for the children...

I just want to take this moment, given that I've had really good traffic on this site today, to mention the people who read for library story times and who perform puppet shows and do all that other stuff with those kids that I personally do not want to be near... My understanding of the benefits of what you do is a little simplistic, but...

I do tech stuff. I teach; I put crap online; I make all kinds of thingies using my compooter. But I could never read to kids. Not that I don't like kids because yes, I don't like them, but that's not the reason I can't read to them. Frankly, they terrify me. They leak, they smell, and they seem to do whatever the hell they want without consequence. And regardless of whatever amount of piss and snot they leave behind, most adults just laugh and think they're wonderful. But not me. I don't know where they've been, so I don't want them anywhere near me or my stuff.

But my girlfriend does this. I have a great appreciation for the job my girlfriend does. She reads books to kids because their parents don't have the time to do it. Or maybe because they don't know that they should do it. But whatever the reason, she does it because the kids need it.

And don't try to tell me they don't. They want someone to pay attention to them, even if it's just to tell them to shake an egg or bang two sticks together. Or to just smile at them and not yell about anything.

From what I understand about kids and their mushy little brains is that they need to be shown how the world functions. They need examples to follow. So reading to a kid shows him that this event he's watching is related to what he's hearing. That the pictures and the sounds and the symbols on the pages and the reactions from the person reading and all the other people around him are all related, that they mean something. Pictures. Sounds. People. Symbols. And that helps that mushy brain develop.

I just want to let you know that the people who read to kids and cut out hundreds of butterfly wings and cat ears and who clean up the glitter and glue are not forgotten whenever I write about library issues. They probably don't teach kids how to use iPads or use Twitter, but they teach literacy and they start kids on the road to reading and the love of books.

And without them, we might not have the library-loving adults who pay my salary today. And for that I thank you.

Oh, the irony.

It's hilarious (at least, to me) that librarians might need to ban kids from the libraries because of the threat of lead content in books.

Libraries. Books. Children.

Basically, one of the core missions of the library is to nurture a child's interest in reading, but the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act threatened to force libraries to test all children's books to ensure they did not exceed the lead content limits. And if they couldn't verify the safety of the materials, to either dispose of them or ban children from borrowing or handling the books.

When the Child Online Protection Act passed, librarians were irate. COPA attempted to keep kids from viewing online porn, but librarians opposed any limits on free-speech, even for porn involving ca-ca poo-poos.

So the federal government attempted to keep kids from viewing porn but the law was eventually defeated and declared DOA on January 21, 2009.

And now another federal regulation will keep kids from viewing porn in libraries by labeling libraries as physically unsafe for them to be in due to an indeterminable threat of lead exposure.

So we tried to keep kids from viewing porn which many consider harmful, but that didn't last. But we wanted to let kids read which turns out to be more dangerous to their health. Porn and pedophiles are not dangerous enough to support a law to protect children, but a little lead ink is a serious threat.

We let kids as young as six have cell phones which many people think is dangerous, but we won't let toddlers suck on a few book pages. We are such hypocrites.

Now, I don't know if anyone in the federal government planned this whole lead scare to keep kids from viewing porn in libraries since it's been clear that COPA was going to be struck down at some point; but if this was a plan, it was a good one. If libraries won't keep the porn from the kids, we'll keep the kids from the libraries.

Now it looks like libraries (but since this a government release, I have no idea what they really mean) have been given a reprieve until February 10, 2010: CPSC Grants One Year Stay of Testing and Certification Requirements for Certain Products. so maybe the problem is gone for a while. Until someone decides the EMF radiation from all the computers in libraries is dangerous and we have to ban kids then because we for damn sure aren't giving up our computers. Because we love them. But we're not in love with them because that would be silly. We're in love with the coffee maker.

[additional info about the one-year stay in this letter]

Oh, and as an fyi, I only see one book recalled for have high levels of lead: SpongeBob SquarePants address books and journals. Yeah, you just knew that SpongeBob was dangerous. SquarePants, indeed.

"Cat's in the Cradle," the video game

I don't have kids.

It's not that I don't want kids, but the bidding got so high on eBay that day when I put them up for sale that I couldn't refuse the offer. Besides, if I reneged on the sale, my feedback rating would plummet.

I put them up for sale as a joke, you know, as punishment. I said, "If you don't settle down, I'm putting you up for sale on eBay." And I logged in and wrote the description: "Evil children. Won't listen to parents. Good for stews."

A nice, old woman from the Black Forest bought them for 200 K (Krone) and a spell for eternal youth.

So when I played a game called Gravitation, I guess I wasn't prepared for its meaning. I can't tell you much about it, but if you have children (not in the cooking pot, but around the house), you might feel something from playing it.

The game will unzip where you tell it and it doesn't seem to install anything; it just runs when you open it. Except it wants to make your resolution 640x480, so if your computer doesn't like being forced into screen changes, you might need to change the settings manually before you launch.

After you play, then read the msnbc story about it.

And if you have kids, go pat them on the head or rub their horns or whatever you do to show affection. But do not listen to that Harry Chapin song around me because I'll be humming that thing for hours.

How do you get a sports team to promote reading?

My girlfriend loves a series of books called Betsy-Tacy.

(I was going to make a joke about how it isn't odd for her to love that series because she's only eight years old. But I'm not Bob Saget, so I didn't think I could get away with it. Bob is a filthy bastard.)

Long story, short, I suggested that she write to one of the sports teams in Minnesota to ask them if they could find a way to promote authors of children's books from their home state (since Maud Hart Lovelace, the author of the Betsy books, was from Minnesota).

I figured it would be an easy task to get every professional sports team (don't care which: baseball, football, kickball) to wear a patch or a sticker on their uniforms to promote reading. And each team would pick a children's author from their home state.

The Betsy-Tacy books struck me as funny because most of the artwork associated with the books is of images of little girls in frilly dresses with bows in their pig-tailed hair. And it would be hilarious to see Betsy and Tacy holding hands on the back of a Vikings helmet.

I don't know what authors are from which states, except that Dr. Seuss was from Massachusetts. I guess it doesn't really matter if the authors are living or dead.

But it sounds like it would make a good partnership: professional sports teams promote both reading and their home state to kids. Players could read to kids. And kids would learn that steroids make them big and strong. It's a win-win.

I could be a children's librarian...

28

What? I say, what?

My father never read to me, but when I watch Monk, I weep for the man with the soothing voice whom I never knew.

Digital audiobooks, especially those narrated by talented artists, can "extend the pleasure of being read to by your parents into 5th, 6th, 7th grades," he [Katz] says. And talented artists are lining up to narrate — Macmillan Audio launched a children's list this spring with narrations by Gwyneth Paltrow and Tony Shaloub.

This is according to this Associated Press report,

Nearly a third of children ages 6 to 10 are regular users of digital audio players, according to market research firm the NPD Group. And thanks to entrepreneurs like [Don] Katz, they can now use them to listen to bedtime stories.

In March, the Audible.com founder launched AudibleKids.com, where children can download books directly onto their digital audio players.

"I hear lots of people talking, saying that when they put their kids to bed, they put them down with an audiobook," says Audio Publishers Association president Michele Cobb.

And those people should be shot. I don't know how kids' bodies develop, but they probably shouldn't be sleeping with earbuds stuck in their ears. I have an mp3 player and it has all these warnings about playing loud music for extended periods of time, and I'm pretty sure it says you shouldn't use them when you're sleeping. And these parents put the kid into bed, and say, "not too loud" without defining what "too loud" is, and then leave the kid alone for eight hours. Sure, you can set volume limits on an iPod, if you remember, or if you want your kid to hate you.

"In a way," Linn says, "this is another gadget for outsourcing parenting." [Susan Linn is the author of "The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in Our Commercialized World."]

That's right. We all know, this is just more crap for us to buy. Hell, you can go back to the 1960s and find some comedian telling the joke about listening to the vocabulary building self-improvement record when he goes to bed, but during the night, the record skips, and now he stutters. (Okay, the only example I could find is from Steven Wright, but I'm sure I heard Shecky Green tell it.) So today's kids aren't any more evolved to listen to loud sounds just because they explode from an iPod. When I was a kid, I had an 8-track tape player that opened up so that I could put one speaker next each ear, and I often went to sleep listening to Pink Floyd. And I had the freakiest dreams. Imagine what dreams the kid will have who listens to Anne of Green Gables as read by Gilbert Gottfried.

So I'm probably one of those people who will be deaf soon. I listen to music that's way too loud. One time I was at an indoor concert with the band My Bloody Valentine, and it got so loud that my vision cut out. I couldn't see at all, and I shuffled over to a wall and leaned there until it came back. I'd never heard something so loud before. It was only after that blackout that I noticed most of the other kids there were wearing earplugs. Pussies.

But parents shouldn't be sending their kids to bed with crap in their ears or with six-foot cables waiting to wrap around their necks and strangle them. And if you don't believe me, here are some helpful tips for not going deaf. Which I'll probably never listen to.

Note: Yes, I know that they don't need to use earbuds to listen, that they can dock the player in a base with speakers. But do you think I thought about that before I wrote this thing? No, I did not. And I for damn sure am not deleting this post just because of some lack of research on my part. Nope, I wrote it, so you're reading it. We can argue the facts some other time.

Where is my mommy?

I don't look like mommy anymore. And Mommy doesn't look like me anymore.

Mommy told Dr. Michael that when I was in her belly she got really big and that she was unhappy with the way she looked. But mommy looks like me, all round and happy. Why doesn't mommy want to look like me, anymore? I would tell her she is so beautiful and she would say how much we are alike. That I'm beautiful, too. But not any more. Mommy wants to be more beautiful, like she was before I came. Before I was born. And that makes me sad because I think she's beautiful now.

Mommy has a new nose, too. All tiny and pointy. How can she even breathe through it, I don't know. She used to say that my bumpy nose was perfect. But she said her nose was too bumpy. Now I hate my bumpy nose. I heard Aunt Lisa say that I have mommy's old nose.

Mommy is also bumpier on her front, all big and pointy. I don't like her new bumps. How can she even hold me in her arms with such big bumps?


[thank you. thank you. I would like to thank my dialogue coach for helping me to sound like a little girl. but frankly, you only have to threaten to punch me...]

The Newsweek article says:

My Beautiful Mommy is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants.

Child psychiatrist Elizabeth Berger, author of "Raising Kids With Character," likes the idea of a book for kids. "If the mother is determined to pursue cosmetic surgery, I think it's terribly important to discuss it with the child," Berger says. But she says the book is incomplete. She wishes that the mom had just said something like, "This is silly, but I really want it anyway," she says. "That is more honest and more helpful to the child."

Berger worries that kids will think their own body parts must need "fixing" too. The surgery on a nose, for example, may "convey to the child that the child's nose, which always seemed OK, might be perceived by Mommy or by somebody as unacceptable," she says.

I don't know how you feel about this, about little kids being told that cosmetic surgery makes you happy and pretty. I like how the mom drives a big, sporty SUV and lives in a 2,500 sq. ft. house.

If this guy wants to distribute a pamphlet through his practice with this information, great. But I hope I don't hear about storytimes where librarians read this. "Yes, children, you're all fat and short and flat-chested. You'll never be happy with those lips. Go ahead, pick that nose while you still got it. And suck in those tummies."


[see discussion on LISNews here. (there, birdie, happy? just kidding, I'm glad to mention LISNews as a site everyone should read)]

Video games bad for brain science

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Longitudinal Brain Imaging Project needs morbid brains. An ongoing study has been monitoring the growth of teen grey matter. "Participants visit the NIMH at approximately two-year intervals for brain imaging, neuropsychological and behavioral assessment and collection of DNA."

The study, so far, proves that teenage brains are very different from adult and child brains.

"Novelty seeking/sensation seeking and risk taking," Dr. [Elizabeth R.] McAnarney continues, "is the basis for considerable [brain] growth during adolescence, as well as for the seemingly reckless behavior of some adolescents. Novelty seeking/sensation seeking and risk taking are topics of growing interest as adolescent brain development is defined better and as morbidity from adolescent risk taking mounts…."

But what risk-taking is involved in video gaming? How can Science benefit from kids playing video games? What can be done to increase the brain "morbidity from adolescent risk taking"?

I guess one kid could whale on another kid with a Guitar Hero plastic guitar or a Dance Dance Revolution untied shoelace mishap might cause a brain injury against a TV screen, but for the most part, video games keep kids from taking any risks at all.

Compare to my adolescent non-video-game-playing risk taking:
Dove from roof into pool.
Rocks, baseballs, pool sticks bounced off head.
Shot in forehead, from b-b gun.
Punched.
"Clothelined," forearmed, elbowed during football games.
Crashed bike into both stationary and moving cars.
Jumped off roof onto ground and other kids.
Pushed out of tree.
Fell from top of NY stoop.
Rode bike off increasingly higher ramps, falling often. Upon landing, cracked bike in half, forever changing reproductive ability; all future produced DNA now carries modified gene producing offspring with innate "fear of fractions."

So kids need to stop playing video games and get out of the house and hit each other and jump off tall things and suffer some head trauma. If not simply to keep them from growing up as nerds and dorks, but to advance our understanding of neuroscience.

What would you rate that book? PG? R?

The other day we were talking about privacy and how some borrowers prefer to use the self-checkout station because they don't want anyone to see what they read. And I asked why no one has ever invented a sheet of paper or a bag that could go over the book to conceal the title and subject, but have a hole cut out where the barcode sits, so it can be scanned . Sure, it's pointless and unnecessary, but if I felt like keeping my reading habits private, I might fold a sheet of paper over my book, secure it with a rubber band and tear an opening for the barcode to be scanned.

And that kind of surprised me that I've never seen anyone do that before.
But maybe that would just draw more attention to the subject matter. Maybe the desk clerk couldn't give a crap until she saw the comical banded camouflage.

I think the better solution is misdirection. If you need to read about a health issue, then also get a book on lesbian sex. Or if you need to read about ED (why? every 8 minutes, some TV commercial tells you how to get free erection pills), grab a copy of Mein Kampf. It's like when I need to fill my prescription at WalMart for some personal ointment, I also buy some K-Y and some Hot Wheels cars or a Barbie or a bowling ball. Misdirection. No one is going to remember that I have a farm animal transmitted skin allergy if they're wondering about the lubricant and the 12-pound Brunswick beauty.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I was wondering what libraries would be like if books had ratings like movies (and now TV) do. What if Jack Valenti had worked for the Library of Congress? (Never mind that crazy Hays Code.)

I was thinking about this because of this story about the parent who complained about his 11-yr. old child borrowing an R-rated from the local library. The movie Underworld Evolution" got a restricted rating 'for pervasive strong violence and gore, some sexuality - nudity and language.'"

And it made me think about all the books I've read with "pervasive strong violence, " descriptions of "gore," "sexuality" and "language." The only real difference is nudity. I guess reading about "glistening orbs" or "bulging manhood" can only titillate so much.

One of my favorite movies is The Browning Version. In it, the student, Taplow, discusses the Agamemnon as being interesting because of all the violence. Much classical literature is loaded with sexy and violent references. And (I've heard that) The Bible is filled with sex and violence. So I guess these are the reasons why the printed word seems to be exempt from the rules of still or moving images.

When I published my own book, the novel-of-which-we-dare-not-speak, I included a black and white message on the back cover that warns: "reader's advisory EXPLICIT language" because I thought it was good customer service to warn the reader that there be dragons between the covers. The only other books that seem to have any ratings at all, are graphic novels with their mentions of "adults" and "mature readers."

So now I wonder what ratings we would give to most of our books, if we had to enforce MPAA guidelines. I just did a search in NoveList, "a fiction database that provides subject heading access, reviews, annotations, and much more for over 135,000 fiction titles" for books with the words "sex" and "violence" in any field and I got back 1120 titles. That's less than one percent.
When I removed "adult" titles from the search, the list drops to 70. If I remove "YA," it goes down to 8 books for children that have plots or descriptions that include the words "sex" and "violence." And so you end up with titles like, Bring me the head of Oliver Plunkett by Colin Bateman; not really sexy or too violent (based on reviews).

I think kids tend to read what interests kids. They want to read about characters like themselves. Sometimes they want to read stuff they're not supposed to. But as long as they're reading, I guess it's okay.