Tech vs Book

I've been reading a lot of articles lately about technology and children. Opinions on how much time kids should spend on technology, what kinds of technology they should use, the educational benefits of technology, the rules parents should set about technology are as wide and hot (I mean varying) as the sun. 

We are spending so much time worrying about technology. 

Every single person has a limited amount of time each day. Twenty-four hours, sixteen if you sleep. How much of that time do we fritter away? I know I fritter, and I consciously try not to. But when I have no plan of action, my time melts away before my eyes, gone in a flash, and there is too little to show for it. 

The same is doubly true for our children. When I think of the time I wasted watching television as a child, I truly, truly want to cry. What could I have done with that time? Hours and hours and hours of time? Anything, probably. Dream, learn, grow, play, serve, make friends. And I can't get it back. 

Check out this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/sep/07/children-reading-fun-fallen-study

Here are the opening paragraphs:

The proportion of children reading for pleasure has declined as their time is crowded with other activities, and more than a fifth never read in their own time, according to research published on Friday.

The study, which finds a clear link between reading outside class and high achievement in school, reveals that fewer children are reading comics and magazines.

The research by the National Literacy Trust was based on a study of more than 21,000 children carried out last year.

It finds that text messages are the most commonly read material outside of class.

This is not about high quality, excellent literature. Fewer children are reading comic books and magazines. Text messages are the most commonly read material outside of class. 

How much time are our children spending texting?

In 2005, four out of ten children said they read outside of school in their free time. Now, just eight years later, it's three out of ten. 

Even if you don't care about reading, your kids won't be high achievers in school if they don't read at home. They won't. They simply won't. 

And now the standards are being raised all across the country. David Coleman, the man who orchestrated the language arts portion of the common core, recently said this in a lecture to educators.

"It is rare in a working environment that someone says, “Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.” Translation to the classroom: No more primary grade essays about lost teeth or middle school essays about prepubescent angst. Instead, students must provide critical analysis of the “Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic." 

This is real. "Allegory of the Cave" is listed as an exemplary informational text in the common core for twelve year olds, as is Reagan's "Address to Students at Moscow State University." Our kids are going to be asked to read and understand and analyze difficult stuff at younger and younger ages. 

Whether you agree with these fundamental changes to our schools or not, it is coming. Actually, it's here. I recently heard a lecture where the common core was described as the biggest educational shift in the past fifty years in America, bigger even than No Child Left Behind. 

(Read this article if you are interested in learning more about the Common Core and how David Coleman and his beliefs are changing the world (He is now the president of the College Board and has plans to completely revamp the ACT and the SAT so that they are "knowledge based.") 

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2716 )

Will our kids be ready? No. Not if they are not getting some serious reading in at home. Because there isn't time for them to play catch up in school. There just isn't time. 

They have to read at home. They have to. 

So I suggest this. Instead of worrying about technology, let's worry about reading. Let's make time to read. Let's force our kids to make time to read in whatever way we, as parents, feel is best. 

Forget about technology! Somehow, make it a non-issue! Technology is not going to save our children. It is not going to help them create a critical analysis of the "Allegory of the Cave." But great comic books with fabulous stories and fabulous words that suck our kids in until they can't stop reading just might save them. Great comic books like Tin Tin, and Asterix. (Seriously, have you read the language in those things? Awesome.)

Here's a picture book list for today. Get thee to the library!!! (And drop the iPhones in the book return on the way in. He he.) 

Dogs on Duty by Dorothy Patent

Charlie's First Night by Amy Hest

Demolition by Sally Sutton

Dreaming Up by Christy Hale

Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns by Hena Kahn

Goldie Locks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems

Hippopposites by Janik Coat

Just Ducks by Nicola Davies

 

A Little Bookroom

If you've ever doubted the power of books to save and make a life, read this:

My Father's Books by Luan Starova. 

At the very least, it will motivate you to make books more important in your life. Not just urging your kids to do their reading homework every night, but using books to define your own life, and letting them see that definition every day.

Here is a snippet from another favorite book of mine, a wonderful book of short stories, magical tales, originally published in the early 1900s. It's the introduction written by the author, Eleanor Farjeon, and I think of it every day when I find books EVERYWHERE in our house. In the bathroom. On the floor. On the couches. Under beds. In the room I affectionately call "The dungeon," where the bikes are stored and the dogs sleep (????). This passage from the introduction demonstrates the joyous (if messy) life of a family that loves to read.

"In the home of my childhood there was a room we called ‘The Little Bookroom’. True, every room in the house could have been called a bookroom. Our nurseries upstairs were full of books. Downstairs my father’s study was full of them.  They lined the dining-room walls, and overflowed into my mother’s sitting-room, and up into the bedrooms. It would have been more natural to live without clothes than without books. As unnatural not to read as not to eat.

Of all the rooms in the house, the Little Bookroom was yielded up to books as an untended garden is left to its flowers and weeds. There was no selection or sense of order here. In dining-room, study, and nursery, there was choice and arrangement; but the Little Bookroom gathered to itself a motley crew of strays and vagabonds, outcasts from the ordered shelves below, the overflow of parcels bought wholesale by my father in the sales-rooms. Mush trash, and more treasure. Riff-raff and gentlefolk and noblemen. A lottery, a lucky dip for a child who had never been forbidden to handle anything between covers. That dusty bookroom, whose windows were never opened, through whose panes the summer sun struck a dingy shaft where gold specks dance and shimmered, opened magic casements for me through which I looked out on other worlds and times than those I lived in: worlds filled with poetry and prose and fact and fantasy...

Crammed with all sorts of reading, the narrow shelves rose halfway up the walls; their tops piled with untidy layers that almost touched the ceiling. The heaps on the floor had to be climbed over, columns of books flanked the window, toppling at a touch. You tugged at a promising binding, and left a new surge of literature underfoot; and you dropped the book that had attracted you for something that came to the surface in teh upheaval. Here, in the Little Bookroom, I learned, like Charles Lamb, to read anything that can be called a book. The dust got up my nose and made my eyes smart, as I crouched on the floor or stood propped against a bookcase, physically uncomfortable and mentally lost. I was only conscious of the story I was reading, and my heart which was in the story as well." 

There's more to that wonderful introduction, but I will stop there.

Do we want our children to remember our nice, sparkly furniture or our super clean and organized shelves? 

I hope my children can say many things about me when I am gone and they are old. I'm sure they will say I was not a great cook, because I am not. I am terrible. I'm sure they will say I was not the best housekeeper, because I am not. I am terrible. (Sam came downstairs as I was writing this and asked me if I've washed the mattress cover Calvin threw up on last night. "No," I said. "Do you think we have to?" And I was serious. Sam said, that, um, yes. We probably should.) 

But I hope they will say, "Books were everywhere in my home. We ate, drank, and breathed books. Mom wanted us to know about the world, about good and bad, about the lives of others and the lives of incredible, imaginary people. She wanted us to expand our minds and our experiences, every, every minute. So our house was messy. But it was a Little Book-house. And, in the end, we were happy there."

Cool series for boys

This is a cool series. Good for kids second grade and up. These are intense, exciting retellings of myths and legends every kid should know. And every adult too. These covers are gorier than necessary, but remember, you should never, ever judge a book by its cover. Ever.

Legends by Anthony Horowitz

(Beasts and Monsters is a Bargain Book on Amazon right now. Four bucks for a hardcover!!!)

Nonfiction and fiction mixed together in fabulous books

These four picture books are worth reading to your older children, and if they don't want you to read them out loud, leave them in the bathroom. Leave them on the kitchen table. Leave them on their beds. Leave them somewhere and your kids will have ten minutes of amazing art mixed with a great story and a real life individual who made a difference in this world!

For the Birds: the Life of Roger Tory Peterson by Peggy Thomas


Mama Miti by Donna Jo Napoli


Jose! Born to Dance by Susanna Reich


Abe Lincoln Tells a Joke: How Laughter Saved the President (and the country) by Kathleen Krull

When everything comes together...

Friday, I read aloud to Lucy's fifth grade classroom. They were mesmerized by these two books:


A Weave of Words by Robert San Souci


Lincoln Tells a Joke: How Laughter Saved the President (And the Country) by Kathleen Krull

They were mesmerized. They were mesmerized because A Weave of Words is a terribly exciting story. You have to find out what happens. It is awesome, and after that, they were mesmerized by the Abraham Lincoln book because they all knew that Abe Lincoln was honest, but did they know he was funny? And did they know he was funny and relied on his sense of humor in the most dire of circumstances? They didn't, and they loved finding it out.

It was truly awesome. Every ear in that classroom was glued to the words in those stories, even the ESL girl who came here from China only six months earlier.

That is the power of a good story.

Then fast-forward to Saturday. After a cello lesson, I talked with Lucy's teacher for a moment. He came from a home of seven children, not much money, but chock-full of books. Their dad read them Beowulf  out loud at the dinner table. For fun. And all seven children are brilliant. "Idiot Savants," he told me. Then he bemoaned the future of kids today. "None of my students read," he said. "None of them even own a book! And these are children of educated parents who should know better!" His wife is a high school English teacher and she is no longer allowed to have her children read novels like they used to. They now read passages from things. Non-fiction articles. Maybe one or two novels a year.

Not an hour later I was driving to pick Mary up from a rehearsal, musing on what I'd talked about with our cello teacher, and I heard this story on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/19/169798643/new-reading-standards-aim-to-prep-kids-for-college-but-at-what-cost

Listen to this story. It's not long. Eleven minutes. Or you can read the text. Even if your eyes roll to the back of your head when you hear the words Common Core. Even if you think this is just another passing educational craze. Read this article, because you are wrong. The Common Core is serious stuff, and it is completely changing what happens at school for our kids. (Unless you live in Texas, Virginia, Minnesota, and Nebraska which didn't adopt the Core) And we need to know as parents what this means and what is changing in our schools.

Without question, the core will mean that fewer novels are read in school. There isn't the time anymore, teachers have so much to cover, and the emphasis isn't there, so any state, any school, any teacher serious about adopting the Common Core standards is going to assign fewer whole novels.

What does this mean?

It means that it will become an increasingly rare experience for children to fall into a book, read it from beginning to end, and leave hungry for more, like Lucy's class experienced on Friday.

It means that this must now happen at home if we want our kids to love reading. This reading MUST happen at home.

I say this as a frustrated parent. I homeschool my third grader and he reads upwards of two hundred pages a day of literature, social studies, science. He is reading books from every decade, nonfiction books on every subject, novels of every sort. He reads constantly, and I can see it in his comprehension and his writing and just the way he talks in general.

Then there's my first grader who's in the public schools. I've bemoaned before that he will come home from school having not cracked a book. I know that doesn't mean he doesn't read. I know there are words and sentences all around him all day long at school. But he's still not reading, and when he gets home, he's my least likely to crack a book.

But reading—reading—is different than just decoding and deciphering words. We all know this to be true, so why are we taking this away from kids? Why aren't we encouraging it more at home? How many books are in your shelves at home? How many books do your children own themselves? I went to Walmart today. It is very telling that the number of children's books in that store could fit on one/tenth of an aisle, but the movie/video game/technology section of the store takes up an entire corner. I complained about this to Sam, and he said, "It's demand, honey. If people were buying books, Walmart would have a huge section of books."

We could change that. We really could. If people started buying books with the same vigor they bought video games and movies, what would happen in our country? They are estimating now that about fifty-percent of children graduating from high school this year will have to take at least one remedial course in college to get them ready for freshman level courses.

Let's make sure our children do not fit into that fifty percent.



Even if you listen to this article and you agree with David Coleman

Expanding

These picture books will expand you and your children. They will make you think. You will finish the book in a different place from when you began.

You will never be the same. I hope. Please give them a try!

Infinity and Me by Kate Hosford



Little Bird by Germano Zullo



Abe Lincoln's Dream by Lane Smith



House Held Up By Trees by Ted Kooser


Jimmy the Greatest! by Jairo Buitrago



The Emily Sonnets: The Life of Emily Dickinson




And this is not a picture book. It's a YA Biography of the Bronte sisters, but I found it truly fascinating. If you love Jane Eyre (I do) or Wuthering Heights (I do not), you will definitely find this interesting, and it was such a quick read, I read it in a night.

The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne by Catherine Reef

Some Real Gems

I know I posted about some of these last Tuesday, but the ones that are repeats have had a week to marinate at our house and we love them more and more.

Truly every one of these picture books are absolute gems and you must check them out. You must. There is humor and subtlety and depth and resilience. Oh! If every picture book could be this good.

The Hueys in the New Sweater by Oliver Jeffers (about a boy who wants to be different—then everyone else wants to be different too—the illustrations alone will make you laugh!)

Ellen's Broom by Kelly Starling Lyons (about the end of slavery and what it was like for slaves who hadn't been allowed legal marriages by their owners to finally get married—good for younger kids because the text is spare and simple. Lots of room for discussion.)

Old Robert and the Sea-Silly Cats by Barbara Josse (I honestly didn't care about the story as I read this book, the language was so delicious. It rolled off my tongue and made me want to say the words over again, just to say them. I am not a language connoisseur, so this is a rare experience for me! The story is great too, though.)

The Triumphant Story of an Underdog Olympig! by Victoria Jamieson (The ending is too awesome for words. Completely perfect and completely unexpected.)

Heroes of the Surf by Elisa Carbone (Flannery loves this one, though I would normally say this is a picture book for ages seven and up. The adventure is tangible to her, though she doesn't understand a lot of the words and there is a lot of text. This is truly a remarkable real story! All the kids have reread and reread it.)

Grammy Lamby and the Secret Handshake by Kate Klise (Nothing surprising here, but the story is so well thought out and the illustrations are wonderful. It makes you feel good about the world just to read it.)

Ralph Tells A Story by Abby Hanlon (Every teacher should read this to their kids as they are learning to write, and every parent should read it to their kids as they are encouraging their kids to shoot for the stars.)

Laundry Day Maurie J. Manning (What a wonderful story to show that good deeds generally get rewarded in the end, though not always in the way we think.)



  

 

And here is a link to a really heartbreaking/wonderful article in the New York Times. Read it if you want to read something else that will make you feel better about the world we live in. Well, better and worse I suppose:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/can-forgiveness-play-a-role-in-criminal-justice.html?_r=0

I Dream of Writing Club

One of my New Year's goals is to spend more individual time with each child doing specific things they like to do.

This means I was supposed to play tennis with Shaemus yesterday, but it was dreary and cold and I was too tired to drive around and find an empty court, so we played Battleship instead. We tied, something you may not know is possible with Battleship.

Each child has two hours per week designated to them. Seven to eight on Wednesdays is Lucy time. 

I was still feeling pretty tired by seven o'clock, even without the tennis. Lucy and I had talked earlier about doing a writing club for our special hour on Wednesdays, but I asked her if she'd rather just play a game instead. Playing games is a fallback for me when I'm too tired to think. 

Lucy loves games, so I was surprised when she said she'd rather do Writer's Club. Pleased by this (though still tired), I walked up the stairs and fell onto her bed and said, "Come snuggle then and we'll make a plan." 

We decided to write a book together based on an idea I'd had a few months earlier about a girl who can see images coming out of people's mouths when they speak. These images are very revealing and therefore dangerous, so her parents keep her safely locked away inside an opaque glass castle. Lucy and I spent an hour talking through the possible plot of our story. 

It was so incredibly wonderful. I loved every minute of it (even though I was still tired!). Lucy kept asking the best questions and making the best comments: 

"How could Christienne see the people through the glass if nobody else could earlier? Wouldn't people know there was trouble?"

"I don't think he should be a fairy, Mom. That reminds me too much of Tinkerbell and England." 

And my favorite, because she was so right, "Maybe we should have this take place in Africa, or someplace like Africa, so as she's running away, she's running out into the desert." 

We finished Writer's Club with a plan. She's going to write the prologue (which may or may not stay in the novel when we're done), and I'm going to write the chapter when they discover the magicked toad that can fly and and speak and basically be the fairy Lucy didn't think we should have.

So many people aren't comfortable with writing, but doing it with your child can be such a great thing. Together you will notice inconsistencies you wouldn't notice on your own. One idea will spark off another. You'll get insights into your child's mind and they will get insights into yours, and the time you spend together will be quality time well spent. I'll bet a lot of you are thinking that your child wouldn't want to do this with you, but that is where you'd be WRONG. They will love getting this one on one time with you, and the resulting book, bad or good, will be something you both treasure always.

And while I'm at it, I'll share two books Lucy got for Christmas that she really enjoyed.

Museum of Thieves by Lian Tanner (currently a bargain book on Amazon!) 

And Juniper Berry by M.P. Kozlowsky