*Insert Literary Blog Name Here*
I write books.
Yesterday, I posted about reading kids’ books on the Kindle. Books for all ages are available, though, as you can see, picture books lose some of their warmth on the matte gray screen.
Would you read picture books on the Kindle? Would you let your kids read on the Kindle?
In the era of the iPad, Amazon’s Kindle appears clunky and drab. The thumb tap keyboard is passe, the gray screen drab, and the lack of touchscreen so 2006. Yet, in some ways, the Kindle one-ups the iPad–lacking interactivity, the Kindle forces users to focus only on the text, provides a quick and easy way (via the OED and Wikipedia) to check a word meaning or make sense of a reference, offers a text to speech function, and has a battery life of around a week with wi-fi turned off. But while the Kindle will remain useful to adults–particularly adults uncomfortable with technology and touch screens–it’s likely the iPad will go where no e-reader has gone before and completely corner the kids’ market.
I know, I know, the Kindle isn’t the only e-reader out there. But B&N’s nook, Sony’s e-reader, and Spring Design’s Alex offer roughly the same set of features as the Kindle, give or take minor changes (the nook’s virtual keyboard, for instance). None of them offer the interactivity of an iPad, and none feature a color screen for text or illustration. And so far, Amazon offers the most access to kids’ e-books, with a quick search returning in excess of 27, 000 results.
Should the iPad be allowed to corner the kids’ market? There are pros and cons, and in most cases, I’m all for e-books within reason. But in the case of kid lit–picture books, early readers, even middle grade novels, the iPad may be overkill.
Kid lit isn’t immune to the tech boom–Leap Frog, Fisher Price, and others have been marketing read-to-me versions of books for years. Almost all the toddlers I know have their own educational, brightly-styled laptops. Why? Because in kid-land, bright is a good thing–unless we’re talking e-readers.
The iPad, despite its app-books and pretty pictures, is a computer. It’s main function is consumerist, not educational–which is okay if you’re over, say, the age of 13/14/15/25 (and, as MacWorld points out, will not replace a Kindle in terms of comfort, anyway). Of course, this hasn’t stopped publishers from releasing kid-targeted book-apps and marketing to the under 5 set. The Kindle, in contrast, is all about the book–it’s a reading device with a little extra functionality, to make reading easier. But Kindle kids’ books have, for the most part, slipped through the cracks–despite the Kindle probably being the better device for reading to your kids.
So far, Amazon’s offerings include pretty much every kind of kids’ book available. Classics such as Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Stevenson’s Treasure Island show up on the first page, alongside Twilight (Stephanie Meyer) and Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. Well-known picture books, such as The Potty Book (Alyssa Satin Capucilli and Dorothy Stott), Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes (Annie Kubler), and even H.A. Rey’s Curious George series are also available, despite the e-reader’s matte gray screen.
Wondering just what illustrations look like on the Kindle? Check back tomorrow to see the cover from Billy Goats Gruff.
Can you read to a child on the Kindle? Yes–if you’re reading a primarily text book. Picture books show illustrations on one page, then text separately, if the publisher even includes pictures in the e-version. If I had a gazillion dollars, I’d buy an iPad. And a monkey, because I’ve always wanted a monkey. And a fur coat, but not a real fur coat, that’s cruel. But if I had to choose between the iPad and the Kindle as a reading device for my child–and solely a reading device–I’d pick the Kindle (or the nook, B&N, if you’d like to give me one). Why? The Kindle may be far from perfect, but it’s the more bookish reader. The lack of bells and whistles makes it easier for small, easily distracted minions to focus, the page buttons are easy to use, and it’s lightweight, much like an oversize board book.
Yet where the iPad is distracting in its detail, the Kindle is almost completely lacking in sensory details–the feel of pages against fingertips, the clean, ink scent of a book–reading on a Kindle is an almost sterile experience. For teens and adults, this can be a good thing, as it helps take a reader deeper inside a book. But for a child still learning about books and reading, and developing their senses, such a lack is a terrible thing.
Reading with your little one is a large part of fostering a love of reading. Curling up together in a comfy chair, reading before bedtime, peeking beneath flaps and scratching and sniffing small plastic dots together are all part of the bonding experience. If we strip away the social aspect–the bonding aspect–of reading together, it’s possible kids simply won’t learn to love books, and that video games and television will become the order of the day.
Will my kidlet ever have an e-reader? Probably–as he grows older and the technology becomes cheaper, an e-reader like Amazon’s DX could be useful for textbooks (and prevent the textbook stoop I suffered from as school-loving nerdlet) and school reading assignments. Right now, though, neither a Kindle nor an iPad are on the books–because Mir’s too busy reading real ones.
This Saturday past, I facilitated the Online Presence Special Interest Group at the New England Regional SCBWI (#nescbwi10) conference in Fitchburg, MA. The group was filled with marvelous people with great questions, and we talked about everything from Twitter lists through the difference between LiveJournal and WordPress. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing up articles based on the things discussed, but in the meantime, here’s a collection of links for folks still sorting out how to fit into the blagosphere.
Anything I missed? Any other links or lists you’d like to see? Drop me a line!
Boing Boing founder Cory Doctorow’s new YA novel, For the Win hit shelves in the US, UK, and Canada this week. A subversive cult classic in the making, FTW is about gold-farmers, workers who do repetitive work in video games such as World of Warcraft to earn valuable game items which are then sold on to the highest bidder.
Every day, we put words on a page. Some of us use pen or pencil. Some of us tap away at keyboards. Most of us do both, handwriting grocery lists, personal notes, even plot outlines, later typing emails, memos, and whole scenes. Some folks lean more toward the paper route, while others tap away on smart phone keyboards instead of grabbing the nearest pencil stub. Either way, we’re inputting words and data, right? Maybe.
Some time ago, I was at a Neal Stephenson talk hosted by the Harvard Bookstore (and held in the First Parish Church in Cambridge, a strangely appropriate venue given he was signing Anathem. During the question session, someone asked Stephenson–a science fiction writer and well-known tech aficionado–
“If you could only teach your kids one or the other, which would you teach? Handwriting or typing?”
Stephenson’s answer was fairly hedged, as if he wanted to say “just typing” but couldn’t bring himself to dismiss handwriting as a fast-disappearing, unnecessary skill. In the end, though, he settled on handwriting because you can always write with a pencil, or a stick, and pay someone else to type it up. And Stephenson has written several of his works the long way–
“The manuscript of The Baroque Cycle was written by hand on 100% cotton paper using three different fountain pens: a Waterman Gentleman, a Rotring, and a Jorg Hysek.”
Back in April (why does that seem so long ago?) I saw Cory Doctorow, another SF (well, sort of) writer with tech roots, and founder of Boing Boing at the Harvard Coop. Giving props to the anonymous guy I’d seen at the Neal Stephenson do, I asked Doctorow the same thing. His reply? “I only have one kid, and I’d teach her to type. Definitely type.” Why? Because his handwriting is so poor! When Doctorow signs copies of his books, he scrawls “Stay Free” beneath the reader’s name. But Doctorow’s “Stay Free” looks a lot more like “stay frog” or “stay froo” (I’ll add a picture from my copy when I get back from sunny-yet-surprisingly-cold Tucson). Doctorow also types pretty much everything.
But not all SF writers and tech-loving folk are so type-set. Neil Gaiman starts out scribbling almost everything by hand then typing it up later. While this may seem old-school, Gaiman is certainly not resistant to technology–he’s an active blogger and tweeter who just happens to be in love with well-made pens and papers.
J.K Rowling, on the other hand, writes almost exclusively by hand, and even sold her original handwritten copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard to raise money for charity. Rowling, however, is very anti-tech, and determined that none of
her books will ever appear in e-book form.
Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling, Fire, and the upcoming Bitterblue, takes the longhand process a step further–or further back–creating detailed handwritten story journals before setting out on a first draft. Drafts are then written longhand and slowly dictated into her mac every few days, “because I’m afraid the house will burn down and I’ll lose everything.” Cashore even has a fireproof and waterproof safe for protecting her work.
And me? I type most of the time, though I find putting pen to paper gets me through the rough patches, and helps me keep track of random bits of dialogue. But for me, handwriting is also hand-drawing–most of my notebooks are filled with doodles and sometimes relevant scribbles that wind around the text. The scribbles eventually grow into coherent words, though sometimes not until I’ve storyboarded or sketched out a whole scene, complete with stick figure characters and room detail. Why? Drawing–albeit poor drawing–is my way of articulating ideas I can’t quite get my head around on the first go.
Do you type or handwrite? What do you like about your way?
Later this week–pros and cons for handwriting and typing, and why they’re important.
My review of Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde has been published over the the Santa Fe Writers Project.
There’s something compelling about a Jasper Fforde novel, something that sucks you into the story, tossing you alg until the end when it finally grinds you up and spits you out before you even know what’s happened. Fforde is a true satirist, not just pulling apart the way we tell stories, but pulling apart accepted critical conventions and putting them back together again, reinterpreting criticism and analysis from the inside out.
Book tours and author visits are a large part of publishing’s promotional band wagon. With author visits new titles get a top spot in stores and fans get to see their favorite writers up close and personal. More popular than simple author appearances, though, are book signings. They offer a chance to chat, but also to own a personalized piece of a given author’s work. Yet, despite their popularity, book signings may soon be going the way of the dodo.
I am a perfect mother, a perfect wife, a perfect daughter. How do I know this? Because I’m Indian.
When my parents give me unasked for advice about Baby, I put on my best phone smile–the all-encompassing, “Of course!” followed by a slight-to medium lilt as I expound on the many reasons I should have thought of such a valuable idea but did not and how I, a first time parent, am in awe of their expertise.
Fairy tales are a familiar part of most childhoods. All over the world, parents tell their children about Cinderella or Cendrillon or Yeh-Hsien or even the Egyptian Cinderella, Rhodopis. At least, they used to. According to a January 2009 article in The Telegraph, parents are skipping the once popular tales in favor of simpler, safer stories such as Eric Carle’s 1969 classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Why?
Because fairy tales are scary, not PC, and outdated.
It’s not surprising that some parents find fairy tales frightening. Children are abandoned in forests (Hansel and Gretel), sent away to be killed (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), kidnapped and/or sold (Rapunzel), even married early to creepy old widowers (Bluebeard). Hans Christian Andersen’s little match girl dies on the street, forgotten and unloved, clinging to a memory of her dead grandmother and her dream of a real home.
Fairy tales were not always the province of children, though children weren’t shielded from them, either. As Maria Tatar, John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Chair of Folklore & Mythology at Harvard University 2005 wrote in an article for Slate–
“[Fairy tales] started out as adult entertainment—violent, bawdy, melodramatic improvisations that emerged in the evening hours, when ordinary chores engaged the labor of hands, leaving minds free to wander and wonder. Fairy tales, John Updike has proposed, were the television and pornography of an earlier age—part of a fund of popular culture (including jokes, gossip, news, advice, and folklore) that were told to the rhythms of spinning, weaving, repairing tools, and mending clothes. The hearth, where all generations were present, including children, became the site at which miniature myths were stitched together, tales that took up in symbolic terms anxieties about death, loss, and the perils of daily life but also staged the triumph of the underdog.”
There are no original fairy tales–not really. There are earliest recorded versions, and literary versions, and retellings, but fairy tales are fluid. Details, like names and places and even supporting characters change, though central themes usually stay the same from telling to telling, because said themes are part of what makes up any given fairy tale.
Although we can’t trace the origin of a specific fairy tale, we can use fairy tales to illustrate the common origins of humanity. Why? Because many popular fairy tales exist, in some form, all over the world. The commonalities in many tales are so widespread that folklorists use a kind of catalogue, the Aarne-Thompson classification system, for keeping track of tales by their common elements. (Cinderella stories are AT-510 (with sub-types A and B) while Beauty and the Beast stories are AT-425.)
Folklorists aren’t the only ones who love fairy tales. Retellings, such as Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl and Donna Jo Napoli’s Bound are still popular with the teen set; The Three Billy Goats Gruff and Caps for Sale, two softer tales, do brisk trade as picture books. Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and Coraline, original fairy tales with strong ties to fairy tale themes and tropes, are bestsellers amongst YA and adult readers alike.
The vast reach of fairy tales isn’t limited the written word, either. Many popular films and television shows owe large chunks of their plot to fairy tales. Pretty Woman is a clear modern Cinderella; almost every bad-guy-changed-for-love-of-the-girl flick out there has roots in Beauty and the Beast.
1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
2. Hansel and Gretel
3. Cinderella
4. Little Red Riding Hood
5. The Gingerbread Man
6. Jack and the Beanstalk
7. Sleeping Beauty
8. Beauty and the Beast
9. Goldilocks and the Three Bears
10. The Emperor’s New Clothes
Fairy tales are dark. In the Grimm’s version of Cinderella, the ugly stepsisters cut off parts of their feet in an eddort to fit the slipper and fool the prince. In Bluebeard, a girl finds a room full of the hacked up remains of her husbands previous wives, her sisters included. In some older versions of Sleeping Beauty, it’s not the prince’s kiss that awakes the fair maiden but rather his, er, lust.
Are all fairy tales appropriate for all children and teens? No. But nothing is appropriate for everyone–not even chocolate. Even if authors and publishing houses did give way to the pressure from some parents to sanitize reissues and retellings, it’s likely the older, darker versions of the stories would stick around. As Jack Zipes, a professor of German studies and folklorist, puts it, “There’s a very important reason why these tales stick. “It’s because they raise questions that we have not resolved.”
As most authors and dedicated readers know, all good stories raise questions–and fairy tales are up there with the best. Fairy tales present stories and situations riddled with questions for the discerning reader. Just a few–
Some argue, though, that fairy tales serve an even deeper purpose, giving readers–particularly children and teens–a framework within which to understand their problems, and themselves. Fairy tales are dark, Tatar admits, but “beneath the horror was always the promise of revenge and restitution, the exquisite reassurance of a happily-ever-after.”
Zipes agrees, going so far as to read some of his own translations at elementary schools around Minneapolis. He “says he has seen young kids latch onto the classic, dark versions of the tales. Some of the most disadvantaged students, he told the Boston Globe’s Joanna Weiss, “really relate to us, because we’re telling tales that they experience in their homes.””
Does this mean you should rush home and read an illustrated copy of Bluebeard to your two year old? Of course not. And it’s every parent’s choice, picking books for their child. But while some fairy tales may not be appropriate at all ages, that doesn’t mean we should pick up sanitized copies to fill the gaps. Skipping over the darkness in fairy tales does readers–all readers, not just children–a disservice. We can’t skip over the darkness in real life, but we can give children and teens a way to put it in perspective, and learn about themselves in the process. As Weiss so eloquently writes,
“Fairy tale” may be our shorthand for castles and happy endings, but these classic stories have villains, too – nefarious witches, bloodthirsty wolves, stepmothers up to no good. And scholars have come to see the stories’ dark elements as the source of their power, not to mention their persistence over the centuries. Rich in allegory, endlessly adaptable, fairy tales emerged as a framework for talking about social issues. When we remove the difficult parts – and effectively do away with the stories themselves – we’re losing a surprisingly useful common language.
What’s a mystery? Are they only stories with murders or crimes of some sort? Perhaps. But mystery can be so much more than that! This list brings together ten unusual mysteries, where characters learn about themselves and their worlds, stories that’ll rip you out of your comfortable, expected reading zone, get inside in your head, and rearrange things until you’re thoroughly confused–but dying for more.
Want the whole list? Get the PDF here; get a titles only download here.
*book may be hard to find
** mature content, but accessible to younger readers
1. THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, Mark Haddon
Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor’s dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he “would like to read himself”-and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears’s dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can’t stand to be touched-any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what’s going to happen next). Christopher’s father bails him out but forbids his doing any more “detecting” about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother’s “death,” his father’s own part in it-and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds-his mother..–Kirkus Reviews
2. THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND, Elizabeth George Speare *
Forced to leave her sunny Caribbean home for the bleak Connecticut Colony, Kit Tyler is filled with trepidation. As they sail up the river to Kit’s new home, the teasing and moodiness of a young sailor named Nat doesn’t help. Still, her unsinkable spirit soon bobs back up. What this spirited teenager doesn’t count on, however, is how her aunt and uncle’s stern Puritan community will view her. In the colonies of 1687, a girl who swims, wears silk and satin gowns, and talks back to her elders is not only headstrong, she is in grave danger of being regarded as a witch. When Kit befriends an old Quaker woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond, it is more than the ascetics can take: soon Kit is defending her life. Who can she count on as she confronts these angry and suspicious townspeople?–Emilie Coulter for Amazon
3. THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY, (series), Trenton Lee Stewart
After Reynie Muldoon responds to an advertisement recruiting “gifted children looking for special opportunities,” he finds himself in a world of mystery and adventure. The 11-year-old orphan is one of four children to complete a series of challenging and creative tasks, and he, Kate, Constance, and Sticky become the Mysterious Benedict Society. After being trained by Mr. Benedict and his assistants, the four travel to an isolated school where children are being trained by a criminal mastermind to participate in his schemes to take over the world. The young investigators need to use their special talents and abilities in order to discover Mr. Curtain’s secrets, and their only chance to defeat him is through working together. Readers will challenge their own abilities as they work with the Society members to solve clues and put together the pieces of Mr. Curtain’s plan. In spite of a variety of coincidences, Stewart’s unusual characters, threatening villains, and dramatic plot twists will grab and hold readers’ attention. Fans of Roald Dahl or Blue Balliett will find a familiar blend of kid power, clues, and adventure in Society, though its length may daunt reluctant or less-secure readers. Underlying themes about the power of media messages and the value of education add to this book’s appeal, and a happy ending with hints of more adventures to come make this first-time author one to remember.—Beth L. Meister, Pleasant View Elementary School, Franklin, WI for School Library Journal
4. THIS IS WHAT I DID, Ann Dee Ellis **
Eighth-grader Logan is struggling to deal with a violent situation he witnessed a year ago between his best friend, Zyler, and Zyler’s abusive father but insists to everyone around him that he is fine. Just fine. Reluctant readers will be drawn into this story, which also includes bullying classmates and a dismal winter camping trip. Frequent line breaks, screenplay-style dialogue, and e-mails and notes illustrated with black icons break up the scenes. Logan gets to play one of the Lost Boys in the school play, and finds that the theater crowd offers a respite from bullies. A friendship with a girl named Laurel (a palindrome collector who is is thinking of changing her name to Laral), and a relationship with a counselor help Logan to begin the healing process and convince him to reconnect with Zyler. This psychological drama effectively explores our failure to protect youth from abuse inflicted by peers or adults.–Cindy Dobrez, for Booklist
5. MONSTER, Walter Dean Myers **
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action. Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence. The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made.–Kirkus Reviews
6. ABARAT, (series), Clive Barker
Like The Thief of Always, Barker’s first book for children, this tale finds a bored protagonist venturing into a fantastical world. The novel begins with a rather cryptic scene of three women on a “perilous voyage… [emerging] from the shelter of the islands.” The action then shifts to Candy Quackenbush of Chickentown, Minn., who hates her life as the daughter of an alcoholic father and a depressed mother. One day, humiliated by her teacher, Candy skips out of school and heads for the prairie, where she stumbles on a derelict lighthouse and a creature with eight heads, John Mischief. The opening scene and the thrust of the novel gradually connect, as Candy begins an adventure to a mysterious archipelago called Abarat. Skilled at fantasy, Barker throws plenty of thrills and chills at readers. Candy becomes a pawn between Mischief and the man (Christopher Carrion, “Lord of Midnight”) from whom Mischief has stolen something of great value. However, by the middle of the novel, readers may feel that Barker pulls out too many stops; he floods the pages with scores of intriguing characters and a surfeit of subplots (some of which dead-end, perhaps to be picked up in one of the three planned sequels). The author’s imagination runs wild as he conjures some striking imagery (“Dark threads of energy moved through her veins and leaped from her fingertips” says one of the three women in the opening scene) and cooks up a surreal stew of character portraits (rendered in bold colors and brushwork, they resemble some of Van Gogh’s later work). But much of the novel feels like a wind-up for the books to follow and, after this rather unwieldy 400-page ride, readers my be disappointed by so many unresolved strands of the plot.
7. THE THIEF, (series), Megan Whalen Turner
Things are not what they seem in this story of wit, adventure, and philosophy. Gen, an accomplished thief incarcerated for stealing the king’s seal, is dragged from his cell by the king’s magus, who is on a quest. The prize is Hamiathes’s Gift, said to be a creation of the gods that confers the right of rule on the wearer. During the quest, the magus and Gen take turns telling the youngest member of their party myths about the Eddisian god of thieves. Turner does a phenomenal job of creating real people to range through her well-plotted, evenly paced story. No one is entirely evil or completely perfect. Gen is totally human in his lack of discipline, seeming lack of heroism, and need for sleep and food. The magus makes the transition from smug, superior scholar to decent guy in a believable fashion. Turner also does a neat job of puncturing lots of little prejudices. There are many deft lessons in this story. As absorbing as it is, the best part lies in the surprise ending. Though it is foreshadowed throughout, it is not obvious?its impact is more like morning sunlight than a lightning bolt. This book is sure to be a hot item with adventure and fantasy lovers, and YAs who like snide, quick-tempered, softhearted heroes will love Gen.?Patricia A. Dollisch, DeKalb County Public Library, Decatur, GA for School Library Journal
