OH, It's a Book; or What to Give a Reluctant Reader

     The season of gift giving is here, and I know what all of you TA followers want...a book. Right?  And what is our go-to gift for the loved ones in our lives? A book.

     I learned early that those square packages that didn't rattle when you shook them were either underwear or a books.  A solid thump would eliminate the former and affirm the latter. No matter what other presents I received, Christmas afternoon would find me curled up with my gift book.  My beloved Charlotte's Web was a gift from my father when I was eight.  A biography, You Might as Well Live, my junior year of high school began a life long love of Dorothy Parker.  My dad was the book giver in my family.  He somehow knew just the right book for me, and what I had already read.  I suppose I should not have been surprised since he was an FBI agent with excellent powers of observation.

   Holiday giving was pretty easy at my house.  Both of my parents were non-fiction readers whose tastes ran to non-fiction, particularly political history and biography. They never read fiction. Christmas at my house was books, books and more books (and, from my ever-practical mother, underwear).

    When I had a child of my own, I felt blessed that she loved books as much as I. Every gift giving occasion included at least one new book, that her father or I would read to her. 

    Then my daughter was diagnosed as severely dyslexic.  While her own vocabulary and understanding of what was read to her was far beyond her grade level, what she could actually read for herself did a number on her self-esteem and willingness to persevere. While everyone in her class was reading Harry Potter, my daughter could not read the picture books that I had written about her.  It was a frustrating situation, since she still loved books and stories.

    Maybe you have a reluctant reader or one, who like my daughter, has so much difficulty reading that it is an ordeal rather than a pleasure. 

    1. Magazine subscription--My husband swears that the only reason he ever read as a child was that his parents gave him a Sports Illustrated subscription every year from third grade on. My dad, the Wizard of Gifts, didn't miss a beat when he learned his granddaughter would never be a reader. He added up her love of nature, travel and her talent as a photographer...and renews her subscription to National Geographic every Christmas. Today, Lily is a National Arts Honor Student in Photography. Her career goal?  To be a National Geographic photographer, of course.

   2. Don't overlook the e books and magazines.  I know I know...there's nothing like a book. However, for a kid, there is nothing like convenience.  When I was a librarian, I noticed that if a student had a choice between the same book in hardcover or paperback, they would always choose the paperback.  They were already lugging around pounds of textbooks; a paperback could fit in their pocket or purse, always ready for a spare minute's reading. The same goes for our kids and their various electronic gadgets.  There is nothing more convenient than a download to an electronic reader or tablet. (E formats can be downloaded to computers as well...but not so convenient.)

    As I mentioned in a previous post, Lily took to the Kindle immediately because there are a variety of applications that can provide voice-activation. Be sure to check when ordering an e-book that voice-activation is available for that particular title. For instance, both of my middle grade novels Yankee Girl and Jimmy's Stars are voice enabled. The one book Lily is dying to read, To Kill a Mockingbird, is not even available as an e-book. (And no, the movie is not the same thing. We saw it again as a family at Thanksgiving and those of us who have read it agree that as wonderful as Gregory Peck is, it is not the same experience as Harper Lee's lyrical prose.)

   As for e-magazines, it would be easier to list those not available electronically.  You can download a subscription to everything from Sesame Street to Seventeen to Sports Illustrated.  

   One word of caution.  Picture books derive much of their meaning from their arrangement of pictures and text.  Even though there are a number of picture books that are available in e format, the print to screen layout is not always the same. There are books designed specifically as e books (Lulu's Brew by Elizabeth Dulemba immediately comes to mind.)  The same is true of verse novels and books of poetry. As much as I love Ellen Hopkins' YA novels, a great deal of their meaning is derived from the way the verse is arranged on the page...something which does not always turn up in the version. 

3.  Audio books--I love being read to. So does my husband. When we were first married and our car did not have a tape player, I would read to him on long car trips. You know you are in love if you are willing to spend an 18 hour car trip reading a corporate history of the Anheuser-Busch company, aloud. 

    By the time our daughter came along we had upgraded to cars with tape and then CD players.  We made a lot of long car trips.  Enter the audio book. Both Lily and my husband ( see item one) enjoyed hearing Henry Huggins, the Ramona books, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Percy Jackson Series.

(We are still awaiting an audio version of To Kill a Mockingbird.)

   Two words of wisdom in buying reading material for anyone. One...if you don't know the person well enough to know they will be interested in your gift selection, don't give a book. If you have to ask a bookseller, "What are 12-year-olds (fill in the appropriate age) reading?" then you don't know this child well enough to give them a book. I learned this the hard way from my husbands nieces and nephew who were not readers. For years they would open my present with a fake smile and an unenthusiastic "Oh, it's a book." I also have observed the wrath of some parents whose child was given "what 12-year-olds are reading," (usually by a grandparent), only to find that the parent found the book inappropriate.  When in doubt...give a gift card to their local (independent, if possible) bookseller.

    Two...just because you loved a book doesn't mean your child will.  The only audio book that was spurned by both Lily and my husband, was Charlotte's Web! Sigh.  It happens to the best of us.

     Happy (book giving) holidays, one and all.

     Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

Learning to love the E-book

      I may have mentioned this before, but...I love books. I own enough to stock my own branch library. I love everything about them...the smell of fresh print, the promises made by the jacket art (sometimes promises unfilled by the actual book), the weight of a story in my hands, my book marker showing me how much I've read, how much more I have to savor.  As you can probably tell, reading is a whole-body experience for me.
      I initially encountered electronic publishing in my first book contract, circa 1999. As I waded through 15 pages of 4 point print literary legalese I stumbled across the term "electronic rights." I had no idea what that might be, and made a note to ask my literary attorney about it. (Those of us without agents depend on literary attorneys to translate contracts into terms that we can understand.) When my attorney explained the concept of e-publishing, my first reaction was "Euw-w-w?  A book on a computer screen?  Gross!" My second thought was "Well, my books will never be electronic." I figured that such exotic publishing  forays would be limited to blockbuster adult writers, like John Grisham, Nora Roberts, John Patterson. Maybe J.K. Rowling.

     Never say never. As of last month, both of my middle grade novels, Jimmy's Stars and Yankee Girl, are available as e-books.

    I love e-books.

    What changed my mind?  It certainly isn't the huge royalties I will receive from this new format.  E-book royalties (like paperback reprint royalties) are considerably less than those of hardcover sales.  No, I love e-books for several reasons.

1.  Living in my own branch library is becoming physically impossible. For the last fifteen years, I have bought 98% of my reading material because I do not have access to a good library. Out of every ten books I read, only one or two are "keepers", something I will want to read again, or use in teaching. Even though I donate and giveaway books in a steady stream, I always have a box...or two...or three...by the back door, waiting to go somewhere.


2. In the last few years, e-book readers have become smaller, lighter and more affordable (still not cheap, though.)  However. their convenience cannot be equaled. I travel a lot, and half my luggage weight used to be books.  How much better to be able to stuff a couple of hundred books into my carry-on, via my Kindle?

3.  E-books have been a godsend for my dyslexic daughter.  Some readers and books are text-to-speech enabled. For someone whose pleasure reading had been restricted to what was available in an audio format, text-to-speech has allowed my daughter to read as much and as widely as she has always desired.  In fact, I bought our first Kindle for her...and then got hooked on it myself.

       Will e-books replace paper-and-ink?  I sure hope not.  Apart from the sensory pleasures of reading a physical book, some books are less practical in electronic format. I still use physical books for research.  In reformatting for e-publishing, some books have illustrative material eliminated. I've also found it more time consuming to try to relocate a reference in an e-book than to page through an actual book. (And of course, you can't put sticky notes on an e-book!)

     Even though some picture books are available electronically, I will continue to buy them as books. A picture book is an aesthetic whole. Story, illustrations, and page layout all work together to produce a
a single artistic vision.  Books re-formatted for a tiny screen don't have the same resonance as they do in  the original.  There are writers and artists who are producing e-book originals.  Perhaps their number will grow with wider readership.

    However, when it comes to a parent-child bonding experience, nothing beats snuggling down with a book at bedtime.  Then, after you leave the room, your child will sneak his e-reader from under his pillow, plug in the ear-phones, and read long, long into the night.  (And he won't even need a flashlight!)

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman