Gotta Keep Reading

Inspired by the Oprah/Black Eyed Peas flashmob in September 2009, Ocoee Middle School in Florida made their own version called "Gotta Keep Reading."

Ocoee Middle School Gotta Keep Reading from Michael Cardwell on Vimeo.

Freedom to Read Week, February 20-26

Freedom To Read Week is celebrated in Canada every year to "encourage Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms." Censorship occurs when anyone but the justice system attempts to enforce limits on what a person can or cannot read. Furthermore, included in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is this statement: “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms . . . thought, belief, opinion and expression.”

I have put together a display of books contained in the PRHS library that were either challenged (one or more persons wanted the book off library shelves or out of classrooms) or banned (those persons challenging the book succeeded) in the past decade in Canada or the United States, one even within Nova Scotia. Below is a virtual display of those books.

For more information about book censorship in Canada, explore the Freedom To Read Week website.

PRHS's freedom-to-read-week book montage

PRHS's favorite books »

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Google Art Project

Announced on February 1st, Google Art Project digitally displays over 1000 works of art from museums like the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Florence's Uffizi Gallery, the Tate Britain, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, and many more. You can do a Google Street View-style walk through of the galleries, make your own collections from the works on display, and the level of detail is mind-blowing (you can even zoom in one eye in Rembrandt's Night Watch - they won't let you get that close in the museum!).

Seriously, getting this close just wouldn't happen.

Artist information, data about the work itself, and links to more works by that artist are provided when you click on the white "i" information icon on the right side of the screen.

My one issue with this site is the inability to search among all of the galleries. For example, one of the art club members wanted to see something by pointillist Georges Seurat and I could not find a way to search for his works in all the museums contained in Art Project. However, a work-around would be to do a Google site search, such as "Seurat site:googleartproject.com" in the main Google web search.

That one gripe notwithstanding, it is a wonderful resource that allows detailed viewing of artwork for anyone with an internet connection, and hopefully the coming months will bring even more artwork and galleries.