Reviewing new literacies

Although I always look forward to the latest edition of Reading Research Quarterly, I rarely read all the articles. One thing the journal excels at however is the essay book review. I nearly always look at this. In 44:1 there was an excellent review of The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky, which was well argued, erudite and gave a balanced appraisal of the book. I learnt so much about how Vygotsky has been differently interpreted by different translators and theorists. In the current issue, Robert Tierney has an extended review of The Handbook of Research on New Literacies. It is a very close reading of an impressively sized tome. Ever the egotist, I quickly noticed that there was a decent paragraph on my chapter! There is also a perceptive conclusion; a summing up of the work which I suspect would have even stretched the illustrious editors. On another note, I’ve been asked to do an entry on Critical Media Studies for a new dictionary of applied linguistics, so if anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment. I’ll also try Twitter (often really useful for this sort of thing).