INK's Theme This Month is Life-Changing Nonfiction

I might have been born reading. I was that kid struggling to walk while carrying a tower of books out of the library like so much firewood, stacked in my outstretched arms so high I had to peer around the side to see where I was going. The kid under the blanket with the flashlight, thinking I was putting one over on my parents who were, in actuality, too smart to stop a kid from reading past her bedtime. The kid under a tree, bike propped against its trunk, book bag on the ground with well-worn titles tumbling out, waiting to be re-read. The girl who spent many after-school hours with her mother in the library, as she happened to be the elementary school librarian.

Images of book covers are fixed in my mind’s eye, a slide show of exciting childhood companions. If I was living inside M.T. Anderson’s FEED, perhaps I could output a retinal scan of those cover memories and attach them here to show you, but alas, I cannot, nor did a World Cat search produce satisfying results. A lot of those books were fiction. But more of them were not. Not fiction. Otherwise known as nonfiction, even though that label never made intuitive sense to me as a kid, and still doesn’t.

They were books about the Jamestown flood, the Donner party, elephant hunting in Africa, and the chemistry of a lemon. Some of those books—such as THE LAST FREE BIRD—were written by my father, an education professor who also authored a bunch of children’s science books in the 60s and 70s. I don’t recall that as being something I was particularly impressed with; rather it was a matter of fact. One of the things he did. And by extension, something that was simply possible for a person to do.

When you grow up around books and by extension, discussions of books, you become a literary person. When you are asked to bring a new word to the dinner table, or a topic to the breakfast table—and both of those meals are had together with conversation, you become a literary person. I didn’t conceptualize any of that as life changing. But it most certainly was.

A Few Treats From Me To You

I can't imagine anyone has any time right now to read a long blog post. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to share with you some wonderful pieces I've read lately. Most of them are on a theme--nonfiction storytelling. I hope you take a minute or two between shopping, cooking, last-minute writing deadlines, last-minute paper-grading, etc., to sit down and treat yourself.

First, here is a lovely piece by Henning Mankell, whose books about the Swedish detective Kurt Wallander I love. It's called THE ART OF LISTENING. I adored this piece and if I could wrap it up and put it in a box and deliver it to each and every one of you I would. Well, maybe I just did.

Next is a piece that was in Friday's New York Times that might not have made it to other parts of the country. It's about a theater group that pairs teenagers with people over 60. It's inspiring for nonfiction writers and lovers, and a great idea for other communities. Sort of a twist on StoryCorps (always a good place to visit!). This one is called TRUSTING SOMEONE OVER 60. (Don't let the headline deter you.)

Another piece that walloped me from the Times was this one, WHAT WASN'T PASSED ON.  I won't say anything more about it so you can experience it for yourself.

Last week Jim Murphy wrote a great post about Recharging Batteries, and I referred in the comments to an article about the novelist Richard Ford that I loved. Read both when you can!

And because I can't help myself, I'm leaving you with my potato latke recipe. Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and here's to a wonderful New Year -- 2012. That number seems like science fiction.

Picture Book Month

There’s a new holiday in town. November is now Picture Book Month. Several picture book authors got together to create this event—and, good for them. As they said on their web site, Picture Book Month: A Celebration!, “We are doing this because in this digital age where people are predicting the coming death of print books, picture books (the print kind) need love. And the world needs picture books. There’s nothing like the physical page turn of a beautifully crafted picture book.”

I have written on this subject myself, a rebuttal to the attitude reported in The New York Times, of parents wanting children to leap past picture books to read chapter books in the quest to get them on the road to...what?

Each day on this site, another picture book author writes an entry titled, “Why Picture Books are Important.” Here are some excerpts from the entries so far:

I believe our first stories become part of our DNA forever. -Samantha Berger

Picture books are important because they are with us for life…No matter how many books we’ve read since, they will always have a place in our hearts…and a relationship that, whether we realize it or not, has shaped our lives. -Dan Yaccarino

When my now 11 year old girl, Eliana, was a preschooler, we bought the book, In My World, by Lois Ehlert. The illustrations are simple. The text is sparse. And yet, there is a magic about this book that completely captured her. It could have been the exquisite die cuts or the bright colors… It could have been. But it wasn't. It was the wondrous way the words and the pictures were married. One could not work without the other. Every night, Eliana read that book to me, putting her little hand, which fit perfectly, inside the die cut hand of the book. And every night I would tear up knowing that I was experiencing a magical moment in my daughter's life… -Diane de las Casas

Picture books have a special kind of magic in the hands of children. They open windows of opportunity — glimpses of new worlds — in the safest of places: in the library, in the classroom, or in their very own rooms. Kids can sound out one word at a time, breeze through full sentences or skip the words altogether to build stories of their own based on warm, vivid illustrations. Anything is possible… -Kelly Milner Halls

I have a sixteen-year-old niece, Sarah. A year ago my sister-in-law, her mom, died suddenly. A friend of the family gave my brother a picture book called Tear Soup to help with Sarah’s mourning.
One night, he walked into her room with the book under his arm. She took one look at him, rolled her eyes, and said, “Yeah, right. You’re going to read THAT to ME?”
“Yes,” he said. “Move over.”
She argued – what teen girl wouldn’t? – but grudgingly made room. They cuddled up and read the book. A couple of days later, Sarah asked, “Dad, whatever happened to all my picture books from when I was little?” My brother pulled a box out of storage and the next night came in with Caps for Sale.
A new tradition was born. For months, every night, he’d read a picture book to her from her childhood.
Picture books heal. No matter your age. -Katie Davis

I have looked up some of the other created holidays for November—International Drum Month, Peanut Butter Lovers Month, Aviation History Month. In my book, this one beats them hands down.

Spread the word.


In celebration of picture books, I would like to recommend one. I’m cheating, though. This one is not nonfiction, but still, “pure genius” according to its Kirkus starred review.

Furthermore it was written by Lita Judge, an author whose books are mostly nonfiction including the lauded One Thousand Tracings and Born to be Giants.

Red Sled by Lita Judge is a whimsical dream of fun and magic. And that is a fact!

Choices

When I read in the most recent Consumer Reports magazine that grocery stores carry 14 different kinds of Tostitos chips alone, not to mention other brands of corn chips, potato chips, taro chips, pita chips, and so on, it got me into thinking about choices. We Americans seem to relish having as many choices as possible when buying everything from pain killers to computers. And we especially like choices when it comes to our reading material. Just look at the variety of magazines at your local chain bookstore, and the plethora of book categories on the groaning shelves. We want to read the kinds of books that appeal to us as individuals. The husband of a children's YA fiction writer I know never reads fiction, including what his wife writes. My brother's shelves are loaded with the science fiction he used to read and the mysteries he's now into, while my husband has a generous collection of cookbooks and other food related books, as well as a smattering of volumes about Broadway and Hollywood. Me? I prefer nature books and select fiction authors.

Yet how many of you have, as I have more than once, observed the following scene:
An adult with a child in a bookstore is going through one bunch of titles as the child is eagerly thumbing through just one book. The adult chooses a totally different one to buy, pointing at the one in the child's hands and saying, "That's too young (or, too old) for you." Or, "This one looks more interesting."

And why is it that we expect school children all to read the same assigned books most of the time? Sometimes they are expected to choose books and write book reports, but often even those choices are restricted--I've been shocked to hear from some teachers that children in their school are not allowed to write reports on nonfiction books! But what if a child is one like I was, who wanted to know about the real world, not some writer's imaginary world?

A friend recently told me about his grandson, who didn't see the point of reading at first. But once he got into it, he plunged in enthusiastically and, at the age of 9, insisted on getting a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records, which he proceeded to devour the way his friends might do with a Harry Potter volume.

Let's all keep our educational focus on helping children become enthusiastic readers because they gain pleasure from the activity, especially during the early school years. Let them read as much for pleasure as possible; they will also learn in the process, either learn the tricks of story telling in fiction or the facts of what fascinates them in the real world. And the more they read, whether it's about fairies or tigers or motorcycles, the better readers they will become, which has to be the first goal of education.