Children’s Literature

More About Reading Logs

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Sep 11, 2019 in Childhood, Children's Literature, Educators & Librarians | 0 comments

It occurs to me that I never did tell you why Natalie Babbit agrees with me about reading logs. (You do know who Natalie Babbit is, don’t you? She wrote Tuck Everlasting. Go read it. Now.)

She wrote, not specifically about reading logs, but about the panic all around her (in 1986) that literacy skills were devolving. This is from her speech “Easy Does It.”

We are blaming our children’s poor reading and writing skills on television, an easy and pleasant machine, and also on the seductive and mysterious computer, which, I understand, is easy and pleasant too….There can be no question about the fact that these two inventions are changing our world. They are only the latest things to change our world, which has been in a constant process of change since its creation…. Still, I think it’s highly debatable that they are single-handedly responsible for our difficulties….It seems to me that it’s not so much the difficulties that are new as it is our expectations.

 

When I was a child in the good old days, my friends weren’t all word lovers, not all book lovers, not all good readers and writers….And all were growing up without television and computers. It seems to me as if we simply can’t expect a universally high level of enthusiasm about reading. That expectation seems new to me. And, unfulfilled, it carries with it for our teachers [and, I’d add, our kids] a heavy and inevitable load of blame. But there always was and always will be a percentage of children that finds reading stale, flat, and unprofitable….

 

And if we–you and I–go on believing that we can, should, and must graduate all children from high school and college into a lifetime of appreciative reading of literature, and a capacity for clear and graceful writing, we will, quite simply, break our hearts….

 

The only thing we can do, I guess, is fight fire with fire….Somehow [teachers] are going to have to find a way to make reading as seductive as its rivals–to make it, in other words, easy and pleasant. Because that, it seems to me, is the only thing that was better about the good old days. Books–for me, anyway–were easy and pleasant.

 

One of the things that makes books easy and pleasant was the practice of reading aloud. Almost any writing is easy and pleasant when it’s read aloud. My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson, read aloud to us every day for the last half hour, and she read aloud for pleasure, hers as well as ours. We weren’t tested on the books she read to us. We didn’t do projects or write to authors. We just relaxed and enjoyed it….

 

Some of the things I hear about that are being done with books in classrooms now make my blood run cold….Books have collected countless barnacles of peripheral stuff these days, and how can that do anything but turn reading into hard work?…

Use a little low cunning. Ease up on the projects, schedule time for reading aloud. Read aloud things that you really like, yourself. Everyone responds to a good story, and that is what good literature really is: a good story, well told.

 

I think we can go a long way if we take that route. Honey, you know, is actually good for us nutritionally. So is peanut butter. But they taste so good that we forget about the nutrition. Reading is like that. Or at least it should be. And could be. Maybe. All we can do is try.

This marvelous essay and many more are found in Barking With the Big Dogs: On Writing and Reading Books for Children.

Editing Services

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Jun 21, 2019 in Children's Literature, Editing, Writing Process, Writing Tips | 0 comments

Finished that manuscript? Need a second opinion or a professional touch to polish it up? I’m glad to recommend my friend and colleague, Michelle Coppola Ames, who has just hung up her shingle as a freelance editor. Michelle is an insightful editor, a talented writer, and an all-around lovely person. Look for her at Wordplay Editorial Services.

Read More

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on May 3, 2019 in Children's Literature, Race | 0 comments

Amelie Zhao’s novel, Blood Heir, will be released after all. I’ve written enough about this topic–I’ll just say that, while I’m reserving final judgment until I read the book for myself, I’m glad I’ll be able to.

Final Thoughts

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Mar 28, 2019 in Children's Literature, Editing, Educators & Librarians, Race | 0 comments

Diversify publishing? Egads!

Okay, I promise this is my last post (for a while) about this issue–books (Blood Heir and A Place for Wolves) being cancelled pre-publication because of online outrage.

You know what the real solution is? Or rather, what the vast unspoken problem is? That publishing and its sister professions, reviewing and librarianship, are overwhelmingly white and female.

That’s what needs to change. We need writers of color, LGBQTetc. writers, immigrant writers–that’s a need that’s been talked about for a long time. But we also sorely, sorely need editors and reviewers and librarians (and teachers, let’s not forget teachers) who are not white and female and mostly middle class. We need publishing professionals who can bring a huge variety of experiences and backgrounds to the table, selecting and promoting books and authors who are similarly diverse.

But that’s a long term process. It takes time and effort and money. (Paid internships with housing stipends would be a start, publishers.) Far easier (but much less effective) to outsource the effort of diversifying literature to Twitter and then to ask authors to bear the financial brunt of it by pulling books and cancelling contracts.

#WeNeedADiversePublishingIndustry