikato
There are many factors that shape the value we place on different languages.
Some languages seem more pleasant to listen to, easier to learn or more logical. These perceptions are generally influenced by our attitudes towards the speakers of a language and the different situations in which the language is spoken.
One reflection of the differential status of languages comes through in bilingual children’s picturebooks. Here I explore how te reo Māori (the indigenous language of New Zealand) is represented and argue that the way languages are displayed in bilingual picturebooks can disrupt the status quo.
Read more:
Why children’s books that teach diversity are more important than ever
As a sociolinguist, I am interested in the representation of languages in bilingual picturebooks. This not only reflects existing attitudes towards languages, but it can also be powerful in shaping future societal attitudes.
As well as telling a story or giving information, the presence of a minority language in a picturebook can serve a symbolic function. The way in which languages are presented in bilingual children’s books may encourage readers to value a language, or perhaps use this language more frequently, thus positively affecting its vitality.
Read more:
Indigenous picture books offering windows into worlds
To show the different ways in which minority indigenous languages can be featured in children’s picturebooks, I examine the linguistic landscapes of some Māori-English picturebooks that are disrupting the status quo of language hierarchies.
Linguistic landscape is a term used to describe the (usually visual) presence of different languages in public spaces. In my work with picturebooks I use this term to describe the space occupied by languages within a book. Language hierarchies relate to the idea that in any society some languages have more status than others.
I use these concepts to examine the comparative presentation of different languages in three areas: which language is presented first, which language uses a bigger font, and which language presents more information.
I argue that these three factors are reflections of the relative status of languages in a bilingual picturebook and they subtly indicate to the reader which language is more important.
In Aotearoa/New Zealand the indigenous Māori language (te reo Māori) has official language status, but it is spoken by a minority of the population (3.73% of the total population and 21.3% of the Māori population). However, some bilingual picturebooks have opted to assign primary status to te reo Māori in terms of order and font size.
Children’s picturebooks are often underestimated, but some bilingual picturebooks disrupt the status quo and promote an alternative language hierarchy.
For example, Kākahu – Getting Dressed (Brown & Parkinson, 2015) is a board book in a series self-published purposefully by Reo Pēpi to encourage the use of te reo Māori with young children. On its front cover, the Māori word in the title (Kākahu) is much larger than the English (Getting Dressed). In the body of the book, Māori is privileged in several ways.
Māori is given first on the page, with English underneath; Māori is presented in a much larger font size than English; and Māori is given in a bold typeface, whereas English is given in normal typeface.
Te Wairua o Waitangi, which can be translated as “The Spirit of Waitangi”, is also part of a self-published series, written by Sharon Holt and designed to support teachers to bring te reo Māori into English medium classrooms via song.
This book (and others in the Te Reo Singalong series) features a brightly coloured title in te reo Māori only. It is bigger and more bold than any other writing (in English) on the cover.
The first few pages before the body of the story feature publishing information, a translation of the lyrics, and teaching notes for teachers in English. However, in the body of the book, only te reo Māori is used. At the back of the book, the lyrics for the song are given in Māori only with guitar chords. The picturebook includes a CD recording of the song, which also features a title in Māori and not English.
The many different factors that influence the status of a language are often inter-related, but if a language is not valued, this may lead to people using it in fewer situations, and even to its eventual demise.
The two picturebooks I have discussed illustrate how an often underestimated form of children’s literature can be used to support an indigenous language with a minority of speakers. Children and adults reading and listening to these books will see, albeit subconsciously, which language is being given higher status. In this way, new language attitudes are being formed and this may result in the adjustment of existing language hierarchies.
Nicola Daly, Senior lecturer in children’s literature and language teaching., University of Waikato
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Julia Kindt, University of Sydney and Tanya Latty, University of Sydney
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (originally published in 1859) shares a deplorable fate with many other classics: it is known to everyone, yet rarely read.
This is a shame, not only because there is much more to Darwin’s theory than the familiar principles of mutation, variation, natural selection, and evolution that have entered popular knowledge as Darwinian buzzwords. The book also gives unique insight into the intellectual milieu in which he developed his theory and his struggles to convince his peers of its veracity.
Indeed in this age of the counter-factual and pseudo-factual, acquaintance with the foundations of our scientific tradition — and insights into the struggles of their creation — seems a matter of some urgency.
In the introduction alone, we learn that Darwin first conceived of his theory when travelling the world as a naturalist on board HMS Beagle (1831-6), that he had kept collecting data in support of it ever since, that he even wrote a rough draft (he calls it “a sketch of the conclusions”) many years earlier, and that he was prompted to publish it (20 years later) only because his contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace had recently sent him a “memoir” reaching a similar conclusion.
The core of the theory, as laid out in the first few chapters of the book, is quickly explained. Plants and animals produce more individuals than nature can sustain in each generation. These individuals vary in looks and in physical and behavioural characteristics, and they are able to pass on this variation to the next generation. Those individuals better suited to their environment have an advantage and are in turn more likely to survive to give their features to future generations.
Yet the bare bones of his theory of evolution are only part of what shapes this book. Darwin also communicates the obstacles he had to overcome to ensure its success and to turn it into what it became: a foundational text of the biological sciences that influenced all sorts of other disciplines, including anthropology, religious studies, and the Classics.
At the time Darwin wrote, the prevailing form of explanation of the origins of life was creationism, which held that a divine Creator had generated life in all its variety. To creationists, the theory of evolution offered a rival way of explaining the origin of species – through descent from common ancestors, not a divine agent.
Darwin was well aware that his theory might prove difficult to accept for those believing in a Creator. His obsession with the factual was one way of addressing this problem, direct rebuttals of creationism were another. Throughout the book, he repeatedly addresses creationist views and shows that they are incompatible with the evidence.
Darwin himself was not against the idea of a divine creator. Rather, he sought to situate the scientific reading of the world within a religious worldview. In the book’s conclusion he states: “I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator.”
This is to say that, while life was first created by a God, it later became subject to the laws of mutation, variation, and natural selection – the evolutionary forces described by Darwin.
This really was a congenial move, offering a compromise between religious and scientific explanations of life. As long as divine creation occurred prior to and outside of nature and its laws of cause and effect, both explanations could, at least in principle, stand side by side. And to some extent it worked. Some of Darwin’s contemporaries found that life’s subsequent capacity to evolve brought out the real spark of the original act of creation. Others, however, did not buy it. To them, Darwin’s theory constituted a frontal attack on religion, the idea of a divine creator, and the tenet that God had created man in his own image.
In this context, it is noticeable that in On the Origin of Species Darwin stays well clear of the problematic issue of human descent. If there is a striking omission in the book, it is man. Darwin originally intended to include a chapter on human evolution but later decided against it. As a result, the descent of Homo sapiens does not really feature in this elaborate discussion of the forces that drive the evolution of species.
Darwin obviously considered the book controversial enough without agitating his readers unnecessarily by touching on human evolution. And his instincts did not betray him: Right from the day of its publication, the book became something of a bestseller. Also right from the start, it elicited mixed responses. Some saw it for the foundational work of the biological sciences it eventually became. Others decried it as a serious threat to the core of humanity.
Darwin eventually came to address human evolution in a separate volume, entitled The Descent of Man. Published in 1871, 12 years after On the Origin of Species, this book offered a detailed discussion of man’s descent from ape-like ancestors as well as the link between sexual selection and human race. Invariably, perhaps, its publication caused a fresh wave of outrage, criticism, and debate. By then, however, Darwin’s theory had already become accepted in certain parts of academe and beyond.
Throughout his writing, Darwin sought to counter potential adverse responses to his theory with an onslaught of fact. On the Origin of Species is peppered with examples from the natural world illustrating the principles of evolutionary theory in practice.
The struggle for existence, for example, becomes tangible in several seedlings of the mistletoe competing for resources on the same branch of a tree; variation and natural selection has resulted in insects with the astonishing ability to mimic features in their natural environment such as leaves or branches. Correlations between physical characteristics of animals emerge in a whole plethora of minute observations such as these:
Hairless dogs have imperfect teeth; long-haired and coarse haired animals are apt to have … long or many horns; pigeons with feathered feet have skin between their outer toes; pigeons with short beaks have small feet, and those with long beak large feet.
Darwin was well-versed in the zoological and botanical literature of the day. He cites other scholars’ works in support of his theory whenever possible (and yet curiously, repeatedly apologises for not citing enough evidence). The result is a rich exposition of life in all its manifestations, which sometimes veers into the finicky – a problem made worse by Darwin’s notoriously long sentences – but never loses sight of its central argument.
Darwin’s sustained concerns with presenting a convincing case reveal the kind of reception he anticipated his book would have. He was well aware that it had the potential to redefine the foundations of biology. He explicitly says so in the conclusion: “When the views advanced by me in this volume … are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history.”
And Darwin’s views certainly did revolutionize. Yet before they could do so, they had to be accepted as fact. To ensure this he evoked the power of the factual itself.
Ultimately Darwin was successful. Even though these days creationism is witnessing a revival in some circles, no serious student of biology would doubt that the origin of species (including the human species) is grounded in exactly those evolutionary forces Darwin described.
As is frequently the case with the most powerful ideas, Darwin’s theory of evolution caught on in other areas of thought, too. In particular, during the latter part of the 19th century, all sorts of theories emerged seeking to apply the concept of evolution elsewhere. It became fashionable to speak of the “evolution” of human societies, for example, or of human cultures, religions – even of the cosmos.
A common explanatory pattern used in this context was the idea that phenomena such as culture or religion evolved from simple (“primitive”) forms to more complex ones. And, as one might guess, “more complex’ often equated simply with the present, Western culture and society, and the religion that shaped it: Christianity. The ideological point of this mode of explanation is easily discerned: Evolutionism here fed into ideas of European superiority, domination, and colonialism.
A particular nasty interpretation of Darwin’s theory came to be known as “social Darwinism”. It transferred the ideas of a “struggle for existence” and the “survival of the fittest” to human society, where they were used as an argument against social benefits for the poor and disadvantaged. In the most serious consequence, this lead to racism, eugenics, forced sterilisations, and the euthanasia of “unfit” people.
Yet this was a blatant misuse of Darwin’s theory, which was never meant as a prescription about how to manage a society. Moreover, ideas about racial superiority lacked any scientific basis and were not shared by Darwin. Quite the contrary: his insights into the common biological foundations of all humanity made Darwin a strong supporter of abolitionism (the doctrine advocating for the abolition of slavery). People simply twisted Darwin’s ideas to promote their own notions of superiority and the ideological agendas based on them.
Social Darwinism ultimately came to an end because it was unsupported by science. At the same time, ideas about cultural evolution fell out of fashion, as did ideas about allegedly “primitive” societies. These days, cultures of the past and present are no longer set against each other but appreciated in their own right, without seeking to establish a hierarchy between them.
Yet evolutionary theory is still going strong in disciplines such as computer science, medicine, and agriculture. In computer science, “genetic algorithms” solve optimisation problems by mimicking the process of natural selection. In medicine, the looming catastrophe of widespread antibiotic resistance is fundamentally an evolutionary problem: by overusing antibiotics, we have inadvertently favoured those rare bacteria that can withstand our drugs.
To prevent a decidedly bleak future where antibiotics are useless, researchers are increasingly using evolutionary theory to develop new ways of preventing resistance. Cancer, obesity and autoimmune conditions such as allergies and asthma can be understood (and possibly treated) through the lens of evolutionary science.
About 170 years after its first publication, On the Origin of Species and the theory it has come to represent still define the way in which the biological sciences conceive the dazzling diversity of life. Its continuing legacy consists in laying out a view of life as “one grand system” and in having described the biological mechanisms shaping it.
Yet the book also shows that the ultimate prevalence of the theory of evolution over rival forms of explanation did not come easily. Darwin had to think carefully how to convince his contemporaries of its validity. He had to defend himself against accusations of blasphemy; some of the resulting ridicule targeted him personally.
The traces of this struggle are clearly visible in his work. This alone makes it a must-read for all budding scientists, both real and armchair.
Julia Kindt, Associate Professor, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney and Tanya Latty, Senior lecturer, University of Sydney
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The link below is to an article reporting on a new Goodreads Android App.
For more visit:
https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/05/29/goodreads-is-beta-testing-a-new-android-app/
The link below is to an article reporting on the latest update to Microsoft’s Edge Browser, including support for ebooks.
For more visit:
https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/05/30/microsoft-edge-browser-for-iphone-ipad-now-supports-ebooks/
The link below is to an article that takes a look at free ebook promotions – are they worth it?
For more visit:
https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2018/05/are-free-promotions-still-worth-it/
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