Kit and Abigail

So, in all my gushing over how cool Twilight looks, I've failed to note that Kit's movie is coming out very soon.

I'm not quite as sure that it will do well in theaters, but it should be noted (but won't be by newspapers) that it will be a smashing success on dvd. After all, it was the huge success of the two previous made for TV/straight to dvd American Girl movies that prompted the idea of a theatrical release to begin with.

Which was again built on the insane success of girls reading stories (and playing with expensive dolls) about girls who had adventures and saved people and rebelled against the establishment. And wore really interesting clothes and had tea parties.

Number One Theme of This Year's ALA

Reading (storytelling/information gathering) is at it's heart a social activity.

If you want to get more people (kids/teens) reading, give them opportunities to share books with other people. Let them join (listen) to books group discussions/activities/etc. even if they haven't read the book. Chances are at least a few of them will find it interesting enough to read

Keep reading to your kids. Harry Potter was popular not just because the kids made it so (by word of mouth - ie socializing) but also because parents and kids read them together/simultaneously. At the very least, show an interest in the stories they are reading, not just the amount and level they are reading.

Librarians Invade Disneyland!

Despite the fact that ALA wasn't any more useful professionally than CLA (possibly less), it was vastly more entertaining.

Largely because

1) Holly Black is completely awesome and I am so very cool bc I (and several dozen other librarians) own signed ARCs of her new book - which isn't out until October.

2) Cory Doctorow is even more awesome in person than in cyberspace. I did not think such a thing was possible.

3) Publishers love to give away free books (and posters) to librarians. (or sell them so cheaply they may as well be) We love publishers back. (our feet and back both disagree, however)

4) Authors like to sign the free books. We already adored the authors. We're not sure we can possibly adore them more than we already do.

5) Disneyland!

and best of all:

6) Book Cart Drill Team Championship. This so needs to be an Olympic Sport. I'd travel to another country to see that event.

LA Times Festival of Books Comics!

So....I went to the Festival of Books today, and it turned out that two of the three panels that I was able (and most wanted) to attend were on graphic novels. (Owing to the frustrating scheduling mentioned earlier.)

*********

The first was panel titled Comics: Superheroes of the Page & Screen and featured Jeph Loeb, Mike Mignola, and Steve Niles. Geoff Boucher moderated.

Loeb was hilarious, Mignola was pretty damn funny as well, and all three were entertaining and interesting. The overall conversation left me (internally) screaming "Wonder Woman!" But sadly, not in a good way.

Also sadly, no autographs as I was pretty ignorant of all their work beforehand and so wasn't prepared to go the the signing. More importantly, I had less than a half hour to get to the next panel, and UCLA is a freaking big campus.

**********

The second panel I went to was titled Tween Series Writing: Other Worlds and featured Cornelia Funke, Erin Hunter and Rick Riordan. Moderated by Sonja Bolle.

Funke is sweet and kick-ass smart, Hunter is sassy and funny as hell, and Riordan is just the kind of teacher you wished you had in middle school. Plus, there were tons of kids there, which was super-cool.

**********

The third panel was Reading Manga: A Japanese Phenomenon Comes to America, featuring Liza Coppola, Lillian M. Diaz Przybyl, and Frederik Schodt. Charles Solomon moderated.

This last was not quite as hilarity filled as the other two (although laughs were to be had, this is manga we're talking about), which may be due to it being made of reviewers and editors rather than writers. Or it could have been the heat. But it was still interesting and informative - if perhaps a bit basic at times, as anything involving manga (that isn't held at a con) must sadly still be.

Unfortunately, the manga fans were the ones pulling the stupid crap that comic fans gets stereotyped as doing (although, being manga fans, the "questions" centered around fanfic/art and scanlations.) I kept wanting to tell them to act their age, but the main problem did seem to be that they were.

*********

My most prized signature of the day was from multiple-Caldecott-winning-author and illustrator David Weisner, who signed my newly bought copy of Tuesday, possibly the first (mostly) wordless picture book I ever read. Since it was my love of wordless picture books (along with my love for the X-Men movies) that got me thinking maybe there was something to this whole comic book stuff, the day seemed more like "sequential art day" to me. :)

Oops! I forgot!

Also:

Angry Little Girl buttons!

Cute! Colorful! Angry!

And Lela's right, the bags did look kind of like bags of candy. Cute, colorful, angry candy.

hmmm...candy.....

Dear LA Times Festival of Books

Why, year after year, do you insist on having the panel on Tween fic and the panel on YA fic at the exact same time?

The whole "boys don't read bc its' something girls do, and girls have cooties!" is making the rounds again.

And once again, everyone's solution is to give them reading material (often comics) that screams "Boy! Boy! Boy! Boys only! No girls allowed!"

Which means that once again, everyone is failing to note that:

1) Comic stores may still be mainly for boys. Comics themselves? Not so much. Graphic novels? Not at all. Yes, there are certainly more "boy" comics than "girl" comics. But walking a reluctant reader over to the J GN section of their local library isn't all that likely to stop them from thinking that reading is for girls.

2) Giving boys "boy books" hardly addresses the root problem. Which is not just that reading is seen as something that girls and women do, but that boys can't (shouldn't?) do anything that is for girls.

3) Inasmuch as the lack male role models in early educational environments seems to be why boys see reading as "feminized" - rather than the actual material itself (which still feature more boys than girls, btw) - wouldn't recruiting more men to be kindergarten and (gasp!) preschool teachers be a better solution? (Oh, but then we may have to pay the latter decent salaries. And stop pretending that men can't be nurturing/that any man who likes small children is a predator.)

4) As my brother points out, guys don't read as much because they have more "choices." In other words, they are more likely to go to the movies or play video games. Both of which, especially the latter, tend to be made for and advertised at them more than women/girls. (Solution: Make more video games for girls! And stop pretending that teen girls don't go to movies!)

5) It's mostly only non-white and working class boys that fall behind their female peers in reading. Upper class white boys still beat everyone. Which means that there is more happening than just reading being considered feminine.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for efforts like Guys Read - as band-aids.

But....can we all get started on some long term solutions sometime this century?

Please?

Girlie Books

heh.

For all the talk about how required fiction in schools is very girl centric, the truth is that while most well-read women have read a decent number of the classic "boy stories" there are very few well-read men who have read Little Women, Anne of Green Gables or the like. (The one exception being Little House on the Prairie which actually is sometimes read in school, owing in equal parts to the TV show and Laura Ingalls Wilder herself being a teacher, imo.)

And this is why I love Buffy. Because it's written by someone who has actually read Little Women - or at least is aware enough of the story to know the special place that Christian Bale as Laurie occupies in our ....hearts.

On a similar note, the closing quote from the latest episode of Criminal Minds was from the creator of our dear Anne Shirley*.

For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won....

Yeah. There's a reason why I love Criminal Minds.

Well, several, actually. :)




(CM screencaps from Oracle of Quantico)

Speaking of TV shows that make me like TV...I finally saw last weeks episode of Numb3rs - "Power" - and wow. If only rape could be dealt with even half that well on even half the crime shows on air.



*I admit it. It took me a few times to realize that "Lucille" = "Lucy" :)

Correlation, Causation or Coincidence?

I keep feeling like I should have some deep thoughts about the WW/Playboy thing - and all manner of shit from the past year - happening at the same time that the American Library Association gave two of their major annual awards to graphic novels/comic books (in addition to this, the 2008 Caldecott went to a graphic novel for elementary school kids). Hell, even this year's Newbery went to an illustrated collection of interwoven stories and last year's Printz award went to a graphic novel.

However, it's just not quite there.......and I need to get ready for work.

thoughts, anyone?

There's A What On My What?

It's a little sad and scary how excited I am about this.

(excited enough to do my first ever wikipedia edit, btw)

But seriously, how cool is it that this year's Dr. Seuss award went to an early reader that was done in comic book format?



And hey! Now that I get actual weekends maybe you'll get a review of it sometime soon!

(don't count on it, though)

Random Observations and Rantings

Since I started this blog in part to rant about working retail - because I quickly learned that one cannot actually rant to family or friends about working retail (at least when one is middle class) because it will inevitably lead to various iterations of "yeah, but..." - I thought I'd kick off my last week as a bookseller with some random observations/advice from working at a bookstore:

1) When giving a title/author over the phone, always say it slowly and enunciate. The person you are speaking to doesn't have the option of going to the other room where it's quieter.

In fact, this is fairly good advice in the store as well. Your title/author may sound perfectly logical to you, but I promise you that unless you are asking for a bestseller along the lines of The Secret or The Da Vinci Code (NOT the latest one week bestseller from Douglas Preston), your friendly neighborhood bookseller is not likely to hear "for a fueding once more" as "For a Few Demons More."

2) Whoever decided that women are not as visually stimulated as men has never had to clean up the teen mag section of their local bookstore/supermarket. If those 13 year olds thought they could get away with it, those pictures of the Jonas brothers on their walls? Would be completely buck naked. I swear, it's like they have to go over every single inch of every single one of those things every month just hoping they'll get some skin this time. (btw, whotf r jobros n e way?)

3) The most recent issue of Bitch? We got enough to warrant a full, unencumbered, out to edge, front row, eye-level slot on the magazine rack this time. awesome

4) When looking for a book in the children's section with "love" in the title, have either the exact title or the author. Preferably both. "But I saw it at Walmart and it had a cover with bears hugging..." Does NOT cut it and will just make me hate you. Do you have any idea how may books we have in the store that fit that description? Much less in the search database?

5) Do not, under any circumstances, answer "Are you finding everything ok?" With "Not my wife/husband/friends!" Your friendly neighborhood bookseller may cease to even remotely friendly at this point. And I swear, if one more person answers with "Not my kids!" I swear I am going to smack them. How the fuck am I supposed to know you mean your 16 year old and not your 4 year old? On second thought, I think I'm just going to look all panicked and immediately ask for a detailed description of the kid(s).

6) That "never" goes double for making cracks about stuff being free when we can't get the scanners to work. Making fun of us isn't going to endear you to us or make us think you ought to have your own sitcom. We are just going to think you are a jerk and pathetically unoriginal.

7) It's also not funny or nice when you joke about working at a bookstore actually entailing work. That's right up with there with the people who proclaim "I'd love to work here! I'd read books all day!" (You can do that now, you know...and get paid pretty much the same.....since you'd be fired before your first day was over. Presuming you made it past the interview.....)

I know it sounds like you are being sympathetic, but all you are doing is making more work for me - because yes, smiling while I pick up, for the umpteenth time, the dozens of millimeter thin chapter books that someone decided would stand upright on a shelf - that is work. Especially if what I am pretending to smile at is someone commenting on how much my job must suck while they just stand there and watch me do it. That's why they can fire me for simply failing to be friendly enough.* So, I may not hate you as much as I hate the idiots that decide to answer "can I help you?" with a question that belongs in Deep Thoughts, but I certainly don't think that you are funny. And if you are trying to be kind, you are failing miserably.

8) Speaking of jerks and jokes made at the expense of people who have very little power - I stopped laughing at your dumb jokes last year when retail ceased to be my primary source of income. Yeah, you don't like that too well, do you?

9) Um....it's two days before Christmas, and we consistently do several thousand better that just about any other bookstore in the area on a normal day. We don't have shit. (No, seriously. We ran out of Goosebumps books this year, of all things.) Yeah, I know that the Riverside store does. Riverside still has copies because no one shops at Riverside. Why? Because they don't answer the effing phones for one....but if you'd like me to call them and have them put it on hold for you....

10) It's two days until Christmas. And Christmas is on a Tuesday this year. That makes today a Sunday. No, we cannot order it today and have it in before we close at 6 pm tomorrow.

11) "But it's cheaper on the website." Yes, that's because the website does not involve paying people like me.

12) I don't expect you to take my advice, but when you ask for it, and both I and the preteen fantasy fan** standing next to us advise you not to give your nine-year old daughter Tolkien as her first fantasy novel, I am a little miffed that you go ahead and get her The Hobbit anyway.

Now I, personally, loved The Hobbit at the tender age of 9***. However, I'd already read A Wrinkle in Time (et al), The Chronicle of Prydain, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Princess and the Goblin****. I may have even read The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown. In other words, lots and lots of fantasy books that actually have girls in them. But, please, do go on ahead and make your daughter's first introduction to fantasy a book that doesn't just feature a male protagonist (as does The Chronicles of Prydain) but is pretty much devoid of women and girls altogether. I'm sure that will go over quite well. Especially since it was clear that she would be reading it, rather than the two of you reading it together.

The Hobbit rocks. It also seems to think that girls are creatures more mythical and less likely than dragons. Methinks there are better first fantasy novels out there - for boys and girls. But wtf do I know.

13) Dear god, either my coworkers don't know the alphabet or they don't even bother to look. (Which, ok, Christmas, I can't really blame them.) I finally found 1 of our 2 copies of A Companion to Wolves next to The Princess Bride. I suppose I ought to thankful that it was in SciFi/Fantasy.



That's all for now, but I'm sure I'll have more. :)



*technically, I think I need to do more than that, but they can certainly cut my hours to the point where they might as well have fired me.

**I was initially just going to answer his question of "which cover would she like better?" Because I know better than to argue with customers that have that look in their eyes. The "I loved this as a kid and my kid will too!" look. (Yes, and that story your tell you kids to make them go to sleep will one day be a bestselling picture book!)

It was the 12 (?) year old girl that overheard our conversation that first suggested he pick something else.

***I may have actually been 10. But the point still remains.

****Too bad we didn't have that one in stock, I might have been able to persuade to him to see reason by telling him that George MacDonald's children's books were an inspiration to Tolkien. It also would have been fun watching him pretend to have already known that. Cuz tons of boys read MacDonald's stories nowadays.

And yes, I know I'm assuming that I know his daughter better than he does. But if he wasn't sure about the gift, he wouldn't have asked me for advice in the first place. He didn't give a damn about the covers, he just wanted me to tell him it was a fantastic idea. And possibly to brag about his daughter's literary feats.

The Things You Discover When You Should Be Sleeping

1) There are over 4,000 fan fiction stories based on the Animorphs series posted to fanfiction.net.

That makes it #6 in books.

What are numbers 1-5, you ask?

Well, you don't really need to be told that Harry Potter is #1

Lord of the Rings is #2

Twilight is #3

The Phantom of the Opera is #4

Tamora Pierce is #5

2) There are 9 stories posted to fanfiction.net based on The Princess and the Goblin

What the hell kind of fan fiction does one write about The Princess and the Goblin?

Apparently, several are sequels written by people unaware that there is an actual sequel. Or that didn't get it. (Just for the record, I loved it. I was, however, no more than 10 at the time, if that matters.)

3) Someone made a movie? MUST SEE!

Final Thought: I'm amused by the number of stories on fanfiction.net based on Eragon. Isn't that a bit redundant? Fan fiction based on Eragon, I mean?

TiVo Has Come to Save Us All

So, I get it when people complain about what's on TV. I complain about what's on TV. Quite a lot, actually.

What I don't really get is when people complain about what's on TV nowadays as if TV was somehow better in the past. I want to ask them what decade they really think compares favorably to the one we are in now.* Because while there may be a hell of a lot of crap on TV, there's also huge number of shows that are leaps and bounds above anything that's been on before. I mean, I agree that the loss of The Cosby Show left a void that has yet to be completely filled again, and that I have better judgement now as an adult than as a kid, but still. I kinda think that if there was something better that Silver Spoons on the air, we would have been watching that instead.

IMO, this is largely due to dvd's and TiVo. It's a lot harder to tell really deep stories if you can't count on repeat viewings. You can't really expect viewers to pick up nuances on first viewing, especially when the chapters are broadcast weeks or months or years apart. Pause and rewind buttons are essential as well. All of the things that the content owning companies hate about new media are the very things that make their products of better quality than they ever were before.**

Did I mention I got into a fight with my sister and dad last night? This was one of the arguments my sister gave. That she'd be more sympathetic to the writers if most of TV wasn't crap. Gee, maybe if writers got rewarded for better stories - ie got a better cut from the shows that are popular enough to sell dvds or be used as bribes to get people to watch ads - maybe they'd have more incentive to write better shows, instead of just what some network committee thinks will sell.

But then, she's also very confused because she thinks that the networks have free downloads available mostly because they will get more people to watch the show each week. Not that this isn't part of the reasoning, or wasn't the initial idea, but I kinda doubt it's the main purpose at this point. First of all, even when this is the case, it's important to remember that free downloads are partly a result of dvds success allowing TV to use arcs more often and make the arcs longer. It's more that networks feel the need to make past episodes of Lost available in order to not lose viewers, rather than because they think it will help them gain viewers in any noticeable amount.

Secondly, if this was the overriding reason, it would be the shows they are trying to heavily promote that would be the available for download (similar to the way the CW will repeat on Sunday episodes of shows they think might do better with a little push), not the shows that are already popular. I'm sure that they use the free downloads to boost their sweeps ratings, but it makes more sense that during the rest of the year, the downloads are mostly there to generate ad revenue.

But then, mostly I just wanted to smack her for flat out saying that she doesn't care if the TV shows her kids grow up to watch are smarter than the ones she watches. Unfortunately, I was so floored by such an idiotic sentiment that at the time my response was (while possibly a good one in other contexts) exactly the wrong tact to take with her. A part of me wishes I'd been clever enough to say something like "well, it's nice that you don't care if your kids never have the opportunity to read Newbery quality literature. Yes, let's stick to the dime novels of the 1900's, it's all fluff anyways." But that would have just made her perpetually defensive about the subject.

Sorry for rambling. It was just very frustrating to come across this kind of attitude in my own family at the same time that I'm finally really getting going in the career that I hope will eventually allow me to help teach media literacy to kids of all ages. I really think my sister thinks that I've just kind of fallen into this because I've always like books. The truth is that that I've been trying to find something that would help me get to where I want to be, which is designing educational programs (both the event and the computer type), toys and/or media for kids that teaches them how to be better writers and readers of all media.

I did at first apply for library jobs in part because I figured that if I was going to work around books, I might as well get paid more to do so. But I was able to see really quickly that public libraries are a great place to experiment with allowing kids to become content creators and readers of all media - especially right now as so many of them are, like the netowrks, looking for ways to not become obsolete in the face of new media. And I suspected this might be true even before I applied. I may have yet to read The Anarchist in the Library, but it's not as if I began this career completely ignorant of how most librarians view things like censorship, free speech, and public access to information.

I'll be getting started on my library school application soon, but I already know that I'll eventually be taking classes in things like film studies and child psychology as well. One of the big reasons why I haven't just up and left CA already is because while it may be expensive to live here, one of the most affordable and best schools for Information Architecture (as applied to libraries) is a CA state school. (Actually, they both are, but San Jose is loads cheaper than UCLA, and still very well respected.) I don't want to just learn how to use to the tools available to serve children and teens better, I want to figure out how to design the tools themselves so they serve teens and children better.

So, yeah, last night's conversation was annoying on several levels.

And then there was the lovely xenophobia/racism exhibited by my extended family earlier that day. Which, considering that the other side of my extended family (not present) is half asian - just like the people they were making fun of - yeah, I'm so ready for them all to go home already. (And yes, I was a coward and kept my mouth shut. I suck.) At least Saturday should be fun, because we'll be to busy coordinating who is waiting in line and who is getting the Fast Passes for there to be too many cringe inducing conversation drifts.

*by which I mean simply the overall quality of storytelling. Not, sadly, the amount of racism, sexism, or unnecessary violence.

** on average - I'm certainly not saying that more than a fraction of what's on TV now could even dare to be compared to All in the Family. I'm saying that TV is quickly becoming more literary because viewers are able to watch shows in ways similar to how we read books.

Another preview pic of the Where the Wild Things Are movie. (via Shakesville)

In case you missed it, here's the first.

Wait, Mr. Elephant!

I've been at CLA for most of the day. My first day at my first professional conference. Why, I almost feel like a real grown-up!



The last workshop I went to was the best. It was about Kamishibai, a traditional Japanese storytelling format. It's kind of like a cross between a slide presentation and a flannel board story. Kamishibai stories usually consist of about 10 large cards that have illustrations on the front and cues/the text of the story on the back. You flip the cards as you tell the story, just like you would flip pages. Only, the illustrations are always facing the audience, because you don't need to twist the pictures around to read the text, which lets you stay more engaged with your audience and lets kids really study the pictures. Often they are displayed in theatre shaped frames.



They can also be very interactive. The first story we listened to was called Larger, larger, larger!. The storyteller had us repeat "grow larger, larger, larger!" (in Japanese!) before she would flip the card to reveal the huge pig, huge egg, etc. (And I'll just note here that while this may seem like no more than just good fun to a lot of people, one of the things they go over in our storytelling workshops is that toddlers and preschoolers need as much practice speaking as they do listening. Giving them meaningful phrases to repeat helps develop language skills, especially among very young children and ESL learners. Personally, I also think that experiences like this help kids to think of themselves as writers as well as readers. And better writers make better readers.)

The people that did the presentation had a few really nice kamishibai stories for sale based on folktales around the world,* but we all couldn't get over the modern samples they'd brought over from Japan, especially the stories for preschoolers. Which, unfortunately, aren't available for sale in the US.

Turns out, they are available for sale outside of Japan - just still not in the US!

This is either a Dutch or a Belgian site that sells Kamishibai, and it has some of the cards they showed us during the workshop.



I loved this one, called Strong Together! (Or Together we are Strong! I'm not quite sure.) Besides being insanely cute, the pictures tell the story enough on their own that you can tell the basic plot of the story even though the cues on the back of the cards weren't translated: A gray spiky ball that is at least three times as large as each of the squares comes along and scares the squares away. The squares are sad. The squares cry. But the squares have an idea; they climb on top of one another to make a tower. Now they are taller than gray spiky ball. Now gray spiky ball is scared and runs away.

I really, really, really want The Round Greedy Trolls too. Which, apparently, teaches math and sharing by having the three round, greedy trolls fight over two ice cream cones.





*Speaking of which, is having a kid hatch out of vegetation a common occurrence in Japanese folktales? ^.^ I suppose that would explain a lot of my favorite manga.

What's the problem with DC? (And Marvel too?)

Personally, I think they are just plain stupid. They've spent too much time catering to a small, specific audience that they are completely oblivious as to the fact that not only is their audience actually more diverse than they are, but that their potential audience has positively exploded recently.

I mean, sure, DC (finally) started a of line stand alone graphic novels for teen girls - a line that has absolutely nothing to do with the characters they are famous for - but well, that's pretty much it. Which, considering some of the huge changes and opportunities in recent years, is just ridiculous.

(I know even certain Fangirls have thought this next bit was a weird point when I've brought it up before, so let me see if I can explain this a little better this time.)

Marvel and DC consistently put out an insane amount of movie-tie-in books for kids when their superhero movies come out, but none of them is ever comics or a graphic novel. Why?

In addition to the teen manga that's been in the store since we opened, the bookstore now has a section just for graphic novels for kids. We've had it for about a year. It started out as less than one shelf; it now takes up more than a whole bay. (Partly because they recently changed how we shelve things; beginning reader graphic novels used to be shelved with beginning readers.)

I might try counting them today to be sure, but I think there are more titles about Marvel and DC characters in Beginning Readers than there are in the graphic novel section. I'm fairly certain the Disney has more graphic novels in the kids section than Marvel and DC do, combined. Hell, Disney (ok, technically Disney licensed titles by Tokyopop) even ties Marvel and DC individually for graphic novels in the teen area - and easily outsells DC. (Marvel is saved from getting beaten by Kingdom Hearts by the ever popular Runaways.)

What the hell? It's not like their non-graphic movie-tie-in books don't sell. It's not like graphic novels don't sell to kids. Why are there practically no graphic novels by DC and Marvel for kids? It just makes no sense.

It's not like, unlike Scholastic, they are being asked to try a new format. They kinda already know of to do comics. It's not like this wouldn't get them new customers for their actual comics. A lot of the kids asking for Bone or Pokemon books are not already comics readers. Some of them may be, but, judging by how often they have to fight with their parents in order to buy a graphic novel, I doubt they all make regular trips to the comic store. And while parents are still quite skeptical of the literary value of sequential art, they are less reluctant to let their kids buy a thick graphic novel at bookstore than a very thin comic book in a store where most of the books on display feature porn-esque and graphically violent covers. These now elementary kids, however, will be much more likely to spend their allowance as a teen on Marvel or DC comics if they get attached to Marvel and DC characters now.

It's not a given that these kids who are getting hooked on Bone are going to start walking into comic books stores and buying comics by DC or Marvel once they can do so; it's not a given that any kid who might do this will do it no matter what. It's also not a given that their love of the Batman movies will remain strong enough over the years to give them a reason to go to comic book stores when they are old enough to do so alone. But that's exactly what DC and Marvel are assuming is true.

And don't tell me that superheroes just aren't highly popular among kids - boys and girls. Fantasy novels are extremely popular at the moment for much the same reasons that comic fans are fans of comics. Very few of the most popular kid and teen novels in recent years would have sold as well as they did if kids didn't love heroes with special powers and/or gadgets.

You can see this same obliviousness play out in how they didn't capitalize on the goodwill and interest generated among non-comic reading adults through the popularity of the X-Men and Batman movies. I actually got interested in comics because I loved the first X-Men movie. Being a book person, I wanted to read the books too. But it took me several years to become a regular at my local comic store because nothing I found there reminded me of the movies. It was Runaways, Buffy, and finding fellow fangirls to give me some advice on what to try that finally did the trick.

I can't be the only one who got excited about comics because of the movies. I can't be the only one turned off by the in-crowd mentality among comic fans (yeah, I'm looking at you, Dale Carnegie acolytes), the vast differences in tone (read: porn style covers and other common complaints) between the comics and the movies, and just how incredibly confusing it all is to newbies. And, again, how dismissive even usually helpful fans are of legitimate complaints. "But you can always look it up on on wikipedia!" is not a helpful response to "Damn, these backstories are confusing." I'm not looking for more HW to do, thank you. Are there any titles that don't require research? Because if not, I'm going back to the manga section. At least there I can easily order back issues if needed.

I know I can't be the only one, because much of the anger over the MJ statue came from newbies and non-comics readers who loved the movies. I don't think that the lesson of the MJ kerfluffle is that "sex sells". I think Marvel and DC should have taken it as a sign that they have a bigger fanbase than they thought, and that they need to treat these new fans with respect or they will lose them before they ever really had a chance to get to know them. A lot of what this means, btw, is truth in advertising. Don't put cheesecake covers on non-cheesecake comics. Don't pretend that the MJ statue isn't about sex or confuse accusations of objectification with being accused of simply showing something sexual. Don't respond to complaints by saying that it fits her character; it doesn't fit her character as the movie fans know it, and telling them that the movie doesn't count is hardly going to get them coming back and buying your stuff. Instead, explain the idea of multiverse to the newbies and direct these new fans to something that they will like. And when you have trouble doing that last, take a good, hard look at the lack of diversity in your current products.

I don't know if their recent corpse on the kitchen floor was a deliberate diss to feminist fans or not. I think it's kind of like arguing whether someone meant to be deliberately insulting when they said something sexist. It's not the intentions I care so much about, but the effect of the sexism. Whatever their intention, DC just demonstrated once again that they are completely oblivious to both the diversity of their audience and the diversity of their potential audience.

So, was DC being stupid or sexist with their latest blunder? Well, like Pandagon, this is a both/and blog. DC was both stupid and sexist for killing you know who, and leaving her on the damn kitchen floor. Seriously DC, this is why I think twice every time one of your comics looks interesting. And don't even think I've forgotten how much you can suck too, Marvel.

Edited: for grammar, spelling, etc. And to add that I did go ahead and count up the number of DC and Marvel titles in the kid's manga/comics section. Combined, they have a grand total of four titles. One copy each. To put things into perspective, there are two Yu-Gi-Oh! titles, with about four copies each. Seven Babymouse titles, with about 3-6 copies each. Eight Captain Underpants, with a full faceout and backstock for almost every title. One title each for Artemis Fowl and Warriors. The former has a full faceout, but that's because it's a new arrival, it will likely shrink down to just a few copies like the latter within a month or two. All of these books are thicker and larger than the Marvel and DC titles, so that makes the latter really hard to see when browsing.

Games Good, Books Bad?

In a recent discussion over a Feminist Gamers, the topic of controversies over books versus controversies over games came up.

(pretty much, someone said something to the effect of "books never get treated this way!" and I called bullshit.)

Might Ponygirl replied with

But I think that videogames just don’t enjoy the sort of support in their controveries that books do.

Which is true, but "books have it bad too!" really wasn't the point I was trying to make. But then I wasn't really sure what my point was at the time, and my point wasn't the topic of discussion. The good news: I figured out what I want to say, and I have my own blog to say it at.

And really, I did say it in my comment over there, I just didn't explain it very well.

[P]eople rarely see “bad” books as evidence that books are bad, even though that’s exactly what they do when it comes to TV, movies, and games.

The flipside to this - the one that people rarely see - is that this also means that you now have the issue of what qualifies as a book. Most often, the debate is phrased as whether something is "really" literature. In my line of work the question often becomes whether it's something the parent will accept as fulfilling the requirement that they "read more and goof around less." (Needless to say, graphic novels rarely count, despite their growing popularity.)

Like a lot of common misconceptions, this doesn't seem, on the face of it, like a bad thing. And it isn't always. Parents should push their kids to to challenge themselves, and I don't believe that kids get as much from reading Goosebumps as they get from reading Bridge to Terabithia.

But there's the catch, the requirement that they get something out of it. Pleasure apparently doesn't qualify as "something" in that sentence.

(And now my ADD brain is remembering a conversation I had recently with someone about how we don't get enough vacation time. Back to the topic at hand....)

Whenever I suggest a book, and the kid says yes but the parent says no, it's almost always because it's not "serious" enough. Whenever a kid asks for a book, and the parent says no, the most common reason given (aside from cost) is that it's not "what they should be reading" - as in, you should be reading something that isn't called Captain Underpants and isn't full of pictures.

Now, I'm not saying that books have it worse than games. They don't. (Recent library workshop aside) Games can only dream of qualifying as worthwhile in their own right, rather than as a way to trick kids into doing something worthwhile. Even TV, which I think is much more limited in possible educational value than video games are, is more likely to be labeled as educational than any video game. What I'm saying is that the problems that books do have overlap with the problems that games have, so displays of sibling rivalry are hardly helpful.

Lauren wrote at Feministe that

The part that’s insidious for me is labeling the [Baby Einstein] videos “educational” when “entertainment” is clearly more honest. When parents start scheduling them into the child’s day, they’re doing so in their children’s best interest, but potentially to the detriment of the child’s education. Especially when a parent who is interesting in helping to further the child’s education might have better tools available to them for a similar price.

And I have to agree. But the problem is that you aren't supposed to give anything to small children that isn't explicitly educational, so there's really no other way to market them except to say that they are good because they are educational. And the AMA's dishonesty about why such videos are bad for kids** gives the companies even more incentive to lie about their product than they would have otherwise. Disney can't make ads simply saying that they are the best entertainment videos for babies and toddlers (even though I think they are) because such things are not supposed to exist.

One thing I do disagree with Lauren about is the type of educational value the Baby Einstein's videos have. Supposedly, it's all in rote learning - people seem to think the videos act like flash cards. However, If you watch the videos it's clear that kids mostly learn from them by processing the stories, the same kind of learning that we supposedly encourage when the stories are told through other mediums. To me, this confusion implies that the value we place on storytelling depends highly on the medium through which the story is told. Which, in turn, suggests that the greatest value we place on storytelling is on it's ability to familiarize children with the "right" kinds of mediums - or facts and skills. Stories themselves have dubious value, perhaps because their intent is to entertain as well as teach. The perception seems to be that, once kids can read, unless they are clearly "reading to learn" something specific, reading is not always good for them.

****************

Books are challenged and banned for all kinds of reasons, but there is a common thread running through all the challenges to books for children*** - and no, it's not religious beliefs or sexual content. It's whether or not the book counts as "literature." Controversial topics are usually considered ok, so long as the book is clearly lecturing at them. That's why books are more likely to get support when they are challenged. Since it's the actual message itself that's being debated and not the basic content, you have an easier time finding people who agree with the message strongly enough to fight for it.

The children's novels that made it to the ALA's top ten challenged books for 2006 are the Gossip Girls series, the Alice series, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, the Scary Stories series, Athletic Shorts, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and The Chocolate War****. The adult novels are Beloved and The Bluest Eye. So, sex, obviously, is a big no-no. And anything that suggest that the white, heterosexual man is not the center of the universe.

But apparently, kids having fun isn't really a good thing either.

(In fact, I'd say this is a big part of why sex is a no-no. Sex without procreation has no value other than fun.)

While there are plenty of books that kids ask for by name because they have to read it, there are fewer that kids ask for because they want to read them. Yet, out of all seven of the kid's books on that list, there are only two books that I've never been asked for by name, by a kid, who wanted to read it for fun. I'm not going to count the hundreds of thousands of books in the store and library to do the math, but fairly certain that 70% of the books in either place don't fit into that category.

Even more than that, four of those books are ones that reluctant readers - several, in fact - have asked for by name. I don't need to do the math to be absolutely certain that the number of books in the store and library that fit into that category is much, much lower than 50+ percent.

Now, again, I'm all for parents pushing kids to challenge themselves.

Still, I find it telling that the Gossip Girls is number two on the list of most challenged books for 2006, and yet the CW started a new series based on the books this fall. (Presumably aimed at a similarly aged audience.)

The contrast between the Harry Potter movies' sucess and book challenges made more sense, because it tends to be just a select group of people who dislike Harry Potter so much that they think kids shouldn't read it. But nobody likes the Gossip Girls. Well, no adult anyway. So while I'm sure that there are lots of kids who will be told that they can't read or watch Gossip Girls, I'm sure there's also a great many whose parents and teachers and librarians try to talk them out of reading Gossip Girls but whose parents won't care about them watching Gossip Girls any more or less than any other TV show.

Now, parents don't hate these books because they are fun, they just see fun as having extremely limited value.***** There's this idea that's taken root in our collective minds that, unless something is explicitly educational or healthy, it's probably bad for kids.

Or maybe it's that, if kids are having fun, they can't possibly be learning as well. So it's one thing for them to watch Gossip Girl, it's another for them to suck all the educational value out of reading by reading trashy books.

I think it's probably both, depending on the situation.

We need to educate people on the health and educational benefits that video games have. The internet and TV too. But we need to advocate for kids' right to have fun as well. Even if for no other reason than because the idea that fun is a privilege, not a right, leads us to cut off kids access to things that are explicitly good for them. Like exercise (ie, recess) for grade schoolers, or books for reluctant readers. Even the dynamic that Lauren decries in her post is one in which parents choose to have their kids watch Baby Einstein videos rather than play in healthier ways because the supposed rote learning they get from the videos is thought of as more educational that the learning they get through play.





*That and we think kids are really stupid - Baby Einstein couldn't possibly teach through stories because babies are too young to process stories. Never mind that they do so all the time. (I let go, it falls.)

**All kinds of studies supposedly say that any time watching TV lowers vocabulary, but I've yet to see one that doesn't make some stupid decision, like not control for time spent talking to parents or lumps kids who watch TV and play with books with kids who just watch TV.

***Children's books that children are meant to read themselves, rather than books like And Tango Makes Three which is primarily meant to be read to them.

****The common perception is that The Chocolate War is literature, but it's placement on the list is a holdover from when this was not the common perception, back when it came out and, along with The Outsiders and other peers, created the YA genre.

****We also think kids are excessively stupid. Like, kids who will be able to vote in two years are completely and totally unable to distinguish fact from badly written wish-fulfillment fiction. Have I mentioned that yet?

:(

Madeline L'Engle passed away yesterday.

I need to go cry now.

:(

How Soccer Explains Everything

(My brilliant analogies always come to me after I've finished and published my rant o the day.)

What bugs me about the question "Where are the books for kids learning to read?" Isn't so much that I really think parents don't understand that kids start learning to read before they start actually reading. It's more that it's like they are all soccer coaches asking for advice on how to teach very young children how to play soccer, and all they are asking for are drills on how to kick the ball.

The unspoken assumption in the question "Where are the books for kids learning to read?" is that they are looking for books for children to read themselves. But that's not all kids need to do in order to be good readers. No more than all kids need to learn in order to play soccer well is how to kick the ball. They are both important, and the final goal can't be achieved without that skill, but kids that are only taught to read by actually reading are poor readers, just as kids who are taught only how to kick the ball make poor soccer players.

In soccer practice we would do all kids of drills. We would practice kicking all sorts of ways. We would practice kicking while doing other things at the same time. We would practice trapping the ball as well. Sometimes, we wouldn't even use the ball at all and we would run some extra laps for endurance or do quick sprints or shadow partners in order to practice running and changing direction quickly.

Most Easy Readers for kids that are just starting out are either sight readers or phonics readers or a combination of both. Like kicking the ball, this is the most basic and fundamental skill kids need to practice the most. But teaching kids to read with only those books is like running a soccer practice with only kicking drills. Most kids still learn to read just fine because so many of the other skills kids need to to become good readers are either integrated into daily life of deliberately inserted into their curriculum.

But when kids are struggling - or even if they aren't and parents just want to help the best they can - we don't just need to make sure that kids are getting the obvious stuff , we need to make sure they are getting all those other drills as well. We need to make sure we are increasing their endurance by still reading aloud to them. We need to make sure they are still motivated by making sure that the reading activities they have to do are fun as as possible. We need to teach them to pay attention by having activities that encourage comprehension (reading and otherwise).

We also need to learn when to let things go and when to work on weaknesses. If the kid is a lefty, you encourage him/her to practice kicking with both feet (like everybody else), but you also put him/her on the left side and thank your good fortune to have one on your team. Don't force a natural sight reader to always read phonetically and don't force a kid who is good at phonics to learn sight words that can be learned phonetically. And understand that asking for advice on Easy Readers is really complicated because so much of it depends on what your child needs to work on and what he or she shouldn't be forced to do too much of.

Things I Don't Ever Want to Hear Again

"Oh, it's not scanning? It must be free!"


"Are you finding everything alright?"

"Yes, except my wife!"


(and yeah, it tends to be fathers and husbands that lose track of their families more often than kids, wives, and mothers. I really don't know why that is. Actually, I suspect it's mainly just that it's mostly guys who think it's funny to make me hear that stupid joke for the ten billionth time. The kids especially just say it straight.)


"But I just saw it at (blah blah blah."

well, why the hell didn't you buy it there?


"Is this a good book for [insert description of child here]?" - but then proceed to cut me off when I answer, ignore my answer, or get annoyed when I ask questions to prompt a better description.



And most of all:

"Where are you're books for kids (who are) learning to read?"


It's called half the kid's section. See a book for a child younger than 9? It's probably for kids who are learning to read.



Snarkiness aside, I really, really, want to do a boot camp for parents on how children learn to read.

The problem is that the parents don't actually seem to care - until they decide that it's time for their child to read. At which point they just want whatever will get their kid to read. As long as it's "high" literature; no Captain Underpants and get away from the pictures as quickly as possible.

Sometimes they make me want to chuck all our abridged classics out the window and require that every parent buying a phonics or sight readers set must not only prove they have a copy of Brown Bear, Brown Bear at home, but understand why it counts as an easy reader.

They mean well (most of them) but besides assuming I know nothing (or, alternatively, expecting me to be omniscient), people in general (not just parents) are so obsessive about the obvious parts of learning to read. They tend to ignore or not care about how people actually do read, because they figure the most important parts are the ones that are easy to watch kids do or explain how to do. But that's just not true. Not all kids can learn to read mainly through phonics and reading is more than just decoding sounds and symbols. In fact, adult reading rarely includes decoding sounds at all.

And even more than that, "pre-reading skills" consists of a lot more than just knowing the alphabet and the sounds each letter makes. It includes knowing things like shapes, colors, and opposites (the building blocks for learning the alphabet). It includes having a large vocabulary, so that when they are trying to guess what the sounds blend together to make, it's not always the first time they've heard that word. It includes an understanding of language; knowing rhymes so that they can use them as hints in lyrical stories. It also includes understanding that stories have beginnings, middles and ends; characters and settings; and knowing the difference between "stories that are true" and "stories that are make -believe." It includes learning to be writers as well as readers, by having crayons and paper and toys for imaginative play readily available.

I'm sure that most of the parents that come in asking for beginning readers books do all of these things with their children. But if they really want to help their children as they are making their first steps towards reading alone, it's best if the parents understand this all explicitly, so that they can pick which kind of easy reader their child needs the most. Do they need to practice phonics? Are they naturally better at sight reading? Can they decode words easily, but always race through the book and never read with inflection? Are they interested in learning to read at all, or do they need motivation?

When I'm asking all the annoying questions, I'm mainly just trying to pinpoint the kid's exact reading level, because new readers are easily frustrated and overwhelmed and they are easily bored and won't improve unless challenged. It would be nice if every once and a while parents came prepared to discuss not only reading level, but reading styles. Which sounds like a lot to expect from someone who is just making a trip to a bookstore, I know. But if getting every child reading by age whatever is really a priority, educating parents about how children learn to read should be one as well. To the point that my pie in the sky discussions are commonplace and easy to have, because we all already know the fundamentals.




And since I'm in a complaining mood, I'd also like to say that I recently watched the movie version of Knuffle Bunny, adored it to pieces, and now hate the AMA for their blanket "no TV for kids under 2" even more than before. Any kid that is capable of sitting through the book itself will benefit from watching the movie.



On a more positive note, I did run across this, which suggests (goodness, could it be?) that people are mixing up cause and effect when it comes to ADHD and TV watching, and that ADHD kids may actually be less at risk from the "deleterious effects of television viewing" than non-ADHD kids.


One last thing I don't ever want to hear: "Well, my child is reading well above reading level" - when said in that tone of voice that means "my child is so special you could never understand just how special."

I was reading Tolkien by fourth grade and no one in my family will be shocked if my 3 1/2 year old niece is reading within the year. Without any formal teaching involved. So not I'm not really bowled over by the fact that your fifth grader is reading the occasional seventh grade book. And when I suggest that they also read an actual fifth - or gasp! maybe even a fourth - grade book, I'm doing so as someone who knows first-hand that variety is really good for children, especially kids who are reading well above their grade level. We tend to go for impressive length and our parents and teachers don't always do the best job of making sure we practice comprehension and critical thinking as well. (Not entirely their fault, they end up having to spend so much time keeping us supplied with books that they tend to push us towards longer books in part for their own sanity.)

Welcome, Julie!

Finally, we have a new American Girl!

Meet Julie, a girl of the 70's. Yes, you read that right, a girl of the '70s. Yes. The 1970's. Which I think is supercool because so much of recent history doesn't get taught to kids because it's too "controversial."

And the books are written by Megan McDonald. How cool is that!

And OMG! here's the synopsis of the first book:

Julie Albright doesn't want to move away from her San Francisco neighborhood near Chinatown, even if her new apartment is just a few miles away... Julie tries to make the best of it by joining the school’s basketball team, but the coach won’t allow girls to play. She learns that it’s up to her to make positive changes in her new school—and her new life. The “Looking Back” section discusses the women’s movement, divorce, and other issues of the turbulent 1970s.

(emphasis mine, of course)

Awesome.

The second book focuses more on Julie dealing with her parents divorce, and the fact that it wasn't as common back then. The third deals with culture clash between Julie's family and her best friend Ivy Ling's family. It also breaks tradition by being about about New Year's instead of Christmas. (The AG books all follow the same pattern - with the exception of Kaya's: Meet [blank], school story, xmas story, spring/birthday story, summer/heroic story, winter/growing up story.)

It gets better! In the fourth book

Julie and her best friend, Ivy, find a baby owl in Golden Gate Park—and it needs help. At a wildlife rescue center, Julie meets Shasta and Sierra, two bald eagles that will be caged for life, unless money is raised to release them back into the wild. For Earth Day, Julie thinks of a unique way to tell the public of the eagles' plight. The “Looking Back” section explores the beginning of the environmental movement.

Bwhahahahaha. (Sorry, I'm just imagining the reactions of all the conservatives that like the AG series bc it's "good, clean fun.") That is just so cool.

The fifth book is about the bicentennial. (Which is another break in tradition, because the first book takes place in 1974 and the series usually span only a year and a half, if I remember right.) In the sixth book Julie runs for school president. (Nice timing there, AG. ;) )

Although, of course, we are left with one big question, and I hope you are all asking it along with me. (Especially since the American Girl books are supposed to be about the idea of American girls being diverse in all kinds of ways.) Why the hell is this Julie's series and not Ivy's? Did American Girl think that they just didn't have enough blonde girls in their line? Are we ever going to have an American Girl of Asian descent? :(

At least they do give Ivy her own book (written by Lisa Yee), like they did for Samantha's friend Nellie, Felicity's friend Elizabeth, and Molly's friend Emily, when their movies came out. Which makes me wonder if this year's movie will be about Julie. That would be interesting. But I doubt it, since they have a theatrical release movie about Kit coming out next summer.

Maybe the fall doll drawing will feature Julie and Ivy this year? The first one featured Kaya, when she first came out. The last few years have featured the girls whose movies were about to come out. So maybe this year it's back to the new girl since there doesn't see to be a fall movie. Hmmm. I hope they at least keep the drawing as being for two dolls, American Girl and Friend. At least that will mean Ivy will get more exposure than she normally would.