Published: August 29, 2009 
Former Children's Laureate Anne Fine said that modern stories offered little hope for their protagonistsOnce upon a time, in the spiffing 1950s, characters in children’s books enjoyed wonderful adventures after which they all lived happily ever after. By contrast, reality weighs heavily on today’s young readers, a former children’s laureate has warned.
Anne Fine said that cosy tales in which children’s characters looked forward to future adventures had been replaced by gritty stories that offered no hope for their weary protagonists.Contemporary literature is dauntingly bleak, with depressing endings that do little to inspire.
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Iambic Pentameter has:
Perhaps there never was a time when education received so much general attention as it does today. The world is deluged with books, pamphlets, and reviews on the subject, new systems are continually jostling the old out of place, new methods are constantly being applied, the very end and aim of education itself seems to change from time to time.
That the object of education should be to fit the child for life is such a trite and well-worn saying that people smile at its commonplaceness even while they agree with its obvious common sense. But the many ways of fitting the child, and the very various and diverse lives that have to be fitted for, are so perplexing that it is small wonder that curriculums multiply and still, multiply their subjects in order to keep up with the complexity of modern existence.
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Is making a book recommendation slightly dangerous? If you're brash enough to distill all your advice about how to face life's stages, blows and transitions to four volumes of literature, should you be surprised if you're met with a few raised eyebrows, maybe some subtly averted glances?
Is it worth revealing all the classics you'd suggest throwing aside in favour of a couple Jon Krakauer books about climbing mountains? Worth admitting you were more moved by Salinger's neurotic Franny and Zooey than Shakespeare's elegant Romeo and Juliet?
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BERLIN — The proposed U.S. legal settlement giving Google the right to sell digital copies of millions of books is dividing publishers and authors in Europe, which has struggled to develop viable alternatives to Google’s ambitious book digitization project.
Some big European publishers, like Oxford University Press, and Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck, which own Random House and Macmillan respectively, support the agreement, which remains subject to approval by a U.S. judge. They see the pact as greatly expanding the visibility of their archives for online purchase. But opposition to the deal, which would allow U.S. consumers to buy online access to millions of books by European authors whose works were scanned at U.S. libraries, is mounting.
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A book looted from a US library during the American civil war has finally been returned, almost 145 years overdue.
The only stipulation of the Illinois handball coach who returned the title – the first in WFP Napier's four-volume History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France – was that he didn't have to pay the $52,858 (£36,000) fine.
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Metaphors cannot be taught, asserted the great philosopher Aristotle. "It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others." But a computer scientist and literary historian say he's wrong.
"...This approach to studying literature was inconceivable back around 330 BCE, when Aristotle wrote that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of the metaphor," language that compares seemingly unrelated subjects - a "winged thought," for instance..."
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A study at the University of Leicester highlights the need for a new approach to the teaching of English pronunciation given that English is now a lingua franca (a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue), with more non-native speakers in the world than native speakers.
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But now, the microblogging site is about to become a tool to aid the digestion of great literature.
Fans of the classics will be delighted or appalled to learn that the New York branch of Penguin books has commissioned a volume that will put great works through the Twitter mangle. The volume has a working title that will make the nerve ends of purists jangle: Twitterature.
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Man claims Bronte portrait find (UK)
Literary greats 'key to English'
A survey of thousands of teachers, pupils, parents, writers and advisers found great support for the classics.
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BUT HERE IS A CONTRADICTING ARTICLE FROM THE SAME SITE!
Media studies grows in schools
By Angela Harrison
BBC News education reporter
Increasing numbers of teenagers are opting to do media studies - with some dropping English literature to do so, a report from an exams watchdog suggests.
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But, dear reader, have you ever wondered what was actually wrong with these swooning creatures?
For, I confess, part of me has always longed to grab them and say: "You only got your slippers wet. For heaven's sake, girl, just get a grip!"
So what does modern medicine have to say about these malingering madams' ailments?
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Print is Dead. Print is Not Dead.Let’s distinguish between newspaper and literature publishing...
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"......Stevens's argument retreads a well-worn syllogism: Shakespeare's plays are so culturally rich that they could only have been written by a noble or scholar of great learning. The historical William Shakespeare was a commoner with no more than a grammar school education. Ergo, Shakespeare could not have written Shakespeare. For example, Stevens asks, "Where are the books? You can't be a scholar of that depth and not have any books in your home. He never had any correspondence with his contemporaries, he never was shown to be present at any major event—the coronation of James or any of that stuff. I think the evidence that he was not the author is beyond a reasonable doubt."....
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