Democracy is the worst form of government there is except for everything else. – Winston Churchill

      There must be some political system better than our present American democracy.
     As we close in on the presidential elections of 2016 everyone seems to agree that the whole process has become a complete, totally unprecedented and depressing mess. 

     Insults are tossed everywhere. But smart strategies for solving serious national problems – like trade and terrorism, our growing national poverty and economic inequities, our public education system, better medical care and better job opportunities for our children – are almost never discussed.

     Maybe it's finally time to just give up, and move on to a better system to take America forward.

     For example, what if dogs ran the world?

    Here on KBN is an important, detailed sociopolitical study on some of the advantages of a totalitarian government opportunity just maybe no one ever thought of before.

     Think about it. How bad could it be?

    Yep, unlike conventional politicians dogs really do like kissing babies.

     What if dogs ran the world?

     You know, even Winston Churchill might like it.

If toddlers are so starved for words that their cognitive development is crippled shouldn’t American education care enough to stop it?

    After almost four years we can’t keep waiting for a big lightbulb to click on in American education.
   We need your help.
   We need to act now to repair the problem discovered by researchers Hart and Risley in the 1990s – that perhaps one half-million toddlers in American families are having their brain development starved and permanently crippled every day, year after year.
    But to this point almost no one in the leadership of American education really seems to care. Or is willing to work to change it.
    Perhaps because later, when the same children drop out of school, it's much easier just to blame their teachers.
    At KBN we have proposed that every child deserves better.
    The basic objective is clear, and even some politicians are starting to understand and agree:
    Every baby and toddler deserves to be in the arms of a caregiver who talks, and talks, and talks with the child to help their brain develop to the greatest potential and highest power in both thought and language.
    But how do we make that happen? And in a way that's both (a) affordable, and (b) effective?
    First, every parent and caregiver needs to understand that nothing helps a toddler learn to speak – and to read and to think – like being held in their lap with the easy, convenient and unique power of an on-paper book.
    You can't just talk with your baby.
    You have to talk and read with your baby –  just like you hug and feed your baby – every day.
    The research is clear. Children whose baby minds are fed with a lot more reading also learn a lot more words.
    If you hug and talk with a baby while reading a book together for one hour or even just a half-hour, every day, that baby will develop a much stronger working vocabulary – and a lot more thinking power.
    And that's more thinking power for life.
    Which is why – working with the U.S. Reading Team Foundation – KBN created and introduced the free Teach Your Child To Read At Two program in 2011. And does it work? 
     Read At Two was originally developed for a toddler who later entered Kindergarten already reading above the highest elementary test level. 
    And after we launched Read At Two on KBN in 2011? See the outcome captured and sent to us by one toddler’s parents on the video here.

     Read At Two was developed on a unique language-based early learning protocol and yes, it really does work. Which is why we published it in the first place.
     But now we need more. 
     We want educators to join and support us with more national research in early-stage language learning – both oral and visual – to identify the solutions that will work best for every child. To confirm our own results independently, and with a larger study population. Plus research to test outcomes in multiple languages, in different learning environments, with alternative program concepts, and with books in other formats. And to begin a long-term controlled study to confirm what common sense already tells us – that children with stronger reading and thinking power before they enter Kindergarten will grow up with more power to handle the learning challenges of high school and college.
    The power they’ll need to stay in school – to become our next doctors, engineers, inventors, architects, scientists, economists and even educators.
    So how can you help?
    You can begin right now with something very important. And very simple.
    You can tell all your friends who have toddlers in their family – or who may know families with toddlers – to watch our KBN video. And ask them each to send this very important learning “secret” on to another ten of their own friends. And then, to ask each of them to send the secret on to another ten of their friends. And so on – until there is no parent with a toddler who does not know the “secret” that can help their baby develop into a super-bright child with a super-bright future.
    You can tell every teacher, educator, caregiver and politician you know, and all of your friends on Facebook, too.
    The U.S. Reading Team Foundation and KBN want to give every child in America the same chance to read, learn, think and lead.
    And with your help we can do it.

What's been happening to KBN? Not much, just a worldwide cyber attack on kids.

     We must apologize.
Ten days ago the entire KBN website abruptly disappeared. Just went away. Poof.
      Then after several days working with our site support team some of our KBN homepage reappeared, but all the rest of our site and our free books for children were still missing.
     Then, after several more days of rework, all of those original books were finally restored. Links to other site pages were also reconnected, and we could see what happened.
     KBN got hacked.
    Why anyone would want to hack and damage a free concept and reading resource like the Kids' Book Network is not clear. But there you are.
     Now what?
    As of today much of our homepage – providing a direct link to many of our most popular books for young readers – is still missing. And we can't tell you exactly how long it will take to let us bring back the rest of the Kids' Book Network homepage, or how we will locate and restore or rewrite the missing site code  – to continue our mission.
     But you can be sure we'll get there.
     We want to bring free books to every child in the world.
     Meanwhile, all is not lost. You can still wander around and find our KBN books by exploring further into the site, directly on our book library pages. They're still all there.
     And you can rediscover what we all learned long ago.
     There's almost nothing more fun than browsing in a library.

  

Write your own book. Then what?

    Linda Lee is a completely amazingly illustrator who lives in Amsterdam. On one day she might be illustrating a work for children and on the next day it might be a witty piece of social satire for the Dutch press.
    So when the Kids' Book Network was recently privileged to publish her unique story sequence of wordless illustrations, reinvented as a book – The Metal Detector – our young readers could fill in to write themselves, it was terrific fun.

The book
you write yourself.

    Kids inventing their own words for The Metal Detector are soon thinking about the next book they want to write. And the next. And pretty soon they are writing and reading and writing and reading a lot more. And as big readers they quickly become better learners, too.
    Thank you, Linda Lee.
    But now Linda's gift shows us something more, that even the most exciting invention can be reinvented. 

The new "silent"
movie.

    Linda and her creative colleague Magda van Tilburg have now recreated Linda's illustrations again – as a delightful authentic silent movie.
    Visit  http://booxalive.nl/tik-tik-tik/#!  and enjoy!

Some observations about the apparently eternal appeal of phrenology.

Let it never be said that the mysteries of the human mind do not merit close scientific investigation.
    So let's take a moment to consider the bold discoveries of phrenologists in the 19th century. Once they noticed that human heads are all shaped differently, and are often sprinkled with unique individual bumps, they concluded that with a one-foot ruler they had all they needed to decipher the variations in human personality and intelligence.
    After all, these head bumps could be carefully measured and calculated. And because the human mind was apparently located in some proximity to the human head, that made their conclusions automatically scientific and true, right?
    Today, of course, phrenologists are a scientific joke from the distant past and we wonder how anyone could have ever believed their head bump conclusions in the first place. No one today could ever be so stupid to believe something so moronic masked as science.
    Or could they?

    Today we have a bright new generation of phrenologists, now represented to us as statistical mathematicians, who are convinced that they can turn around the test scores of children in school to accurately measure, not anything about the children themselves, but the quality of teachers. They call this teacher measuring method "value-added." The only problem is, their analysis never includes any adjustments for the umpteen – which is a real and very large whole number – qualitative factors which are confronted every day by real teachers in real classrooms, and which make their pseudo-statistical conclusions completely meaningless. Complexity, both social and mathematical, is something they just don't like to think about.
    And yet, they will not give it up. It's like they invented celery yogurt or something, and then have to keep trying to explain why everyone should love it.
    How did this all happen in the first place?
    As their circulation continues to shrink, newspapers are looking desperately for new "issues" to keep their existence relevant, and they have lead the frenzy for test-based teacher evaluations. But even if this method makes no sense, "improving our schools" has always been a popular campaign mantra for politicians as well so why just not go along? And as for administrators, of course, well – you just never want to contradict politicians.
    So how will this all end?
    Don't worry. The end is finally near.
    Our complete national fixation on "fact-focused" student test scores will soon begin to wash away as we now move away from fact memorization as our total educational focus and return to teaching children, along with essential reading, writing and math skills, a greater ability to think. To analyze. To compare. To evaluate. To infer. To conclude. To hypothesize. To predict. To imagine. To invent and discover.
    It's called the Common Core, or the return to reason.
    And it's going to happen now.

Give everyone you know who cares about children a very special free gift for the Holidays.

     And we mean everyone.
    Who do you know who cares about children today?

    Only parents, teachers and everyone else who understands the critical importance of literacy in child development.

    That's why we created the Kids' Book Network. And that's why now we are asking you to help us spread the word about KBN to everyone you know who maybe still doesn't know about KBN, but would really like to.

    All parents who want their children to enjoy reading, and to open every new book with excitement.

    All teachers working with early grade children and middle grade children.

    All parents with toddlers who might want to give their children a critical cognitive edge.

    All educators who understand that, if children are not going to become early school dropouts, reading can't just be about passing tests.

    So how do all of these people who care about children find out about KBN?

    It can only come as a special holiday gift from you – because only you can tell them all.

    And we've made it easy. Just go to the KBN homepage and then choose and click on one or another of the social networking link buttons where you already share ideas – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. Just press, and you're done.

    You can tell everyone what you like about KBN. And when they come back themselves to see what KBN is doing, they can share the good news with their friends, too.

    Their children can all read and enjoy our free KBN picture books, and make our KBN coloring books.

    They can all share our books projected up on their classroom wall, and all read together.

    And they can even teach their toddlers to begin reading even as early as 18 months – for a lifetime cognitive edge.

    As we approach 2013 we thank you for caring. And sharing.

http://www.read4free.net

KBN announces a new research-based national learning initiative to rebuild American education.

      The Kids’ Book Network, in cooperation with the U.S. Reading Team Foundation, is pleased to announce a new national initiative to refocus American education on solving a major problem in educational achievement.
As of today, the KBN website features a complete program of free books and instructional support designed to enable any parent to teach their toddler to begin reading before the age of two.
       You'll find a full explanation of the Read At Two program – including toddler learning objectives, parent teaching strategies, and much more – in the program's 28-page Parent Handbook. The Handbook is located and available for easy direct on-monitor viewing on the special KBN library page for every book featured in the program.

      We're introducing our Read At Two program primarily to support parents and caregivers of children from approximately 18 to 36 months old, the toddler age. Then, we've brought the same books into the KBN library, in our new Pre-K and Kindergarten book categories – with the addition of their California teaching/learning standards – for versatile use in the classroom with children from Pre-K and Kindergarten to First Grade and beyond.
      This way (a) parents can now have an easy-to-follow way to scaffold their children's early reading and language development at home, while (b) children can continue on and even accelerate their learning progress with the same familiar books as part of their first years in classroom education.
      And finally, (c) professional classroom teachers and educators now have a way both to support parent at-home teaching, as well as to work with traditional public and school libraries and librarians to overcome any other book shortages or other at-home reading/learning limitations.
      Why is such early reading development so crucially important?
      The answer has to do with both strong early vocabulary development and the habit of intellectual exploration during the at-home, toddler phase of child development – without which a child is later likely to experience an irreplaceable loss of learning facility in middle- and high school.
      As discovered through a major longitudinal study by educational researchers Hart and Risley [The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3, In: American Educator, Spring, 2003], vocabulary use at age 3 is strongly predictive of both language skills and reading comprehension at age 9-10. And many parents, although they may love and nurture their children in other ways, simply don’t actively speak and converse with their children enough to build their vocabulary and related cognitive powers to the level necessary for easier and higher learning success.
      That’s what daily reading with books can achieve. And that’s what KBN’s new national initiative is all about.
      KBN today wants every parent and educator in America to understand that all children need to sit in their parent or caregiver’s lap every day and start reading books, and more books, starting as early as just 14- or 16- or 18-months old.
      To that end, KBN’s free Read At Two program and Parent Handbook provide a sensible, practical platform, or every-day learning/development instrument, to enable families to give their children the critical interactive parent-child experience they need for strong mental development. Reading development is almost a side benefit to the increase in vocabulary development and affirmation experience that comes with parents holding their babies on their laps and discovering together the meaning and content of books.
      Local site-level implementation of KBN’s national Read At Two initiative, including education and family support, will be directed in parallel by the U.S. Reading Team Foundation, which will seek to work closely with families in local and regional school, library and social services partnerships – to help us all step up to a new standard in American education.
      Now let’s get started.

Are you wearing your hardhat?

   By the time everyone got back in school in January KBN hoped to have construction complete and several important new options in national literacy development fully installed – to empower teachers, parents, and of course kids.

   But all that is still in progress. So please continue to excuse the construction noise along with confusing fragments of change now beginning to appear on the KBN website.

   And get ready for an exciting new year.

   From all of us at KBN, best wishes to the best teachers, best parents and best children in the world!

Why make books?

      Of course with all of the books in the KBN library available for convenient, on-screen or on-projector reading in the classroom some may wonder why we continue to emphasize the importance of making KBN books on paper.

      Is that not perhaps obsolete?

      Actually it’s just the opposite.

      First, only the on-paper book gives the young reader the experience of a book as a solid object of content and value. Not just another form of flowing video.    

     The concrete, on-paper book gives the young reader-learner a much stronger way to become engaged with the concept of book, and to bond with the meaning of the story. In terms of Piaget’s views on both the preoperational and concrete operational stages of cognitive development, it accelerates the ability of the reader to construct a stronger, more useful schema of what a book is and what it may hold.

      It serves to deepen, as well, the experience of reading satisfaction, and strengthens the reader’s ability to absorb and retain the specific story or information content.

      Reading an authentic on-paper, page-turning book also provides a unique platform for the developing reader to read the story over and over. It enables the reader to reinforce “learning” in terms of text recognition and, in the case of early reading development, it supports better character and word recognition as well.

      Recent studies on the learning impact of handwriting exercises in contrast to typing exercises provide an illuminating parallel. A 2008 study reported in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience showed that the physical experience of hand-writing characters on paper leads to better and longer-lasting visual recognition of these same characters later.

      The importance of the direct sensory connection of the reader with the book in his or her hands, and the kinesthetic experience of turning pages, cannot be overemphasized.

      Plus, when you learn how you can actually make copies of a book that you like, well, that’s pretty darn exciting. And color the book yourself? That’s so much fun, too.

      Suddenly it’s not so difficult to see how the close connection with a physical book you make yourself and you can carry around in your backpack might help children place a higher value on both the book and the experience.

      Q. How did Johannes Gutenberg become such a great reader?

      A. He made his own books.

The next big technology. The new excitement of reading.

    I don't know if you've noticed, but young readers today seem to face more electronic distractions than ever.

    Originally it was year after year of TV reruns. Then more recently it became hour after hour after hour of the endless bam, splat, and zonk of video games.

    And whatever time is left is now devoted to peer conversations on Facebook.
    But the power of strong, active literacy remains the most important human skill for the 21st century. It is the neurotech core at the foundation of all personal control over reasoning and logic, and the critical engine of human scientific and social progress.

    Readers are the next leaders.
    So in the year ahead our KBN objective is to make reading more fun and more satisfying at every level.

    And we hope more and more parents, teachers, librarians, kids, politicians, critics and dogs will all join with us to make it happen.

    It becomes all the more important that we engage young readers today with the full experience of reading, and that means capturing their attention to develop their skills with books – along with teaching and learning concepts – that are bright, original, surprising, fresh and perhaps sometimes challenging, but always exciting.

Looking back on KBN's amazing Year One. And a look at what's coming next.

     A few weeks ago our KBN Teacher Talk Center looked back at KBN's Year One. But not every KBN visitor reads Teacher Talk, so perhaps what was noted there is worth repeating here.  Both the Kids' Book Network and the teaching year got off to a fast start last September 1, and by June 24, 2010, both KBN and our teacher colleagues concluded an amazing year in U.S. education.

     Reflecting on what we've accomplished in Year One, it's clear that we've come a long way in less than ten months.

      First, we introduced the concept and practical possibility of free, self-made books for every child in the world. Picture books, coloring books, adventure books, puzzle books, microbooks, and literary classics. Even one book in eight languages.

      Our original KBN books are witty and fresh books you can download, print and form into classic on-paper, page-turning quality books to read and share with friends and family, at home or in the classroom.

      Next, we introduced the unique device-free reading technology of live on-screen bookcasting. And suddenly reading is more fun and exciting than ever.

      The Kids' Book Network website has now been identified as an information resource for young readers from Kindergarten through Grade Six by CLRN, the official California Learning Resource Network. And we're pleased to see that visitors from around the planet have begun to discover KBN – from Australia and Brazil to China and Russia.

       But we're just getting started. As kids and teachers now return to school in September, 2010, KBN will be working with in-the-classroom educators to make classroom teaching smarter, more effective and easier than ever. For our Year Two we have plans for many more fresh and original KBN books for young readers, of course, but also more great teaching and learning features for America's teachers.

      In just a few weeks, for example, we'll be publishing the first of what we hope will become many original KBN books written by kids themselves, starting with a very special book for a very special moment in history – the story of Fr. Hidalgo, considered the father of Mexico, on bicentennial of the Mexican Revolution. When teachers can show students what other students are writing, featured on KBN, students are encouraged and inspired to write more stories of their own.

      We'll also be introducing a new category of foundational reading books to support an exciting new style of reading instruction by our pre-K, kindergarten and early grade teachers. And we'll be working to bring parents into our KBN teaching program as well, with our Read At Two program which will connect early at-home and pre-school reading development with in-school instruction.

      It's going to be another exciting year.

We want every teacher to succeed, we want every child to read.

Words are not given to Man in order to conceal his thoughts.

Several weeks ago the world witnessed the passing of the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago.

      "Words," the novelist once observed with dry simplicity, "are not given to Man in order to conceal his thoughts."

      Saramago appreciated the core function of language, allowing us to communicate with each other for survival, and our human need to share our thoughts and ideas.

      Nowhere is this critical exchange and compression of meaning so powerfully captured as in the book.

      And that is why, despite every new form of serial information made possible by electronic technologies, reading is. and literacy will remain. the critical human skill in the 21st century.

Better health for every child in the world.

Everyone is concerned that children today are becoming seriously overweight. Pediatric body fat and health problems have become a national epidemic.
      So here's one answer.
      When it's time to reward students in the classroom, maybe it's also time to replace the traditional reward of sweets with a new classic prize that has no calories at all. One that might actually provide some nutritional benefit to the brain.

      Now, for less than the cost of a couple of fat-loaded candy bars the size of your thumb, you can print out a complete, 48-page free minibook from KBN.
      Sure, the actual cost either way is only a few pennies. But look at the nutritional difference.
      Two of those tiny chocolate crispy bars provide all the nutrition of 120 junk food calories, including 53 calories of saturated fat. And that's it.
      On the other hand a free 48-page KBN picture book has no calories at all. But it provides a child with a real on-paper, page-turning book experience that he can read and enjoy personally, share with friends, and then keep to read again and again.
      For healthier children in America's classrooms let's agree to forget the candy. Instead, let's think about the special nutritional fun for young readers in the prize of a book from KBN.

KBN introduces a new, very different computer-based media experience. What should we call it?

      First came the Kindle. Then a few weeks ago it was the iPad.
      Now, finally, KBN is pleased to announce the introduction of a new, very different media experience featuring the most advanced design and user technology yet. Our new invention is far more performance-driven, requires users to buy no new hardware, and actually lets people read whole books, without squinting, up big on the largest computer monitors – or even projected theater-size on your family room wall.

      Just imagine. Now your whole family can sit down together in the family room and, instead of watching old Lassie reruns and reality cooking shows on TV, you can read a whole book together up on the wall of your new state-of-the-art family reading center.
      We need a name for this new media experience, so what should we call it?
      What do you think? Bookcasting™ maybe.
      After you say the word only a few hundred times you actually start to get used to it.
      Try it again. Bookcasting.
     This week we are introducing the first authentic bookcasting to the world on the KBN website, so sit back with some popcorn and get ready to enjoy reading a good book like never before.
      Just select any KBN picture book, for example, click on the flashbook option,  and start reading.
      Tired of all the same old arguments between Republicans and Democrats? Want to see some solid new ideas for our political future? Consider the thoughtful options you will find in the recent KBN sociopolitical study What If Dogs Ran The World?

      Or are you possibly in the mood for something lighter? Then you might enjoy Possibly The 100 Worst Jokes Of All Time.
      Or would you prefer something more educational? Then you'll want to read the documentary The Tooth Fairy Goes Off To School. 
      See? The possibilities are almost endless. Now you understand why more and more kids, parents, teachers, politicians, pundits and phrenologists are turning to KBN. 
      Bookcasting.
      It's starting here and it's starting now.

KBN welcomes Linda Lee. And the fun of reading books you sometimes just have to write yourself.

This week we are pleased to welcome Linda Lee as a contributing KBN author/illustrator.

        An extraordinary artist living in Amsterdam, her work can be  charmingly innocent one moment – as in her new book for KBN for which the story was lost, apparently, because her dog ate it – and sharply witty and complex the next as in her sophisticated visual commentaries appearing in the euro design magazine DZone. 
        Linda Lee has illustrated literally hundreds of picture books, educational books, magazines, games, puzzles, and much more. A visit to her website at www.lindalee.nl offers a delightful exploration of the visually unexpected.  
         Interactive reception concepts are also an important focus of the artist. Recently, for example, she developed a series of nursery paintings which children can not only observe, but touch and feel as well. Now, with The Metal Detector, she brings KBN readers a fresh interactive children’s story.
        Like a silent movie, The Metal Detector can be read perfectly well without text. But with the help of limited metatext the work also invites young readers  to tell the story they observe in the cinematic flow of images in words, which of course are their own words. Children are encouraged, further, to inscribe the story they create directly into the book, which becomes a unique interactive work actually written by its readers.

Parents will treasure this book. And teachers are provided with more classroom suggestions in our KBN Teacher Talk review.

Happy New Year in 2010 to children around the world!

It doesn't get more fun than this.
In 2009 the Kids' Book Network launched the 
idea of free books for every child in the world.
Not just sample educational downloads,
or subscription classroom learning 
materials. You can find that stuff all over 
the internet.
What KBN introduced was the concept of 
real, on-paper, page-turning books, all 
for free download, in all of the classic forms 
of children's literature. Picture books. 
Adventure books. Coloring books. Joke books 
Puzzle books. And literary classics. 
Even books in new twitter-age forms like 
our almost origami-size microbooks.
And of course our KBN books represent the 
same quality of books you would expect to 
find in a popular bookstore or public library.
So what's ahead for 2010?

Well, once we get our KBN staff to wake up 
from their deep Winter sleep and charge back 
to work – get ready for even more free books, 
more fresh ideas, more big fun. And as we 
recently promised, look for the first of many 
more books coming up soon from the best 
international authors and illustrators – plus 
books in a new format to project and read on 
the biggest walls anywhere in the world.
Happy New Year from KBN!

KBN's first Thanksgiving.

The Kids' Book Network was launched on September 1, 2009.
    That's only three months ago. But as we reach the Thanksgiving season we already have much for which we are very grateful.
    First, the website itself was effectively complete, functional and glitch-free from Day One. Some people with spam blockers found it blocked the completion of their KBN registration – and it still does – if they don't advise their blocker to accept all messages from hello@read4free.net which sends the standard KBN message to complete the registration.
    Our registered users are starting to build as more and more parents, kids, teachers and other educators learn about KBN. And they're giving us some very helpful feedback and new ideas, too.
    We've already added some more swell free books – like our Halloween thriller The Vileburgers in October, as well as the suitable-for-framing Rembrandt's Coloring Book. And we have many, many more exciting books scheduled for publication in our first KBN full year ahead.
    We're inviting the best international children's book authors and illustrators, for example, to showcase some of their most original ideas with us on the Kids' Book Network, featured in some of their most delightful stories, and we'll be publishing the first of these works very soon.
    December also marks the publication of our second literary classic after the Wizard of Oz. And it marks as well our first cooperative publication with one of America's leading academic libraries.
    The classic A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was first published in a British newspaper, in a serialized format, in 1843. Republished here just in time for Christmas – again in a "serialized," five-part format – our special edition of of the story was carefully prepared by scholars at the University of Virginia Library and has been made available to KBN with their kind permission.

    Beginning in January teachers – and everyone else – will also be able to download many of our books in a convenient powerpoint show format for dramatic classroom projection, so a whole class can enjoy reading together at the same time. The teacher can pace the "page-turning" to the next page just like any on-paper book, to match the readiness of her class to move forward to the next idea in the story.
    And finally, we're beginning to see more and more institutional support as teachers themselves are telling other teachers about our website, and the new opportunities for enhancing literacy and learning in the classroom using the completely free books and materials on the Kids' Book Network.
    Everyone who has visited KBN seems to be as excited as we are about our mission – to bring free books to every child in the world.
    And at this special moment of Thanksgiving we wish to thank you all. Thank you for your enthusiasm, ideas and continuing encouragement.

Here come The Vileburgers. Genies they are, geniuses they're not.

According to Kirkus, The Vileburgers is something like "City Slickers meets Ghostbusters" with an outcome that's "enjoyably ridiculous."
      Bookwire, on the other hand, describes this new KBN action novel as "replete with elements of magic, humor and wit" and categorizes it as a "new Halloween classic ... imaginative adventure ... hilarious cast." We of course appreciate their enthusiasm.

     But the movie-style criticism from these reviewers is not entirely accidental. Vileburgers was deliberately written by the author in "scenes" rather than traditional book "chapters," and was written as well in the present tense to add additional immediacy and a certain live quality to the story – just like the experience of sitting in a "movie."
     That also makes it the perfect novel for teachers to use with the literacy development practice known as Readers Theater. So when you locate and download The Vileburgers from its location in the KBN Action Books category you'll also find a very complete series of lesson plans featuring Readers Theater.
     Published by KBN here in three episodes, we hope The Vileburgers adds extra fun to your October!

KBN introduces The Wizard of Oz.

Just like KBN today the Wizard of Oz represents a new direction for its time in children's literature.
    When L. Frank Baum first wrote and published the Wizard of Oz in 1900 he wanted to move the genre forward – to a new generation of characters and themes, and away from the continuous threats to children that characterized so many of the stories and fables and fairy tales written by Anderson and the aptly-named Grimm.

     When children read out of pleasure rather than fear, they enjoy the experience more, they read more, and ultimately they learn to read better.
     While the motion picture made from the Baum Oz stories is certainly a classic in its own right, the wit and charm of the original novel can't be completely translated to celluloid. The complexity of the characters, the surprising ideas and amusing sophistication of the narrative are simply exceptional and still a pleasure today for readers of all ages.
     Republishing the work here in five smaller, episodic volumes, we are very pleased to showcase The Wizard of Oz as one of the premiere titles in the KBN classic books section.
     Just print and read Volume I – and you'll just have to read the rest. Otherwise how will you know if Dorothy ever gets back to Kansas?

Can't complete your KBN registration? Maybe it's your darn spamblocker.

It looks like some philosophers, radio announcers and politicians are having trouble completing their KBN registration because they cannot receive their KBN e-mail confirmation. Bummer. The problem seems to be that they have set up some sort of spamblocker on their e-mail which is not all that smart about identifying actual spam, and blocks out the incoming registration notice coming from hello@read4free.net.
    If that has happened to you we hope you have somehow figured it out by now and have told your anti-spam service to let any message from KBN's hello@read4free.net through the gate. Or, you can perhaps look in the e-mail folder that holds your incoming spam and see if you can find your hello@read4free.net KBN registration notice there.

    Finally, before you try to register with KBN, if you have a spamblocker on your system be sure to inform it to add our hello@read4free.net address to your let-it-in "whitelist." That way you can complete your registration and start downloading your free books from the KBN library.