Sora Unveils Its First Annual Report Sharing Worldwide Student Reading Data
Sora, the student reading platform from OverDrive, published “its first annual reading report of worldwide student digital reading data for the 2022-2023 school year.” “The State of K-12 Digital Reading,” which is available to download for free after registering, “reveals compelling regional differences, double digit growth in Comics and Graphic Novels and a surprising insight on which months tracked the most time spent reading.”
Key findings include the following:
Digital reading in K-12 schools has increased significantly over the past few years. Since 2019, total usage (based on digital book checkouts) has grown 286 percent as the number of schools using the Sora platform more than doubled. In 2022-23, usage continued the trend with 12% growth.
Reading sessions on the Sora reading app were up more than 8 percent compared to the previous school year (2021-2022), with total books read per student increasing by 3 percent.
The ebook format accounted for 84 percent of titles opened during the ’22-’23 school year, while audiobooks remain popular with 14 percent. Comics and graphic novels have contributed to the strong ebook usage, more than quadrupling in checkouts and jumping from 31 to 42% of total ebook checkouts since 2019.
For more information, read the press release at https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/student-ebook-usage-breaks-records-302105186.html.
Author Archives: Editor
BICOP Representation in Children’s Books
The modest increases in diversity in children’s literature continued in 2023, according to the latest Diversity Statistics report released by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC).
In 2023, 49 percent of the books the CCBC documented had significant BIPOC content (up from 46 percent in 2022) and 40 percent had at least one BIPOC primary character (up from 39 percent in 2022). The number of books with at least one BIPOC creator was about the same as 2022. Those numbers continue the trend of slow growth in representation year to year. In 2022, the books with significant BIPOC content went up two percent (from 44 to 46) while BIPOC primary characters jumped three percent (from 36 to 39).
For this report, the CCBC analyzed 3,491 books for children and teens that were published in 2023.
For details, go to https://www.slj.com/story/Books%20%26%20Media/BIPOC-Representation-Childrens-Literatures-Continues-Its-Slow-rise-According-CCBC-Diversity-Statistics
Parent Reading Research
A large-scale Chilean study looked at the relationship between parents’ reading habits and those of their children. Unsurprisingly, the study revealed that, when it comes to adolescents’ leisure reading, the impact of parents’ reading motivation and frequency proved far more significant than socioeconomic status. Writes the author, “The findings reported here should encourage stakeholders to promote the love of reading in not only children but also their parents.
Cubillos, M. (2023). A chip off the old block: Do reading-motivated parents raise reading-motivated children? Reading Research Quarterly.
https://repositorio.udd.cl/server/api/core/bitstreams/e6b7087f-a56f-44e4-b809-80fba9df1e79/content
ALMA 2023 Laureate
Congratulations to the 2023 laureate, Laurie Halse Anderson!
Laurie Halse Anderson is one of America’s foremost writers for young adults. Her breakthrough novel, Speak, was published in 1999 and has been translated into many languages and adapted for film. In her richly expressive novels for young people she gives voice to the adolescent experience with sometimes brutal honesty. The yearning for love and belonging is a recurring theme for Anderson.
The jury’s motivation:
“In her tightly written novels for young adults, Laurie Halse Anderson gives voice to the search for meaning, identity, and truth, both in the present and the past. Her darkly radiant realism reveals the vital role of time and memory in young people’s lives. Pain and anxiety, yearning and love, class and sex are investigated with stylistic precision and dispassionate wit. With tender intensity, Laurie Halse Anderson evokes, moods, and emotions and never shies from even the hardest things.”
ACRL Critical Reading Book
ACRL announces the publication of Teaching Critical Reading Skills: Strategies for Academic Librarians, edited by Hannah Gascho Rempel and Rachel Hamelers. This two-volume set — Reading in the Disciplines and for Specific Populations and Reading for Evaluation, Beyond Scholarly Texts, and in the World — provides ready-made activities you can add or adapt to your teaching practice.
This collection explores the experiences, approaches, and roles of librarians who teach reading: using pedagogical theories and techniques in new and interesting ways, making implicit reading knowledge, skills, and techniques explicit to students, presenting reading as a communal activity, partnering with other campus stakeholders, and leading campus conversations about critical reading. The five sections are arranged by theme:
Volume 1
● Part I: Reading in the Disciplines
● Part II: Reading for Specific Populations
Volume 2
● Part III: Reading Beyond Scholarly Texts
● Part IV: Reading to Evaluate
● Part V: Reading in the World
Each of the 45 chapters contains teaching and programmatic strategies, resources, and lesson plans, as well as a section titled “Critical Reading Connection” that highlights each author’s approach for engaging with the purpose of reading critically and advancing the conversation about how librarians can foster this skill.
Academic librarians and archivists have a long history of engaging with different types of literacy and acting as a bridge between faculty and students. We understand the different reading needs of specific student populations and the affective challenges with reading that are often shared across learner audiences. We know what types of sources are read, the histories—and needed changes—of how authority has been granted in various fields, how students may be expected to apply what they read in future professional or civic settings, and frequently look beyond our local institutions to think about the larger structural and social justice implications of what is read, how we read, and who does the reading.
These volumes can help you make the implicit explicit for learners and teach that reading is both a skill that must be practiced and nurtured and a communal act. Teaching Critical Reading Skills demonstrates librarians’ and archivists’ deep connections to our campus communities and how critical reading instruction can be integrated in a variety of contexts within those communities.
Teaching Critical Reading Skills: Strategies for Academic Librarians is available for purchase in print and as an ebook through the ALA Online Store, individually or as a set; in print through Amazon.com; and by telephone order at (866) 746-7252 in the U.S. or (770) 442-8633 for international customers.
Reading Research
Digital Practices for Reading Study
Reading Intervention Programs Literature Review
Learned, J., Frankel, K, & Brooks, M. (2022). Disrupting Secondary Reading Intervention: A Review of Qualitative Research and a Call to Action. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 65(6), 507-517. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jaal.1234
Secondary School Reading Study in England
A recent study of reading achievement of students in England’s secondary schools revealed several factors that predicted reading gains: leadership of reading such as a deputy head of literacy lead, regular assessment to accurately determine students’ reading needs, training staff on emerging reading strategies, highly skilled librarians to select and promote appropriate books, adequate funding to support reader needs, and staff awareness of students’ reading levels and needs.
‘Now the whole school is reading’: Supporting struggling readers in secondary schools. (2022, Oct.). Ofstead.