A few quick links

Are our children suffering from nature-deficit disorder? Richard Louv postulates in Last Child in the Woods that they are, and provides evidence that their lives are far the worse for it. (CSM)

Another CSM article, another look at how to get boys to read with a suggested summer reading list for high schoolers from the Haverford School that contains a mixture of quality and junk. Boys today are much less sophisticated readers and require difficult material be presented to them later than in the past, according to educators.

More gloomy news: odds stacked against pleasure reading for high school students.

Does listening to an audio book count as reading? Is it a good way to consume literature?

Who dies in the next Harry Potter book? Are you willing to make a bet on it? Would you be suspicious if most of the bets coming from the town where the book was printed all pointed to the same character? (And, more importantly, will the boys still want to read this book if they know ahead of time who dies?)

And an interview with Ali Smith, whose latest in the UK is called The Accidental. '"Stories can change lives if we're not careful," Smith says. "They will come in and take the shirts off our backs. Tell the right stories and we live better lives."

Maybe she should have a talk with all the high school boys before sending them out to play.