Who knows about the awards?

The highlight of the American Library Association’s Midwinter meeting for children’s librarians every year is the annual awards ceremonies. The ceremony is always held early in the morning in front of a packed room full of conference-weary attendees,who wait hopefully for the announcements. Many libraries hold mock-Newbery events prior to the conference in which staff and patrons can vote on the books they think should be awarded the Newbery Medal, so everyone has a stake in the outcome. The ALA awards are the most prestigious award childrens books can get in America. This year’s event happened this week in Dallas, Texas.

News of the winners of the award spreads quickly throughout libraryland. If you haven’t heard, then check these books out. Jack Gantos won the Newbery Medal for his novel Dead End in Norvelt and Chris Raschka won the Caldecott award for the best children’s book illustrations for his wordless picture book A Ball for Daisy.

Normally publicity about the award would spread quickly in print and on TV. The New York Times and other mainstream papers carried stories about the winners. As the Publishers Weekly pointed out however, the usually reliable Today show on NBC did not interview the winners. PW sounds a bitter note about how children’s literature is undervalued and many of us will agree. Parents are often the last people to learn about the medal winners, yet many of them like to buy good books for children’s birthdays or take them out of the library for children. Lots more parents watch TV than read the print newspapers. It is a shame that important new children’s books are not being publicized on the shows that people watch.

Perhaps it’s time for librarians, teachers, and others who care about books for children to write to NBC and the other networks and tell them what they are missing. If we are going to keep children reading and writers and illustrators producing great books for them, we have to urge the media to publicize the best that is being produced. In the meantime we can publicize the books in our libraries and on our Facebook pages and Tweets. Let's make our voices heard in support of children's books and reading!

Making the Most of the Neglected Years

Occasionally an article appears in a newspaper or journal that appears to have little connection with libraries or education but which, on second thought, offers insights into children’s services. The NY Times published a piece this week about how scientists are turning their attention to changes in children during the middle childhood period of 5 or 6 to 10 or 11 years of age. These crucial years, before the turmoil of adolescence are a time when children’s brains are becoming more adult-like. Almost all societies offer special roles to children as they enter middle childhood and become capable of taking responsibility for adult-like tasks. In many pastoral societies, young girls are given the responsibility of caring for younger siblings, in some communities they learn to prepare family meals; boys learn to watch flocks and tend livestock or they learn the rudiments of hunting. In Western societies there is no comparable assigning of tasks. Few families expect 7 or 8-year-olds to babysit or help much in the house or garden. The acknowledgement of a child’s growing maturity at this time is marked by starting school and learning the developmental tasks of highly-developed societies—learning to read, to calculate, and to understand the tools we depend on in our daily life. All teachers, librarians, and parents acknowledge the importance of school in our culture and especially the importance of learning to read, but for the most part we don’t think about school as an introduction to adult work. All too often school is thought of as an interlude—a chance to get children cared for during the day and keeping them out of mischief. The tasks of school are often considered artificial lessons that must be mastered in order to pass tests and achieve recognition.

The scientists who study middle childhood have noted that these years are the time when children begin to be noticed and brought into society. In infancy and early childhood, in many cultural settings, babies and children are almost ignored. Sometimes they are not even given names until they reach the middle childhood years of becoming useful. No other creature has the long, extended growing-up period that human children have, and of course the period has become more prolonged as human work has become more complex. Perhaps it would be useful for more of us to think about the wonderful period of middle childhood when, with a brain grown to adult size, children are poised to learn more quickly and easily than they will during other periods of life. School age children are ready to be challenged with new tasks, new knowledge and new insight into other people. Most librarians have noticed that these middle-childhood years often coincide with a greater interest in reading than most people will have in later life. These are the years when we should offer children a rich and varied diet of books and other media that will stimulate their imagination and also give them a grounding in the realities of the world around them. All too often libraries become so fascinating by the joys of picture books and storytimes for toddlers that the slightly older school aged children are neglected. We are lucky that scientists are pointing out the importance of this life stage and as librarians and teachers we should take advantage of some of the new insights to offer the best we have to children starting their years of adult responsibility.

Why are libraries invisible?

For those of us who are concerned with libraries and make them a part of our lives, it’s often discouraging to discover how many of our friends and neighbors don’t make libraries a central part of their thinking even when they try to encourage their children to read. I was reminded of this again reading a blog post by a mother concerned about her daughter’s reluctance to read. Mia Wenjen, the blogger, started by pointing out that the loss of the Border’s chain of bookstores is going to affect the reading habits of many children. There’s no argument about that and librarians and teachers across the country are mourning the loss of one of the few bookstores serving many communities. Nonetheless, in describing her technique for turning her daughter into a voracious reader, I was surprised at what a small role the library played. First on the list of steps to take to encourage your child to read was to make regular trips to the bookstores to buy books. There is nothing wrong with that, but very few families these days have access to bookstores; for many the only place to buy books is the scanty space in a big box store. Besides that, very few families have the money to spend on buying children’s books regularly. Another technique mentioned was for a parent to start a reading group. Again, this is a fine idea, but many libraries already have reading groups for children and they have a wide selection of books to support them. A reading group in a home is likely to have very limited access to books unless one or more of the families involved has an unusually wide selection of books at home. What was the problem with the library? Well, the short three-week borrowing period seemed to be the major one. That time was often too short for the girl to finish her book. Perhaps libraries should think about encouraging parents and children who find the borrowing period too short. Most libraries offer renewals online and by telephone, which lengthens the period to six weeks or even longer if others are not clamoring to take out the same book. Do we publicize this flexibility enough? Perhaps a renewal notice in each book that goes out would help some families. Most of all, the problem seems to be that many families that are trying hard to encourage their children to read do not know about library services available to them. Librarians often look around the busy library and notice the children who are there reading, sharing books, enjoying programs. They don’t see the children who rarely enter the building. Just because we work there every day doesn’t mean that all members of the community understand how many books and other materials are available. Mia Wenjen is right; the loss of so many bookstores is affecting the reading habits of many children in our communities. Now is a great time for librarians to step up their PR efforts and try harder than ever to remind people that despite financial cutbacks and hard times, the public and school libraries are still the best reading support in the community. We need to push that message out more than ever before.

A study to watch for

Although the full report hasn't yet been released, Scholastic's survey of 2000 children about their attitudes toward e-books seems to have some interesting tidbits. According to a N.Y. Times report today, the report shows that not very many kids have access to e-books, but they would like to read e-books. Many of them say they would read for fun more often if they had e-book readers and could use those instead of print books. At the same time, they express a liking for the old-fashioned print on paper books--but then, don't adults have the same dual response to e-books? It seems to me most readers enjoy reading e-books for their practical advantages, but the tug of emotional attachment comes from print books that we have read over the years. Probably both formats will survive for many years to come and those of us who are lucky, including libraries, can have the best of both worlds--as long as we can pay the price.

Gotta Keep Reading

As of today almost half a million people have watched the video "Gotta Keep Reading" made by students at a middle school in Florida. Like many other useful and valuable items about reading, it was made famous by Oprah Winfrey who featured it on one of her TV shows. Any teacher, parent, or librarian's heart will be warmed by watching the students, each one clutching a book, sway to the music and sing about the joys of reading a good book. The children look natural and happy, but it would be fun to see them actually sit down and start reading those books. Someone ought to consider having a sit-in for book reading, where students would sit down in the schoolyard and read quietly for a few minutes. That might be an effective video too, although the sound track would be far different. Let's hope this video encourages kids not only to pick up a book and sing, but to have some quiet time to settle down and read.

Do we need a new term?

Recently there has been a flurry of online chatter about whether we need a new term for reading from a screen as opposed to reading on a page. Take a look at this blog for example. The term that seems to be cropping up most often is "screening", although that ruins the image of wealthy people in the Hollywood hills screening films in their rec rooms. Not to mention the screening we all endure at airports. You have to wonder whether reading words differs from one medium to another. Does reading handwriting differ from reading printed type? What about reading characters in Chinese as compared with reading alphabetic scripts? Are the differences great enough to require a new word? For librarians and teachers the important issue may be whether children who habitually read from a screen are having a different experience from those who read from a book. And are these differences great enough to require a different word? It's still an open question, but after trying my first Kindle yesterday, my own feeling is that the differences between e-books and paper books are far less than the similarities. One will be more convenient than another under specific circumstances, but in reading it's the ideas and story that matters--not the material on which it appears.

Should they read what they like?

For generations children's librarians debated whether children should be allowed to read any book they wanted--series books? comic books? books with bad grammar?--or whether libraries should concentrate on collecting only the best books. That debate has pretty well been ended, with popularity conquering "elitist" librarians' tastes. Now the schools are going through the same arguments. According to a front page story in today's N.Y. Times, English teachers in some schools have given up on class novels and turned to a new approach that lets every child choose his or her own reading. Tempting books on a variety of reading levels are offered to middle grade or high school students who choose according to their own taste. The teacher discusses the reading individually with each student. Does this work? Apparently in some schools children become enthusiastic about the books they choose and enjoy the process. Whether it is realistic to expect a teacher in a large class to read and discuss the dozens of books on an individual basis is another question. And whether it is important for children to have some experience with the classic reading of recent years is yet another issue. The results aren't final yet, but teachers, desperate to get kids to read anything, are offering wider and wider choices in reading and the trend seems to be toward more pop culture and fewer class novels.

Is this what we've been dreading?

The Kindle craze has swept some schools, and some librarians and teachers are predicting that textbooks and entertainment reading alike will be moving to electronic format. There are roomers that a new Kindle 3 will revolutionize reading by bringing graphics to the Kindle screen. Reactions to this have been mixed, as shown in this Publisher's Weekly blog and the College Humor video clip. It makes you laugh, but also makes you think about what might be gained and lost as more and more text moves into electronic format. Is this really what we want?

What will they read this summer?

Summer reading lists have been popular--at least with teachers--for a long time. Often the books listed by the schools are featured in public libraries and large bookstores so students can pick them up easily. One questions that's often raised is how to balance classics with popular reading on these lists. The scales are turning in favor of popular books according to an article in the Boston Globe If the reason for these lists, the argument goes, is to get students to enjoy reading, there's no point in assigning books that are too difficult and/or "boring". Who would read Jane Austen when Pride and Prejudice and Vampires is on the list, as it is on several high school lists this summer? Many librarians and teachers hope that developing a love of reading will lead teens to wider reading and eventually perhaps to the classics. And if they don't read the traditional canon, is that so bad? Maybe encouraging teenagers to read manga from Japan, journalists from India and Afghanistan and novels from South America will be better preparation for 21st century life than reading the old standbys like Kipling, Dickens and Melville.

More ways to get kids reading

Children love to make their own videos and express their own ideas and smart librarians and teachers help them along as much as possible. School Library Journal offers a roundup of digital products that will spark children's interests in learning and reading. Media producers are aware that many teachers are not adept at working with video cameras or editing the results, so a product like Animoto will cause rejoicing. With this tool, students can produce lively, inviting 30-second reviews of books. These will get other students talking and reading. Other products listed include a new database of books and authors that will help kids choose what they want to read next. This is a list to print out and use as a resource for providing your own stimulus package for reading.

Have you read this book?

Parents and other adults are often irritated when their child asks them to read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus or some other favorite story "one more time". Kids know the value of repetition and will happily listen to the same story, word by word, over and over again. Even in today's fast-changing world, children appreciate the new but still value the familiar and we ought to keep that in mind. In today's N.Y. Times Verlyn Klinkenborg reminds us that many adults have also learned the value of rereading familiar books. One of the reasons books won't disappear from our lives is because of the stability of the text. We can go back time and time again to see the same words telling the same story, but our vision and our experiences open new paths into the book. Even those of us who welcome change and enjoy the new avenues opened by technology in recent years have to be sure we don't discard the past. New formats add to the mix but they don't lessen the value of older ones. Each new perspective helps weave a richer fabric in our minds and in our memories. Let's be sure to share them all with children.

Publishing online

Techniques in publishing are changing so fast that librarians can scarcely keep up. One of the newest ventures starting this month is Scribd.com a site that will offer authors a chance to upload books, documents, stories, articles or whole books and then selling them. According to a N.Y. Times article, the author will receive 80 percent of the sales price--far more than authors receive as royalties on print books. The trick, of course, will be in the marketing. How will potential readers learn about what's available? Will they be willing to purchase books from new and untested authors who haven't been vetted by a publisher or reviewed by a critic? It's expected that the price of the books will be low, perhaps two dollars each, so buying one is more like buying an extra coffee rather than buying a book. And an author could offer a chapter free or at very low cost so the reader could sample the goods before investing the full price. It's impossible to know how this experiment will turn out, but important for librarians to follow. Will we be building collections this way in the future?