How to Get on the Newbery Committee's Bad Side
Okey-dokey . . . so I picked up Karen Cushman's new novel, The Loud Silence of Francine Green a few days ago, and read this in the front acknowledgements:With thanks to Google for the research help, libraries and librarians for being there . . .
She wrote an entire historical novel using GOOGLE as her primary source?!? GOOGLE?!? And libraries and librarians were just "there"? Is Cushman trying to make some sort of pointed statement about the relative helpfulness of print versus electronic media? (Eh, probably not.) I will be the first to admit the righteous awesomeness of Google, but I don't know if I'd ever have the nerve to come out and cite it as the primary help in my research. To her credit, Cushman includes a list of resources in the back of the book for kids interested in researching the McCarthy era, but still. At least she has good taste in search engines. Heaven forbid that she goes to AltaVista for fact-checking.
Click here for an example of what AltaVista can do.
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