Soupy Sales Taught Me to Read

Junior and I were snuggled in the rocking chair last night, iPad before us, great British narrator's voice reading the words of our bedtime story aloud. I was watching my son follow along, whispering quietly to himself as each word became illuminated. He was enthralled, loving that he could keep up with the narrator and feeling quite big for "reading" the story himself.

It took me back -- waaaay back, I have to admit -- to the pink and green bedroom I shared with my big sister in Oklahoma and the Fisher-Price record player that stood beside my bed. I was a huge Soupy Sales fan in those days (who wasn't?), and my parents presented me with a great new find: Soupy Sales Reads a Wonder Book.


It was a simple children's book accompanied by a 45 record. Pop it onto your record player and voila!, Soupy Sales was right there in your room reading Silly Sidney or another title aloud. I could not get enough of Soupy. I holed up in my room each evening to get my daily dose, and before long, I was venturing off to read other things beyond Sidney.

And it will be the same for my little guy. He looks forward to reading time, whether it's my voice or anyone else in the family reading to him, or even this anonymous Brit who joined us last night. He simply loves to have a story read to him. But soon -- all too soon, I fear -- he'll be ready to climb into the rocking chair on his own and read a book like Silly Sidney all by himself.

He'll have his own Soupy Sales to thank.

Kirkus Revs Its Discovery Engine for iPad

Kirkus Reviews, the curmudgeonly review journal that looks at more than 500 books each month, has moved into app-land. And not a moment too soon, when I consider some of the stinkers I've recently purchased in the iTunes store.

Last month Kirkus began reviewing picture book apps -- from tried-and-true classics to brand new titles created just for the iPad. About 50 apps are already reviewed on the site, and a Top 10 list highlights their faves. Also in the works, according to a press release, is a discovery engine for the iPad that will feature app demonstrations along with interviews with authors and developers.

"Parents will have the opportunity to hone their search by answering 5 quick questions about their child. Kirkus will then return a selection of book apps to match their child’s interest. The questions include gender, age, price range, visual interests, and interactive elements."

Think of it as your neighborhood children's bookseller, who has gotten to know you and your child's interests over the years, only now the chit-chat is cut a little short.

That Kirkus is venturing into this terrain is not all that surprising, as this is the future of reading. But that it is reviewing -- and giving stars -- to material that some diehards would not dare call "a book" does raise an eyebrow. Here's an excerpt from a starred review of Bartleby's Book of Buttons:

"Less a straight-ahead storybook than a combination of story and interactive puzzles, each page includes lighted buttons to press, keys and cranks to fiddle with."

The book app discovery engine, which will be available in March, is part of the journal's repositioning since its purchase last year. While some authors still smarting from scathing Kirkus reviews quietly cheered its seeming demise in late 2009, parents, teachers, and librarians who need help slogging through bookshelves (both the wooden kind and the digital ones) have a lot to be grateful about.

I hope to make good use of it. Now, if only I could take those stinkers I downloaded earlier this month and resell them at Powell's.

Does Borders' Failure Mark the End of the Traditional Book?

Stopped by our gasping Borders bookstore yesterday to check out the fire sale. Everything was marked down 20 percent. And though I am typically more of a 50-to-75-percent-off kind of gal, in the end a sale is a sale, no?

As I picked up early readers for my little guy and some fun new titles for my older kids, I couldn't help but feel like this was a real turning point. In my mind, the death of Borders marks the end of the book as we know it.
I got this sense that, as the stacks and stacks of hardback Olivia and Pinkalicious books were being pushed out the door, so too was the notion of hardback books themselves.

It was spring 2009 when Borders decided to pull CDs from the shelves. Why? Because of competition from iTunes. We were downloading our music instead of popping it into the CD player. And at garage sales across the nation we saw great deals on CD racks and other storage systems.

Buying those hardback books yesterday felt like a quaint exercise, even though I have been doing it every week over at our local Indie bookstore, 57th Street Books. Thumbing through the stacks of Junie B. Jones and Ivy and Bean yesterday felt a lot like when I'm at a flea market and poking around in the piles of cassette tapes.

I still love the feel of a traditional book in my hands. And I love curling up in our cushy old chair and turning the pages of a picture book with my kindergartner. But I think he would be perfectly fine if we snuggled in together in the glow of an iPad.

Book 'Em, Danno

Interesting story in Publisher's Weekly's Industry News today about "dynamic, interactive multimedia content" for kids. Or in other words, the picture books of tomorrow.

Speaking at Digital Book World, four publishers who have already staked a claim in the great digital book frontier talked about rapidly changing technology and what it means to the publishing world as more and more books are going digital.

I found humor in how each identified himself on the panel. Are they book publishers? Not in the traditional sense. More like a “mobile and tablet publisher,” as one defined his business.

The question of quality is always what interests me, and Rick Richter of Ruckus Media Group has the most interesting comments. He referred to picture book apps and this new medium as "books you can play with and games you can read."

Richter said, “there are 30,000 kids’ apps in the App Store, and about 27,000 of them are horrible. We hope to take that curator's role and let parents know what’s makes a great app and an excellent experience for their kids. We want people to take this space seriously and respect kids.”

Let's hope he puts his money where his mobile, interactive body opening through which food is taken in is.

Excessive Gaming and Depression

I'll be the first to admit that the Wii makes a great babysitter. Fun, peppy personality, reliable, and the kids are in love!

When I have to meet a work deadline and I have a house full of my short friends, eager to do something, I sometimes let them Wii. And oh, my, how the time flies!

Suddenly and hour, two hours, dare I admit THREE hours go by. Without a peep from my peeps for me to engage or intervene or entertain. No muss, no fuss, and my project gets done.

We don't always go on video game benders like that. I typically limit their screen time -- whether it's the TV, laptop, or a phone. But life gets busy, and we occasionally have days that are intense for Mom and Dad.

But once the deadlines have passed and I am no longer a crazed lunatic, I find it all a bit appalling. What do we have to show for all that time? Just thinking of those hours spent on Star Wars Legos for the Wii makes me queasy. Like the way I feel after consuming a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup.

Both instances (the excessive Wii and the ice-cream overload) require a bit more self-control on all our part. I own up to throwing out the rules now and then -- life isn't always tidy.

Balance. Moderation. We all strive for reasonable approaches to life in our day to day, and we want our kids to understand it too. But it's hard. And it takes discipline -- both internal and external.

As adults, we recognized that just about anything in massive doses is bad for us. Kids have to be taught this. And that's why the recent study by the American Academy of Pediatrics that found excessive gaming may lead to depression, anxiety, and poor grades in school comes as no surprise.

The researchers studied more than 3,000 elementary and middle-school children in Singapore. Their findings? Almost 9 percent of these kids were "addicted" to gaming, and similar percentages were found in other countries.

The kids where considered "pathological" gamers exhibited higher levels of depression and other mental health issues than their peers who played fewer video games. On the plus side was that students who stopped excessive gaming reportedly reduced their levels of depression, anxiety and social phobia.

As I read this, I immediately wanted to know where my kids fit in. According to the study:

• Pathological gamers clocked in an average of more than 31 hours a week
• Their less excessive peers tallied about 19 hours a week

What does 31 hours look like? Well, nearly a full-time job. Even the group playing fewer hours could still hold a part-time job.

If kids are gaming every day after they come home from school, they're putting in more than 6 hours daily. Say they get home at 3 p.m., -- does this mean they are gaming until 9 p.m.? What about homework, dinner, any sort of sports or other activities? To fit those it too, they're probably gaming until midnight.

If those 31 hours are distributed over the entire week, that's nearly 5 hours each day.

And with what are those hours filled? Just like the Wii benders we experience, and when I stare at that empty Ben & Jerry's carton, yuck. Regret.

What would these kids in the study be like if they were engaged in something productive? What if they were building a new game to share with friends? Or making a movie, creating a public service announcement for their school. Or moving offline, what if they were playing a sport? Singing in a choir? Would they be depressed if they were interacting with friends or friendly adults? Would their grades turn around if they found more purpose for their time?

Perhaps the kids in this study already had addictive behaviors, and gaming just happens to be the outlet. That is possible -- in any cross-section of the population, we will find a lot of folks with these issues.

But any way we count it, 31 hours is a lot of time to spend on endless, repetitive tasks each week. And the rewards seem less than satisfying. It would tax the mind and emotions of anyone, adult or child.

Mom, Will You Read Me a Bedtime App?

It's a pivotal moment for picture books, and traditionalists might find themselves shouting, "No, David!"

Here come the picture book apps.

The New York Times writes about e-readers with color and the new push from publishers to bring these books out. Most readers and writers of picture books knew that day was coming, but it still seemed "a ways off." Many hung tight to the thought that the purity of the 32-page book as we know it might remain unthreatened.

Well, those days are over, and it remains to be seen how the youngest readers respond. Our kindergartener has a paper-thing-with-a-spine kind of book under the Christmas tree. I plan to download a new picture book app after school today to see what he thinks. We'll see which one he goes back to again and again during the holiday break.

While the early picture book apps out of the chute have been with smaller publishers, the heavyweights have now arrived. Apple is pushing more than 100 titles to its iBookstore starting today with incredibly popular titles like the Olivia series by Ian Falconer. And Fancy Nancy has been available on Nook Color for about a month.

Most publishers have been eager to jump onto the e-book bandwagon, but there were a few obstacles in the way for picture books. The largest being that pesky problem of color. But now that that's taken care of, off we go!

"It finally gives us the opportunity to have our picture books join the e-book revolution,” says Jon Anderson of Simon & Schuster in the Times article. “It gives us a great opportunity to monetize our content in a way that we previously haven’t been able to.”

And monetize they will.

This is the turning point. Anderson says that by early 2011, S&S hopes to release picture e-books at the same time as the print versions. Just like the grownups.

Daphne, Dressing Up, and Parenting Online

Parenting is hard enough. Taking it to the Web? That's a whole different can o' worms.

A Missouri mom's recent post about her 5-year-old son's Halloween costume has drawn a tremendous response from parents and others -- and not just for his choice in being Daphne from Scooby Doo.

On her blog Nerdy Apple Bottom, the Mo Mom wrote,

"If you think that me allowing my son to be a female character for Halloween is somehow going to ‘make’ him gay then you are an idiot. Firstly, what a ridiculous concept. Secondly, if my son is gay, OK. I will love him no less. Thirdly, I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off."

The post, which features a photo of her son in his bright orange and purple costume complete with pink boots, has gone viral, generating over a million hits and more than 38,000 comments. Mom was interviewed by phone on CNN’s “American Morning,” saying she and her husband were “flabbergasted” by the response.

Various media outlets have now weighed in, not to mention all the mothers and others with strong opinions.

Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams hilariously addresses the mom's post, saying "This is how it's done, folks."

"It should be a no-brainer that 5-year-old boy who dresses like Daphne one day a year is not automatically gay or transgendered -- although obviously, if he had wanted to be Velma, he'd be a lesbian. The point is, as the mom blogger beautifully expresses it, so what?. . ."

But Carline Howard over at Forbes.com isn't so supportive.

"Her anger at the mean mommies is valid. But she’s taken to the blogosphere with her rants (people can be mean, even to children! traditional gender distinctions aren’t fair!) and his photo at the expense of her “worrier” son’s privacy."

This entire kerfuffle reminds me of a children's picture book called "King & King" (Tricycle Press, 2002) that was attacked for "promoting a gay agenda" and sexualizing characters for children. But what the book boils down to for me is less about homosexuality than about teaching tolerance. Buy it now.

I agree with Nerdy Apple Bottom that her son did "rock that wig." And obviously her post struck a chord across the country. So while many of us support the notion that "it takes a village," this Missouri Mom seems to have gotten a much larger village than she ever dreamed possible.