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Hands down, the most fetching cover of the year. Look at this house. Absolutely beautiful. This is kind of the house of my dreams, and the minute that I saw the cover I yearned to live inside.

Until I read the book.

Miranda is a little girl who often gets caught by the wind. She is diminutive in size, and can easily wind up tossed about like a kite without a string. One day she is taken by the wind and lands in some brambles where she is discovered by Wysteria's hounds. Wysteria Barrows is the mistress of this house which is called Bourne Manor. Wysteria takes Miranda in, and sets her to work mending the fishing nets that pay the bills. Wysteria is a bit odd, but Miranda is thankful to have a home. So she overlooks the fact that Wysteria locks her in her room every night and makes her wear heavy iron boots so that the wind no longer takes her.

But Miranda is a child, after all, and she is curious. Over time, she discovers the entry to Wysteria's late husband's study. He was a sea captain, and among all of the expected treasures in the study, Miranda finds a secret room that is filled with kites. Miranda is soon up on the widow's walk flying the kites unbeknownst to Wysteria. When her beloved kite is stolen by the wind and found by a young boy named Farley, Miranda feels a stirring in her soul that she cannot name.

Soon, Miranda finds herself on her own, and is discovering the secrets of the Manor. Chilling secrets. Should she stay with Wysteria who has helped her all of this time, or should she escape and see where her future takes her?

Now, I should preface this by saying that I am very susceptible to books about houses that seem somewhat possessed. I went and read Amityville Horror at the tender age of 9 (which I DON'T recommend!!!) so houses with personalities scare me more than your average reader. I do not want to imply that this is a horror story, but there are ghost story elements to it. Along with a fairytale like atmosphere complete with an otherworldly lead character, and an Irish boy filled with fairy lore.

Rita Murphy has written an interesting and ethereal story about friendship, family, loyalty and first love. It is an odd story. There is no other way to say it. But it is magical and compelling as well. Bird is for the older tween who is a deep reader and will not be put off by something completely different.

I found this at habitat media , in the section on its movie, EMPTY OCEANS, EMPTY NETS. They have transcripts of interviews with prominent scientists interviewed for the movie.

Many of the interviews are interesting.

They have interviews from the Philippine perspective, the scientist who says we have only 10% of our large marine animals left since industrialized commerical fishing, and the Harvard professor who talks of the need for marine reserves, among others.

But for me, the one I've published in full below is the one to read first. In this one, we hear wisdom, as well as knowledge. It's pretty powerful stuff.



INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT - Dr. David Suzuki

Dr. David Suzuki is a geneticist, founder of the David Suzuki Foundation and a Professor at the University of British Columbia. He also hosts the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's science television series, "The Nature of Things" and is author of "Science Matters."





Do you believe we have reached the limit for growth on this planet?

All over the world, whenever I happen to visit a place like Africa or Madagascar, New Zealand, Australia, anywhere I go, I try to seek out elders who’ve lived in an area for 70, 80 years. And I ask them, "What was this place like when you were a child?" And everywhere I go around the world, people tell us that the planet has changed in a fundamental way. They talk about fish as far as you could see. Our elders in British Columbia talk about going out in a little row boat and being able to rake from the seaweed and fill a punt with herring in a matter of minutes. They talk about going out in a rowboat with a shovel and just shoveling abalone off the rocks into the boats and filling it in no time. They talk about salmon in runs that were so massive you could hear them coming from miles away. All over the world, elders are a living record of the enormous changes that have happened in the 70% of the planet that is covered in water. It’s happened in a lifetime. And if it’s disappeared in each of these regions, do we think there are massive areas of ocean waiting for the things we drive out to go somewhere else! If they’re not here where we knew them as children, they’re not anywhere. So our elders are the best way to verify the enormous changes that are going on. And it is simply not sustainable. We can’t continue to deplete the ocean resources the way we have and think that this can go on indefinitely.


Since salmon was listed as an endangered species in the US there’s a belief that to ultimately save this species it will require a complete reshuffle of the economic base of the pacific northwest. Do you agree?


The problem we face today with something like salmon on the west coast of Canada and North America is that where the salmon have disappeared there is absolutely no assurance that even if we were to try a massive program of restoration that the salmon would ever come back. I mean we’ve so altered ecosystems, up and down the coast. The notion that we are clever enough to say "Oh-oh, we made a mistake, we’ve got to start now, pouring massive amounts of effort into trying to get them back," is still a conceit that we know enough to be able to restore them. So from my standpoint, it’s not at all clear that we will ever get anything like what once was, even if we have the commitment, the will to do it and the money to do it. In terms of asking the question, "Would it be worth making the investment, to take down dams on the Snake Rivers and to try to restore the Fraser River?"


I don’t think that anything like that could ever be argued in economic terms. It’s simply an issue that goes far deeper than anything economic. It’s a question of "What is our place on this planet?" and "What is our relationship with the rest of life on earth?" Is this planet a place where other creatures can live rich full lives as well, to accompany us, because we live here for a very brief moment in time. Right now we seem determined to domesticate every possible thing that we can on the planet, in the service of whatever our needs are. And, of course, it’s suicidal in the long run because we are still a deeply embedded species in the rest of the nature around us. But we seem compelled to try to imprint our image of what we want from the planet. And it wont’ work! I think it leaves us spiritually bereft. The cost, to me, of what we have done and continue to do is a spiritual cost, not an economic one.


In what way do you think salmon are perhaps an ultimate indicator species for an ecosystem that’s out of balance?


Biologists talk about key species or indicator species; critical species that if you remove them or reduce them in an ecosystem, it may lead to a collapse. My own feeling about keystone species is that it’s a conceit on our part to think that we know which elements of an ecosystem are crucial. The knowledge base that we have of ecosystems, of what makes up an ecosystem and how the components interact is so limited that we have no idea what a keystone species is. Of course there are charismatic species like grizzlies or elephants or whales. And salmon are, to me, a charismatic species. Their abundance, the magnificence of their life cycle is an inspiration. It’s inspired the First Nation’s people that lived up and down the coast. It was what their cultures were built on. And we understand why we focus on salmon. The biomass mass represented by the salmon runs every year must have been unbelievable in pre-contact times.


So of course, extirpating that biomass mass must have an enormous impact. But again, we know so little. How can we even begin to assess it? When you think of 60 million bison that ranged up the center of this of this continent and were extirpated in a matter of a century…I mean the impact of that, ecologically, must have been tremendous. But we didn’t have total collapse, and chaos. We extirpated over three billion passenger pigeons in a matter of a hundred years. And again, it wasn’t that there were total collapses. And yet, they must have been keystone species.


So with regards to your question of what is a keystone species, is the salmon the critical or key indicator species? My own feeling is that it’s going to be some little thing out there in the ocean that we haven’t even discovered yet that will suddenly be found to be an absolutely critical component.


I think that as a species which boasts of being intelligent, we ought to have far greater humility with what we can say about systems that exist out there. If we were going to manage something far simpler than say, wild salmon…let’s say a shoe factory. I would think that any manager of a shoe factory would require at least two things in order to manage that factory properly. You’d need an inventory of everything in your factory. And then you would need a blueprint that tells you how everything in the inventory is connected. And if you knew that, you might be able to manage it indefinitely. Now you think about the natural world out there. What the hell do we know about a forest, about the soil, about the oceans? We know diddly. We know nothing. When you look at the estimates of how many species exist in the world, it’s estimated anywhere between 10 and 30 million. Now a going number seems to be 10 to 15 million species. Of those species that exist, scientists have identified about 1.5 million. That just means that somebody has taken a dead specimen and given it a name. It doesn’t mean we know anything about how many are there. Where do they live, how do they eat, how do they reproduce, how do they interact with other species? It means someone has given a dead specimen a name. Okay. So let’s say they’ve given one and a half million names and there are 10 million species of which we know 15% by name. Out of that 15%, we know a fraction of 1% of any of them in any kind of detail to say that we know something about their biology. So how can anyone have the conceit or the arrogance to say that we can manage natural resources? It’s absurd. I say, anyone who says that seriously is either lying or is a fool. Because we don’t know enough to be able to manage that.


What you have just said speaks volumes with regards to the precautionary approach to fisheries resource management. It’s meant to serve as a means to start guiding some decisions within fisheries management. What is your view on this?


To me, one of the most pernicious approaches to management of nature is to set up a committee with all the quote, "stakeholders" at the table. If you’re going to deal with management of salmon, then of course we have to have an international committee because our salmon are so stupid, they don’t know they’re Canadian salmon, they get stuck in American nets and Korean nets and Russian nets. So we have to have all of the countries involved in taking those fish. And then we have to have of course, the commercial fisherman present and the native fishery. We have to have the sports fishers. And then of course we have to have the Minister of Forests whose activity affects the fish and the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Energy, Urban affairs.


And all of these people come with different perspectives and they’re there to fight for their turf in terms of the way it interacts with those fish and what they want out of the fish. But it makes absolutely sure that the most important stakeholders are never at the table. And that’s the fish themselves. Who looks out for the fish and makes sure that their biological history and their future is insured? We don’t start from the idea or the simple notion that fish lead a very complex life. And because of their abundance and their health, we human beings are able to parasitize them to a certain extent, and make a living. And we ought to be very careful about the degree of predation that we impose on those fish. But instead it’s, "I’m a commercial fisherman, damn it, and it’s my right to take my share, and I want to get as much…." And so if one asks, "Well are we coming to any kind of precautionary approach to the resource?", the answer is I don’t see much evidence of that. And it is stymied, I think, in large part, so long as we commit ourselves to a process of allowing all of the stakeholders and forgetting then what the real issue is. The real issue is the long-term survival and resurgence of the salmon.


When there’s a decline of fishery resources, say a decline in salmon for example there’s sometimes a response from the capture fisheries to say, "Hey, aquaculture’s the answer!". What’s your view on this?


It may very well be that aquaculture will be able to take up some of the slack when we’ve found that we simply cannot restore wild stocks of marine fishes. I personally think it’s far too early to begin to think of that. Because the mentality, the bureaucratic mentality, of course, is that, those in power can see fish farms being set up very quickly and results start coming out of these pens very quickly. So it’s a very nice, political time frame. You can say, "I’m going to invest a huge amount of money and give support to aquaculture," and you can see a payoff in numbers of jobs and amount of income coming in within a matter of years. In terms of the wild stock, in order to restore those rivers — if we can ever restore runs back to the rivers that have lost their stocks, you’re talking now about decades or perhaps generations. And of course, that’s a time frame that is far beyond anything a politician can afford to look at. So we have the terrible dilemma that politically, fish farms are very, very attractive. And if the wild stocks are gone, what the hell, it’s too expensive anyway, so let’s just repopulate the whole coast with fish farms.


Now I personally think that this is a spiritually bankrupt approach. But I also think it is an ecologically, potentially, very devastating, activity. Sure, fish farms may work, especially if they’re in hard containers and especially, if they were on land, which is where I think that we ought to have our fish farms, in hard containers on land, or hard containers in the water. But we were assured by government, DFO, that Atlantic Salmon, for example, grown in net pens, would not pose a hazard on the West Coast. One, that they would never reproduce. When they were actually found spawning, we were told by DFO that they will never, the fry will never hatch. And when the fry were hatched they said, "Well, they’ll never survive." And now we’ve got two-year-old Atlantic Salmon.


And DFO actually had the nerve to suggest that maybe it was environmental groups that had actually seeded these fish in the rivers to prove their point.


So DFO has been horrifyingly wrong at every point. And yet the encouragement is to have fish farms in which you have exotic species brought into Pacific Waters. We have five native species of salmon, for heaven’s sake, on the West Coast. Why do we need another species, an exotic one, with all of the problems of disease, escapes and potential replacement by an exotic species.


The Great Lakes in North America are an ecological disaster area; Lake Ontario, the fifth lake in this chain, has been planted with Pacific salmon, chinook and coho and Atlantic salmon. And a few years ago I went to do a film on these fish. And we set a net in the lake, pulled out about 300 salmon. About three quarters of them were coho and chinook. Every single one was dead. Some were only caught by the teeth, but they were all dead. The rest were Atlantic salmon, every single one was alive and kicking. Some were caught by the gills. When we took them off and let them go, boom, they were gone. Now what does this mean? Pacific salmon has evolved to live its life, run up the river, spawn and die; it’s got one shot at it. And so I believe they have a life force. They hit the net, they give it everything they’ve got; they run out of their life force and they die. The Atlantic Salmon is a survivor. It runs up the rivers, spawns goes back, runs up again another year and spawns — five or six times in its lifetime. They are repeat survivors. And so they hit the net, they fight but they’re going to survive. They’re going to fight and keep going.


Now we have a case on the West Coast where we have depleted rivers with the Pacific Native stocks, we introduce now, alien species, the Atlantic Salmon, which is a survivor. My own feeling is that these are potentially the rabbits in Australia. Once they establish a toehold, because they are survivors, they are going to really wreak havoc in these ecosystems. Now I think anyone who says, "Well, that’s good, the Pacific Salmon are disappearing anyway; it’s good to get another biomass in there to replace it" has no understanding of what ecological systems are and about the nature of the interaction of various components.


We’re supporting a study here showing that not only do the salmon need the forest - we know that. Because when you clear cut the forest, the salmon disappear. The forest needs the salmon. The salmon represent the largest single pulse of nitrogen fertilizer that the forest gets each year. Because the salmon are taken by the bears and the eagles and the ravens into the forest where they fertilize the trees. If we have Atlantic salmon that don’t die that way, you’re going to remove all of that potential biomass from the forest. And do we think the forest isn’t going to feel the effect of that. So people just don’t think properly. If they think, "Well, we’ve extirpated Pacific Salmon, so let’s stick in another exotic", it’s crazy.


I hear of efforts here in Vancouver to genetically modify salmon for the aquaculture industry. What are the potential risks with this?


What’s going on today in genetics, and I’m a geneticist by training, is nothing short of miraculous. I see experiments going on now, in laboratories, at undergraduate university laboratories that I never dreamt I would see in a lifetime. So it’s easy to understand why scientists are intoxicated with what they’re. We can take DNA out of one species, read the sequence of genes that have letters in the genes. Take those genes, stick them in another organism. And it’s truly revolutionary. But because it is such a powerful revolutionary technique, it seems to me that we ought to be even more cautious about what we’re doing. You see, right now we’re in the very early phases of genetic manipulation. And what I like to tell people is, "Don’t you understand that the way that cutting-edge science works is by advancing, by proving our current ideas are wrong?" That’s the nature of cutting-edge science. I graduated with a Ph.D. in 1961, and man I was hot! I was as hot as anybody at the time. When I tell students today what we believed genes were and chromosomes and DNA in 1961, they fall on the floor laughing. Because in the year 2000 what we thought were the hot ideas in 1961 are ridiculous. But then I tell these hot-shot students, "You’re not going to believe this. But when you’re a professor, 20 years from now, and you tell your students what you believed about genes in the year 2000, they’re going to fall on the floor laughing at you."


Most of our current ideas are wrong, and that’s the way it is in any hot, exciting, revolutionary area. So that’s not a denigration of the science, it’s simply the way it is. Why do we want to rush to apply every incremental insight that we get, when the chances are overwhelming, the reason we’re trying to do the manipulation will prove to be wrong. And if that’s the case, it will prove to be downright dangerous. Now most of our principles in genetics have been derived by breeding a male and a female of one species, crossing them, looking at their offspring, crossing them and, and following them on down. This is called vertical inheritance. You look at breeding within a species. What genetic engineering allows us to do is take a gene from this species and transfer it, laterally or horizontally, into a different species, and then follow that gene down. Now geneticists make a fundamental error when they think that the principles they’ve developed by looking at vertical inheritance now apply when you taken genes and stick them in horizontally. They think because it’s DNA, you’re manipulating DNA, "So what difference does it make, we take it out of this fish and put into a tomato plant; it’s DNA." That is a fundamental error. Because DNA, of course, is DNA. But genes don’t evolve by natural selection on each gene, alone, separately.


What you have is the entire genome, the sum total of the genes in a fish, let’s say, are selected by nature, on the way those genes interact to produce the fish. So the whole genome is an integrated entity. When you take a gene out of a fish and stick it into a tomato plant, as scientists are doing, that fish gene finds itself surrounded by a tomato gene that is going, "Whoa, where am I?" Because you’ve changed the context within which that gene operates — still DNA, same stuff that you find in the tomato plant, but it’s a totally different context. And there is absolutely no basis for saying the behavior of that gene will be exactly the same as if you just bred the tomato plant as just another tomato plant. And that’s the fundamental error that I’m shocked that most bio-technologists haven’t seen that that’s not a valid assumption to make. So I don’t say that they’re going to be "frankenfoods" or dangerous things happening; I’m just saying "Hey, we don’t know." We don’t know what the behavior of those trans-genes will be. And until we can, in the lab, reproduce results, start being able to predict the exact behavior of these genes we’re flipping around we sure as hell ought not to be releasing these creatures out into the wild or growing them in fields. And we sure as hell ought not to be testing them out by doing an experiment with people — by letting them eat it. It’s not that I’m against all this manipulation; our ignorance is too great.


In our research I was told certain types of Pacific Salmon are being farmed. Are they modifying the genes of those fish?


You know, I’ve had students who were out taking genes from one species and putting them into salmon growth genes and trying to get more rapid growth. And you can do all of that in a test tube or in a tank; that’s easy. I mean you… I can tell you a very simple way to get bigger, bigger salmon in a tank. What you do is you go and edectomize them, you remove their testes or ovaries. Those fish will not die on cue at four or five years as they do out in nature. They will keep on growing and they get bigger and bigger and they’ll live for years and years. That’s been known for years. Now in fact, it was a guy then that said, "Hey, this a great idea, we’ll just go and edectomize a whole bunch of fries, release them. And they’re going to come back in eight or nine years huge. Well they let go thousands and thousands of these creatures that didn’t have gonads, and they never came back of course. Because the idea of what you do in the lab and manipulate and so on, then release them in the wild, and they’re going to behave as you predicted, is absurd. It’s absolutely absurd.


So you take a gene and I don’t… this is a hypothetical thing, take a gene out of a shark, stick it into a salmon and get the salmon suddenly in a holding tank to grow six times faster, into these giant salmon. Well do we think for a minute that then we just have to breed up a bunch of these and release them and they’re going to come back that much bigger. I mean we’ve had thousands of years of natural selection to hone the entire genome of the salmon. And the idea that we can do something as crude as taking a gene from another species and ramming it home into that genome and get an organism that is going to function out there and compete in the natural world is…well, let’s say it’s naïve at best.


With regards to genetics and fisheries-hatcheries, we hear a lot about the other horror story which is the dilution of the gene pool from wild stocks. What is your view on this?


The reason we have such an enormous abundance, and some people think it’s a waste to have a massive return of salmon that clog the rivers and overshoot the ability of the river to support. And this is the kind of terminology I hear. Well of course, what this is a wonderful cauldron for constant selection then from the animals that are returning. They have been selected throughout their life cycle. Then they make the final run up the river. That is a way of providing you with a wide gene pool within which survivors, or gene combinations can exist that will allow the species to survive over long-term change. See the nature of biological systems or the planet, is that over time the planet has changed enormously. When life evolved 4 billion years ago, the sun was 25% cooler. It’s increased in its temperature by 25%; there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. It was much more carbon dioxide. The poles have shifted around and gone back again; there have been all sorts of enormous changes, and yet life has persisted, how? Life has persisted we now understand by maximizing the amount of genetic diversity that exists within each species. So as things change, you’ve got a pool of genes within which to select out possible survivors out of that. When we impose a human agenda, which is to say, "Let’s set up a hatchery" we’re going to select on a very limited number of features. We’re going to look for size or beauty or whatever you want to impose as a selective agent. And then we’re going to breed up millions and millions of eggs from a limited number of individuals that fulfill our expectations.


What you do then is immediately reduce the size of the gene pool that you’re drawing from. But we’re undergoing enormous changes right now. If ever there was a time when we need maximum gene diversity, it’s now. The planet’s getting warmer. We know that the temperature of water and rivers is going up. We know that there are much more pollutants. There is greater runoff. All kinds of things are happening that are altering the path of the salmon. This is a time when we need huge amounts of genetic diversity. And yet if we think we’re going to go in and start selecting with an attitude like, "Oh the water is getting warmer; we better have some heat-tolerant salmon and start selecting on that basis." This is crazy because we’re just restricting the gene base on which these creatures depend.


Part of what we’re looking at in our series is the new eco-label for the Marine Stewardship Council; the idea being that consumers, by voting with their pocketbook, can actually create changes in the way we fish. What do you think individuals can do to have a positive influence on sustainable fishing methods?


I think there are a lot of things that we, as individuals can do. Of course, the global situation is just so massive and terrifying, that people often feel dis-empowered because they have a sense that "I’m so insignificant, what the hell difference does it make? If I go out and catch two more salmon what the hell difference does it make?" I think there are many, many things that we can do. For one thing, we definitely are catching way too many salmon — either commercially or by sports fishing. And the idea that you can catch a fish, or catch an animal and play around with it while it’s in its death throws; it’s fighting you for its very life. And then we bring it into the boat. We remove this hook and let it go and we say, "That’s sport fishing.… we’re catch and release." This is madness. I mean you’re torturing an animal for your pleasure. And do you think for a minute that animal is going to survive? I mean that animal has been exhausted; it’s played it’s life out. I just think that we have to get over this idea that we have the right to just go out and torture an animal and then we can feel good about it because we let them go. If you’re not going to eat it, don’t go fishing. It’s as simple as that. But you can go out in a boat. There are many other things that you can do to enjoy the experience of being out. But if you’re interested in the future of salmon, don’t catch them if you’re not going to eat them. I think we also can, by the way that we buy things, we can certainly influence the kind of policies. Carl Safina who wrote The Blue Ocean has published a list of a number of commercial fishes that you often seen in restaurants, and shows the ones that are in danger or are at risk. And that certainly, for me, had a profound effect.


Our Foundation started a tiny project a few years ago that has been amazing to me. In 1900 there were estimated to be 50 or 52 rivers and creeks in the City of Vancouver that had salmon runs, unique salmon runs. Today there is one. And the only reason it continues to exist is that it runs through the Musqueam Indian Reserve, and they have valued that run. Now it was down to, I think 10 or 12 salmon one year. And we got involved with the Musqueam trying to restore that river or creek. Now the amazing thing is there had traditionally been a great deal of mistrust between the native community and the non-native community that lived right around that reserve. But the community began to see that the Musqueam were trying to restore the salmon run. And the community itself took possession of that, as theirs’, as part of their heritage. And it was very exciting to see old ladies walking along the road, bailing out the Musqueam people who were trying to preserve the creek, saying "Get out of there; that’s our salmon creek, get out of there," you know, and just feeling that it mattered to them. And I’d, I’d find all across this country, there are communities that are trying to restore salmon runs and it’s a very uplifting experience. The commitment you see from kids and elders trying to return those fish is absolutely inspiring. People want to do something and you can do something. Go out, give money to support people, volunteer to organizations, change the way that you buy things; change the way that you fish or deal recreationally, all of those things. Each person is insignificant. But if you add millions and millions of insignificant people, it adds up.


Part of what we’re looking at in the series is the world population growth and the idea that marine resources is finite, not infinite. What’s your view on eating lower in the food chain?


I was a boy in the 1950s going to high school. And my teacher said, "The oceans are an infinite source of renewable protein." Maybe in the 1950s the oceans were an endless source of renewable protein, but we know for sure that it isn’t today. Those vast resources that existed there, in my lifetime, are gone. And it’s absolutely shocking to hear scientists like Daniel Pauly tell us that perhaps up to 90% of the fish that were once there are now gone. I mean my wife and I wept for days after hearing that. We are now lamenting what has happened to the oceans; we are grieving. We are grieving not for us, we’ve lived off the abundance of that ocean, but we’re grieving for our grandchildren. My grandson calls me all the time and says, "Grandpa, please take me fishing where your dad used to take you." I can’t because there is nothing to take him fishing for. And that’s what I’m grieving for, that what we took for granted when we were children isn’t there. Now what is the cause of that? Well of course, a lot of it is greed. Instead of really talking about sustaining resources and caring from a biological standpoint, we’ve got in and mined the resources as quickly as we could get them, because money doesn’t represent anything. If you mine out all the fishes, well you just take the money and put it in trees. When the trees are gone you put it in computers. Money doesn’t stand for anything and it grows faster than real things. So the economic system drives you to trash the resources that you’re dealing with.

I've been reading more and more to educate myself about our oceans. I favor conservation, and I'm now more convinced than ever that the responsible thing to do, for conservation, for moral reasons, and as citizens of the world, is to establish a national marine monument around the three northern islands of the CNMI.

There is a very good article in the April 2007 National Geographic. It covers some of the same ground as in the thoroughly researched book, THE UNNATURAL HISTORY OF THE SEA by Callum Roberts. Both point to several important aspects of the discussion about our oceans and the marine life there.

* Fishing, as practiced now, causes terrible damage to our marine environments and is exterminating species of ocean life at an alarming rate.

* The degradation of our marine habitats causes a phenomenon of "shifting baselines" where we come to accept as normal what we have/see, and forget about the past, what really was normal and existed. We tend to think those stories told by older generations of "the big one" caught or that got away are exaggerations, but the scientific evidence shows that predator species were bigger in the past, and there were more of them.

* Current strategies for "sustainable fisheries" aren't working. If we don't do something now, drastically, we will lose about 90% of our marine life by 2050. And the effect of degradation of our coral reefs and other marine habitats has on climate change, global warming, and our very existence, will be harsh.

* There are seven steps we (as governments, as policy-makers, as enforcers) could take that would save our oceans.
1. Reduce the amount of fishing.
2. Eliminate politicians from much of the fishery management decision-making.
3. Eliminate catch quotas.
4. Require fishers to keep what they catch (no more throwing over the "by-catch"-returning dead sea creatures that aren't what you wanted)
5. Use the best available fishing technology to reduce bycatch.
6. Ban or restrict the most damaging fishing gear (bottom trawls, in particular).
7. Create marine sanctuaries that put 20% to 40% of the ocean beyond harm-no take zones.

* And as individuals, there are a few things we can do. Namely choose seafoods caught using sustainable methods. There are sustainable fisheries, with their catch labeled by the Marine Stewardship Council. The labels look like this:



Or check out what are good choices here .

AND OF COURSE, SUPPORT THE CREATION OF MARINE SANCTUARIES!

It's that time of year, FINALLY, when the snow begins to melt and the ice trapped in the rocks seeps out to fill up the streams. The rushing waters create their own kind of wake up signal.

Author: Jim LaMarche (on JOMB)
Illustrator: Jim LaMarche
Published: 2006 Chronicle Books (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0811844455 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Dreamy, maritime seascapes and homespun charm are brushed lightly with a glimmer of the extraordinary in this magical story of sibling belittling and the delight of possibilities.

Other books mentioned:

• Matilda

I have been in love with this cover since I first laid eyes on it at a Random House preview so, so, so long ago. Now I am kicking myself for taking so darn long to read it!

Moxy Maxwell is a dreamer. Moxy Maxwell is a planner. Moxy Maxwell is a list maker. Moxy Maxwell is a book carrier. She has had Stuart Little with her all summer long. She has simply been waiting for some "in between" time. You know...that time after something ends and the next thing begins? The perfect time for reading. Moxy's mother points out that she has never seen Moxy with any in between time. She is a busy girl.

But time has run out.

With one day left to read Stuart Little under the threat of consequences (the word itself is terrifying to Moxy). The fact that her twin brother Mark had read the book on the first day of summer vacation is no help. Can Moxy with the help of her lists, plans and neighbor Sam, finally make it through the book in time to get to her water ballet recital?

Peggy Gifford has written a perfect book describing a certain type of reluctant reader. Moxy is perfectly capable of reading, she just has better things to do. Her character is aptly named, the short chapters have hilarious titles themselves, and before I knew it, Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little was shifted over to my read pile. The photos added the perfect touch to making the Maxwell family come alive. MMDNLSL will be hitting my Summer Reading List this year!

Worker of the world Claire has put together a list of books for Labor Day.

Budd Par recently published his heavy vacation reading list. He confessed that his summer reading is anything but fluffy, since vacation is the only time he can dedicate to reading a big book straight through.

His dilemma will seem familiar to all writers with a day job:

"I’m auditioning some decently chunky books to read while on vacation. I guess this is what’s called summer reading, which for me is the opposite of what most think of because it’s a time when I get to do some relatively uninterrupted and in depth reading."

I heartily agree, and I've been pondering books for my own summer vacation in August. So here are my favorite 'Opposite of Summer Reading' books. Add your own favorites in the comments section...

1- William T. Vollmann's The Atlas--A book of literary, travel-themed bedtime stories from one of our best writers, blending fiction, journalism, and hallucinations in short sections you can read whiling traveling.

2- Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch--I read this book in a dreamy haze earlier this summer. Easily the best book I've read all year, full of narrative tricks and writing stunts to keep you inspired the rest of the year. Continue reading...

by Renee Kirchner, Teaching Tips Contributing Editor

It’s only natural for kids to want to pack away their books during summer vacation. They want to play with friends, swim, and ride their bikes. However, a summer spent without books could cause their current reading levels to drop before school starts in the fall. If you make summer reading a pleasant pastime, kids will be more likely to pick up a book.

Summer is a great time for kids to branch out and try reading something new. In summer there are no book reports or projects to complete when they finish a book. Reading should be for pure enjoyment. Encourage your children to read books from many different authors and genres. If they normally read mysteries, suggest that they try biographies, historical fiction, science fiction, or poetry. Don’t limit summer reading to hardcover or paperback books either. Children would probably enjoy reading comic books, magazines, and newspapers also. The objective in the summer is to make reading fun.

Learning how to choose their own reading material is an important skill for young children. Children are more apt to read a book if they select it. Parents can model book selection by taking their children to a library or a bookstore. Pick up a book and look at the cover. Next, flip through the pages and read the jacket out loud. Let your children hear your thoughts. For example, “I love books by this author. I’m so glad he has written another one. I think I’ll check it out and see if I like it.” Children also need to understand that it’s ok to not like a book. Everyone has started a book and then decided it wasn’t for them. Children do not instinctively know that it’s ok to not finish a book if they don’t like it.

Children might become overwhelmed when they see the huge selection of books available at the bookstore or the library. It might be a good idea to visit some websites and get some book recommendations first. Here are some excellent websites to try:

RIF (Reading is Fundamental

The RIF (Reading is Fundamental) website if full of great information. There are fun summer activities for families that are centered on reading. The website also has recommended reading lists broken down by children’s ages and interests.

KidsReads.org

This website is excellent if your child is looking for the newest releases. Each month a new selection of books are reviewed and posted. Frequently there are in-depth author interviews on the website so kids can read about their favorite authors.

American Library Association

The American Library Association has lists of recommended reading that will please everyone. The lists include classics, paperbacks, Newbery Award books, Caldecott Award books, and many others. Children will never run out of book suggestions after visiting this site.

This summer can be a great adventure for your children when you mix free time with some great books. Have a great summer and happy reading.

Another nice round of visits this afternoon. In this instance, to my local local libraries: Winthrop and Twisp. Here are a few of the promised coloring pages as inspired by our group drawings in round no. 1 of the summer reading tour. Just click on the images to enlarge and then print away. More to follow!

Can you identify the three creatures combined together in this lovely beast? The name is a major clue :)

The July-August issue of the Horn Book Magazine is out; selected snippets can be found on our website but, c'mon, subscribe already.

Also new: assistant editor cum tea-dumping subversive Claire Gross gets all in the (British) government's face with a reading list of books about the events of 1776.

I actually kicked things off last week with visits to Republic, Tonasket and Oroville -- and thanks very much to all of the librarians and patrons that made those visits such an excellent start to the summer. Following, are just a few photos from part 1b of my summer library tours: Mattawa - Grand Coulee. Photos of crowds are conspicuously absent, but I will add a few when I get them -- the photos, that is, not the crowds :) Thank you!

The state of my passenger seat on a trip such as this... Essentials, one and all!

From my hotel room in Moses Lake, WA, I give you Moses Lake :)

An excellent mural painted on the exterior of the Quincy Public Library.

The Horsharkasaurous Maximous: Also discovered in Quincy. BEWARE!
**Check back soon to see some of these fine creatures turned into coloring book sheets.

"Points of Interest" along my route. After Moses Lake, Warden and Ephrata, WA, I headed north again through Soap Lake and into Grand Coulee country. Some incredible geologic history in this area. Visit the Ice Age Floods Institute for more info. I took too many pictures of cool rocks and canyons to post here :)

A reason for smiles in Soap Lake, WA. The Pigeleken!

From my day's end stroll around Coulee City. Although sage brush and grasses rule, this small town on the south end of Banks Lake reminded me a lot of places in rural Minnesota.

opined Karen Hesse in her Newbery-Medal acceptance speech (yeah, I know, easy for her to say) but I am stoked, not to mention contractually obligated, to announce the winners of Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge. The Most Books Read Prize goes to the Midwestern Lodestar blog, and the Most Time Spent Reading Prize to the blog Finding Wonderland.

Congratulations to you both. I remain unsure about why my mentioning these winners is supposed to be some kind of prize and have a sneaking suspicion MR is expecting me to make fun of their reading choices or something, but I would never do a thing like that where you could see me. Now shoo, earnest readers. Go outside and play.

Every summer, the middle schoolers at my place of employ have required summer reading. Required, not assigned: they have some choice about which books they read, but they have to read something.

And every June, I put together recommended-books lists, racing the clock before the end of school.

For years, I painstakingly compiled three separate themed lists, one for each grade, keyed to the Humanities curriculum each grade would be studying that year. It was thorough, but exhausting, and frankly I'm not sure how useful it was.

Last year, with thousands of books to weed through and pack up for a summer remodel, I tried something new: an annotated list of a couple dozen "Els's Picks" list for the whole middle school, from entering-6th to entering-8th. They didn't have to choose a book from the list, but if they wanted some guidance, it was there. I tried to range it out with young-ish books, old-ish books, male and female protagonists, different genres, etc. Because it was the first time I'd done a list like that, I went a little wild with it: threw in all kinds of stuff that I just loved, cobbled together some summaries, and tossed it to the kids. This was the result.

Now I'm up against the Summer Reading Wall once again, and realizing I have a problem. Last year's list was the cream of the crop of a lifetime's reading, so how can I possibly top it this time around? I'm thinking that rather than create a whole new Picks list, I'll revise last year's, deleting a few titles that aren't so incredibly compelling in retrospect and adding some new ones.
On the other hand, I've been reading teen/YA fiction at a furious rate this year, and might just have enough to support a brand-new list, supplemented with a few titles that ended up on last year's cutting-room floor.

So far, here's what a list like that would look like, in no particular order:

American Born Chinese
Fly By Night
Hattie Big Sky
Rules
A Drowned Maiden's Hair
Uglies
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Yellow Star
Septimus Heap--Magyk
Changeling
Feed
Persepolis
Runaways
The Weight of the Sky
No More Dead Dogs
Jason's Gold
A Mango-Shaped Space
The Lightning Thief
The Wee Free Men
Rules for Survival
A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life
Monster
Sorcery and Cecelia

I'd like to add a few more, like Heat by Mike Lupica, and a Gilda Joyce book, and The Schwa Was Here, and Vive La Paris, and Twilight, but I haven't actually read those yet so even though I think I'll love them I can't include them in good conscience. Ah, well; maybe next summer.

Now that I look at it, though, it's not a bad list just as it is. (Astute readers might notice a definite Cybils influence--no big surprise.) I might just go with it, if I can slog through the summaries in the next few days.

We've put together a summer reading list for your pleasure; please note that it fulfills no requirements and promises nothing but a good time.

Bruce Brooks kicked off my summer reading with a gift of the latest Prey book (Invisible Prey) by John Sandford. Give me Sandford's Lucas Davenport in the summer and Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti in the winter and I'm a happy man. Otherwise this summer, I'm planning to continue my binge on Turkey and the Turks and am currently enjoying Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul and Hugh Pope's Sons of the Conquerors. But that's indoor reading, and for the beach--if I get there--I like 'em big and stupid. Any suggestions?

Bad new, folks. Apparently Horn Book Magazine has acquired a way to see into my very brain. Look at this magnificent Summer Reading List they just put out. It's like we're soul mates or something.



Beach - Beach? Someone else on this planet read and loved Beach? *sob* I'm not alone!

The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County - Excellent. The buzz starts low, but if I can keep it up then this book will be causing a veritable blaze of glory by the time the award season circles through.

Aggie and Ben - Awwwww. Just... awwwww.

The Green Glass Sea - Look, Ellen! They included your book!

Larklight - Suh-weet. Now please to find me a child who likes it. I love it, but I want some confirmation that there's a kid somewhere anywhere that digs horrible white space spiders.

A Drowned Maiden's Hair - Look, Laura! They included your book too!

To Dance - This makes me happy.



I'm really going to have to read this Rex Zero and the End of the World book aren't I? It just keeps cropping up.


Please go to bookshelves of doom for a full encapsulation of all the further summer reading lists out there.

Recently I went to my local library with an odd request: Did the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature still exist, or had it been replaced by the Internet? The reference librarian looked me over and sighed. It may still exist, she said, but the library hasn't purchased it since 2001 and few people have ever used it, or asked where it was kept. Once a massive multi-volume record of articles

Warm weather, the dog days of summer, time to break out the shorts. Nothing more refreshing and cooler than lounging about, unencumbered, with plenty of free time to lounge and let the mind flicker an wander. The perfect time to snack on short stories and other collected short works. I am opening this one to the floor because while I feel I could cover this topic myself I've found myself more

"Read the Dell paperback."

You have to be of a certain age to recall when those words would come at the end of a movie trailer. It was usually some genre film, something a little exploitative, a summer popcorn movie that was either based on the kind of paperback people would buy at the checkout stands in supermarkets or was written in haste between the editing of the film and the release date. I think half of these movies were produced by Roger Corman's American International Pictures because that was usually the first part of the announcer's sign-off: "An American International picture. Read the Dell paperback."

How many people bought those books? It's hard to say though there's a booming business of these titles on eBay. It's nice to know there was a time when major motion pictures and the venues that advertised them -- theatres and television -- once actually used to use summer as a time to promote reading, even if it was merely an attempt to wring every last penny of profit from their films.

Today I am singing the praises of that ghetto of fiction known as Trash, or sometimes Beach Reading, and almost always as Genre. I'm not necessarily digging into the actual trash mentioned above but that fiction which tends to get marginalized because of its connection to popular culture. I won't attempt an exhaustive list of titles or suggestions, instead I'm taking a look at some of the books that many of my friends and I read and passed around during the summers when we were teens. My goal is to suggest some older titles that are still around and just under the radar of most young adults. If some of these titles seem like classics of their genre, well, I can't pretend any of us knew or cared about what sort of shelf life these titles would assume when we first read them.

One of my first "adult" summer reads was Ian Flemming's Bond classic Diamonds Are Forever. I bought it at some yard sale, among the go-cart parts and old kitcheware, laid out on a blanket with a bunch of other trash. I was eleven and it cost all of a quarter. I had seen a couple of Bond movies prior to reading this book and I might have already seen the film version, but on a lazy July afternoon I picked this thing up and started to read.

It might sound obvious to say this, but at the time I remembered thinking the book was nothing like the movies. There was something way more adult about all this, the language was foreign to me, the pacing and storytelling alien. It was tough slog at first because I was still trying to marry the book and images from the movie into my still-developing cranium. And then there was all that narrative, all those points where the author explained Bonds thinking and rationale. Huh, there was actually some thinking going on behind all that action, some deep cover and intel gathering. He wasn't just a spy or a man of action but a trained agent in the British Secret Service. There were dimensions to his character and *pop* suddenly Bond is a bit more real. Oh, and here's a surprise: it was really about diamond smuggling, with no evil villain planning to send a laser into space to blow up parts of the world.

I had two other Bond books in my collection -- did I pick them up at the same time? -- but I don't recall reading them. And I've meant to go back and reread Diamonds Are Forever or any other Flemming that looked interesting to see what my adult mind makes of it all. A few years back they repackaged the covers of the books, upped them to trade paper size (mine were the smaller paperbacks), which I found appealing. I would need to reconfirm this, but readers deep into the Alex Rider series (or even the Young Bond series that's a few titles in) might enjoy a little old school cold war spy genre fiction. From here one could suggest some Robert Ludlum, John le Carre, or Len Deighton. I am a particular fan of Deighton's Harry Palmer books and equally of the movie adaptations which featured Michael Caine. It's Caine's spymaster turn that is the physical inspiration for Austin Powers which is better appreciated when you get the joke. You might even be able to introduce a spy fiction buff to the broccoli that is Graham Greene, especially Our Man in Havana which borders on parody of the genre.

The penultimate summer movie, the one that actually created the mold for all summer blockbuster movies, is Jaws. When it came out I felt compelled to read the book first. In fact, knowing it was a bestseller before a movie I almost felt a certain sense of indignation that a movie had been made from the book and that most people would see the movie and never actually read the books.

I was a teenage boy and self-righteous indignation, especially over things I knew little or nothing about, came naturally.

I don't remember how I came into possession of my paperback of Jaws but I do know that I lent it out twice before trying to read it myself. I just had a hard time getting started. I must have reread the first 20 pages a half dozen times before I sat down determined to bust my way through it. I gave myself a 50 page deadline and had finished twice as many pages before I thought to look at the page numbers. The rest of the book came easy and when I finally saw the movie... well, let's leave my views about Steven Spielberg for another time and forum.

Jaws, at its simplest, falls into the man-against-nature horror genre. Typically there is a thing that is out to get people and there's a lot of running around trying to sort out what the thing wants and how to kill or outwit it. Character plays second fiddle to the action, which requires the story to be populated either with people of average or lesser intelligence than the reader to luck into a resolution or, at best, a challenge of wills in which the strongest (protagonist/s) survives.

For somewhat similar books I don't imagine there's any harm in Michael Chrichton's Jurassic Park, though I think The Andromeda Strain is a lesser known story that teen readers might enjoy. Also Robin Cook's Coma, William Wharton's Birdy, William Goldman's Magic (skip the film, the adaptation is atrocious), and Benchley's post-Jaws follow-ups The Deep and The Island.

For many I knew growing up summer reading could be summed up in two word: Stephen King. Personally I had some problems with early Stephen King where the characters had a paranormal abilities that were referred to as "the push" (in Firestarter) or "the shining" and I couldn't fully grok King the way my friends had.

Until The Stand.

Much talk these days about apoca-lit in YA fiction, much talk about how kids really seem to dig the political, ethical and moral questions that arise when the world faces a destructive-yet-unifying cataclysm like a comet knocking the moon off course or a plague devouring humanity. But when you weld these elements together with the muscular fists of a writer like Stephen King you have the ultimate in summer reads. Biological weapon released, killing a vast majority of the population who are haunted by visions of either an old woman near a corn field or a handsome stranger in the desert, drawn to either one in a battle of good verses evil for the survival of mankind. I haven't even glanced at this book since it's original publication and I can still remember images clearly from the book, more so than things I have read in the past year. Rib-sticking, something that isn't going to leave you feeling empty, yet nothing that's going to show up on an SAT test.

I would say that any Stephen King would work but I haven't read them all and I have encountered some duds, especially in the 1990's. Stick with the classic King, the books that made his name, like Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, Firestarter or The Shining. If you've got a reader who's already run those books down why not give them a taste of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, David Seltzer's The Omen, or Jay Anson's The Amityville Horror. These aren't exactly apoca-lit titles (I've got one coming up next) but they are still very sturdy reads.

I read another book the same summer I read The Stand and that was Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Now here was something fun: a newly discovered comet originally believed to pass Earth appears to be on a collision course. While the scientific community assures the public that impact isn't likely a televangelist fans the flames of fear and suddenly everyone's on a survivalist kick. The comet breaks up as it nears Earth and lands in various places across the planet, causing earthquakes, volcano eruptions and tsunamis-a-plenty. What's left of civilization is in ruins, fighting for survival among militant cannibals. Fun!

Larry Niven's name is probably familiar to science fiction fans for many books including the Ringworld series. I have tried to start other Niven/Pournelle collaborations but they just didn't click for me. That aside, what were talking about now is science-fiction which has steadily increased in its general approval since when I was a lad and is now (finally) practically respectable literature. Why, 30 years ago Phillip K. Dick might have had the word "wacko" in front of his name but now after Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly -- films all made from Dick stories -- he is being embraced as a unique and genuine American voice. Blade Runner and Total Recall were not the names of Dick books (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale respectively) and it might be fun (in a devious way) to present the originals sans mention of their movie adaptations on the cover to a reader to see if they make the connection.

A younger reader with a hunger for actual science fiction or fantasy may have already discovered the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker series, or the Anne McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern books (one was good enough for me, thanks), or Octavia Butler's dystopian Parable titles -- all fine suggestions if they haven't been previously experienced. But there was one book that really tweaked me one summer and that was Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human. There was something truly alien about the feel of this story about a group of people with various powers who could blend together as one, sort of a next step in human evolution. To my younger self it felt like The Fantastic Four crossed with The Twilight Zone and only later did I understand some of the more psychological aspects. Sturgeon also wrote the novelization for the movie Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, giving him some true trash credentials. For something a bit more light and fun, a bit more Renaissance Faire-meets-Star Wars, try Robert Silverberg's Lord Valentine's Castle, the first-written-but-middle-title in the timeline of his Majipoor series. I think it makes a good transition from a fantasy world reader into the more politicised sci-fi world. I'm sure that statement's going to upset someone. So be it. It's what I read then and what I'm suggesting now.

I'm going to cheat a bit here and talk about my summer reading after my first year of college. Technically I was still a teen, and I think that if I'd had this genre tossed my way earlier I'd have loved it. I'm talking about detective stories, especially those old school hard-boiled types. I'm talking about that triumvirate of explorers from the dark underbelly of the American psyche: Dashiel Hammet, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler. Hammet, the former Brinks man invented both Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles and practically the entire genre we now recognize as hard-boiled. Cain's gritty stories traffic in a world of femme fatales and dirty double crosses, a bit on the misogynist side of things but no one comes out smelling like a rose with Cain.

For my money though it's Chandler all the way. Phillip Marlowe is his man, prowling the streets of Los Angeles in the 30's and 40's, pulling the most disparate threads and ties them into tangled nets that eventually solve the crime. Chandler claims to have been influenced by Hammet but it's Chandler who perfected the lyricism of the private detective's inner voice. You might have better luck teaching kids how to write more concisely, and more vividly, by teaching them from Chandler's stories than from Hemingway. Chandler, in describing Marlowe lighting a pipe in the smoking car of a train, taught me a word that I hope one day to use in my own fiction: frowst.

I loved this summary of Phillip Marlowe from Wikipedia:

Philip Marlowe, is not a stereotypical tough guy, but rather a complex and sometimes sentimental figure who has few friends, attended college for a while, speaks a little Spanish, at times admires Mexicans, and is a student of chess and classical music. He will also refuse money from a prospective client if he is not satisfied that the job meets his ethical standards.

And to think they used to call this kind of stuff pulp, after the cheap paper it used to be printed on in magazines. They made plenty of good movies from this stuff as well, inspiring an entire genre of film called noir: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely. All good stuff.

* * * * *

What these books and many, many more like them have in common is that they were paperbacks, they were cheap and, without exception, they were intended for adult audiences. If there's one thing teens love to do is assume they are ready for "adult" reading material as soon as the bug hits them, and I don't imagine it's been any different throughout history.

But looking back and then turning forward I am struck with how unified and national tastes were once upon a time. Many of these books weren't on the bestseller's lists because they had high orders from bookselling superstores, these were the books everyone read, and knew, and talked about. Maybe the closest thing we have to something similar in recent years is Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and the popularity of that book remains a mystery to me even today as I found it filled me with inertia. But there was a time (I imagine some publishers and editors moon about this late at night at their favorite speakeasy) when the bestseller list was full of books -- for better or worse -- that were actually read by lots and lots of people and everyone would talk about them the way people now stand around and talk about the results of American Idol or the most recent developments on Lost. There are fine books out there, yes, yes, but how many of them are really capturing the national imagination and get read (before being optioned for movie rights) or that aren't being flogged by Oprah?

As I said from the beginning, this was my list and my experience. These were the books I discovered as a teen reader, or wish I'd discovered earlier, that make for good, solid summer reads. I'd love to hear what others discovered in a similar vein, particularly those who can speak to the romance genre that, as a boy, never held any pull with me.

Where to now? Let's see...
First there was Low Humor
Then there was Non-fiction
Next up: Shorts, perfect for summer weather

Previously I made my case for a summer full of reading that had little-to-no direct educational merit. That is, I'm all against handing out lists at the beginning of the summer with a required title (or titles) with a la carte suggestions for additional reading. I still hold to the belief that play as important as work and that if we expect to have well-rounded, culturally alert, hyper-literate children then we need to honor and encourage the notion that reading for fun and pleasure has a place. Now I'm going to turn around and suggest that there are ways to encourage non-fiction as a summer reading activity that doesn't feel like a learning experience and still be fun.

As a caveat, I don't suggest doing all of these things (save some for future summers!) and would in fact caution against too much non-fiction as kids are pretty quick to figure out when a "lesson" is coming. Just take all this in and when the moment presents itself casually introduce one of these topics into the slipstream of their summer reading.

Joke and Riddle books

I have a larger thesis (much larger than can be presented here) about using jokes as a way of teaching kids how storytelling works. Basically, the idea is this: Jokes are some of our shortest stories and once you understand how they work you can apply that knowledge to telling a story. A joke has a setting, characters, dialog, and usually a twist ending. I find it amusing when I hear adults say they cannot tell a joke who then turn around a relate a personal narrative with the same elements. Set the story, introduce the characters, keep the pertinent details, timing is pacing, aim for the climax/punchline and when you hit it the story ends.

Riddles, on the other hand, have the actual advantage of developing lateral thinking. Where a joke's aim is a punchline, often surreal or just plain silly, a riddle demands a closer examination of language and context. Also, where jokes tend to run in fads and cycles (when was the last time someone told you an elephant joke?) there are riddles from hundreds of years ago that can still stump the sharpest young minds today.

Jokes and riddles are always great ways to pass the time, especially if siblings have their own books to pull on each other. If a child responds to joke and riddle books do your best to put up with the corniest of jokes, then encourage them to seek out more. This, by the way, was how I learned about the Dewey decimal system and discovered many great riddles and lateral thinking puzzle books in the adult section of my libraries. I remember once looking like a Master of All Knowledge with my girls when I was looking for a particular book and walked over to the 800's, bypassing the online card catalog. "Do you know where all the books in the library are?" my youngest asked. "No, but I know the numbers for the books I like." If they learn to do it themselves it won't look like you're forcing them to learn anything.

Martin Gardner, the great polymath of all things logical and illogical, had a book that I must have checked out more than any other kid at my library: Perplexing Puzzlers and Tantalizing Teasers. From this one book I learned puns, anagrams, palindromes and the kind of logic puzzles (classic matchstick puzzles) that can bend minds if not keep them limber. Just following Gardner around the library led me to his annotated versions of Alice in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark, into examinations of logic and philosophy Aha! Gotcha and Aha! Insight and finally into Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing. It might not be an exaggeration that Martin Gardner was my first dip into library spelunking. It also makes for a nice segue into

Code and Cipher books

Why do kids love codes? Maybe it has something to do with the deliciousness of secrets, the ability to create something that has a certain power. Codes and ciphers scrape along the surface of our desire to create symbols of meaning, communicating with a select group, a way of reclaiming the mystery and power of language. The history of codes is full of political intrigue and human struggle. The armies of the ancient Greeks and Romans employed codes, just as 20th century railroad hobos did to communicate among themselves. Ciphers have been used by spies for hundreds of years and they vary in sophistication and style in a way that make them appealing to all ages.

Gardner's book makes for an excellent introduction for kids, as does Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing by Paul B. Janeczko. Older kids who might want a bit more history with their cryptography will probably want to check out The Code Book by Simon Singh (note, there are two books by Singh with the same title, the teen friendly one has the subtitle How to Make It, Break It, Hack It, Crack It and covers everything from Mary Queen of Scots and ends with Internet security encryption).

If you end up buying a code book I'd suggest getting two copies and keeping one for yourself. Once they have done a little reading you can write them a coded message (perhaps the secret location of a special treat) and send it to them in the mail. This isn't the first time I've suggested mailing things to kids in the summer and I can't promise it won't be the last. I have yet to see a kid act blase about an unexpected piece of mail, and once you send the first coded message you might be surprised at just how much and how quickly they'll want you to send another. I like to find unusual postcards for this and so far Homeland Security hasn't hauled me in for questioning. Maybe I've stumped them.

Activity books... and game instructions?

Get them out of the house! No one said all this summer reading meant staying indoors and there are ways to combine reading and activities. I'd also like to suggest that learning how to follow directions, instructions and rules surrounding various activities -- a lot of the same things we expect kids to get out of sports activities -- get reinforced this way.

Last fall a book came out that I would have drooled over when I was a boy: Steven Caney's Ultimate Building Book. Over a dozen years of research and development went into this book and it shows. Page after page of ideas for all kinds of project, both indoor and out of doors. Building an igloo with cubes of jello? Why not? How about using graham crackers as bricks and canned frosting as mortar for building edible structures? Sure! Bird feeder space station platform from drinking straws and disposable drinking cups? Check. Rich in explanation about how structures work and the different kinds of structural elements featured there's bound to be something that sparks an interest. Don't be surprised to see some projects consuming the better part of a day. Or week.

How about a quick course in Pioneering, the art of binding ropes and poles to create impromptu fire towers and bridges across small rivers? Or a solid study in the art of Orienteering, the use of map and compass? Small boat sailing? Cinematography? Basketry? Auto Mechanics? Five words: Boy Scout Merit Badge Pamphlets. Despite the dated, sometimes hokey post-war earnestness each of the pamphlets available for various merit badges provides a solid foundation in each of its subjects. No kid is going to naturally be attracted to a pamphlet on first aid or lifesaving (unless they want to work toward becoming a lifeguard) but many of the booklets deal with outdoor activities, crafts or hobbies. I still haven't managed to build the junk wood punt from The American Boy's Handy Book but when it's done you can be assured that before I let the girls set foot in it they'll read all the merit badge pamphlets on boating.

Similar but a little less rigid are a series of books called the Brown Paper School series published by Little Brown back in the late 1980's. The Backyard History Book presents the idea of local history as a series of discoveries. Delving into the origins of street names, mapping neighborhoods and collecting oral histories gives the curious and the extrovert a channel for those energies. The Book of Where focuses more on geography, starting from diagramming your own home and building to mapping the world. I wish I'd had their Making Cents: Every kid's guide to money, how to make it, what to do with it back when I could have used it: about ten years before I went off to college. These and other books in the series (Math for Smarty Pants is fun but probably not as much for summer) are still out there among the remainder bins and, naturally, in finer select libraries.

On the occasional rainy day, or for a lazy afternoon, an indoor board game can be fun. Why not suggest playing a familiar game by new rules? The part of this exercise that requires reading is New Rules for Classic Games by R. Wayne Schmiteberger, former editor of Games magazine. Popular board games like Monopoly, Scrabble and Risk get new instructions, as do variants of Chess, Checkers and Go. Part of the fun in playing these games sometimes is the newness, the foreignness of their strategies. It hardly seems like legitimate reading, and that's my point. Reading, interpreting, understanding and following rules and instructions can be more of an intellectual workout that a flaccid textbook and some ditto sheets.

Other great possibilities for games, if you know kids who aren't afraid of the word brains: The Big Book of Brain Games, The Brainiest, Insaniest Ultimate Puzzle Book, The Games Magazine Junior Big Book of Games (there are two volumes out there), and for a really nice coffee table style book that covers the history, origins, rules and even instructions for making games you really can't go wrong with Games of the World.

Magic tricks, slight of hand and illusion

This requires a bit of work on the part of an adult initially but the payoff can be great.

Hit the library or bookstore and find a book of magic well suited for the children in your charge. Flip through and find a trick or illusion that looks good, and by good I mean has good presentation that doesn't lend itself to being easily figured out. Now, learn the trick and practice it until you can do it comfortably and without hesitation. Got it? Good. Showtime.

Find a casual, low key moment and say "Hey, want to see what I learned recently? Watch." Then perform the illusion. If the child/ren in question are suitably impressed they will ask you to do it again, and then beg you to show them how it is done. The rule of a good magician is that you never repeat a trick for the same audience (unless you can do it with a twist of equal awe) and to never give away the secret. "But," you can explain "I can tell you the name of the book where I learned the trick."

Yes, it is tricking them into reading, but I doubt they'll mind if they really want to learn the trick. Let them try the one you performed, being ready to help understand the steps if they get confused. After that they'll usually pick up a couple more tricks easy and will surprise you with their showmanship, dexterity and focus.

In sorting through books on magic you'll want to focus on those that deal with simple playing card -- sometimes called self-working illusions because the trick takes place in the manipulation of the cards. These tend to be variations of the "pick a card" fortune telling variety and are both simple to perform and impressive. Some books may include other tricks and illusions that include simple household items and these are fine as well, what you want to avoid is starting out with magic that requires the making (or purchasing) of special apparatuses.

I still have a handful of card tricks I learned as a boy that I remember. My girls have since learned all my tricks -- and taught me a few. My guess is they will one day pass along some magic to their own kids.

Reference material

I've mentioned the paperback spinner rack at my library, the place where I could find the Mad paperbacks and other collected comic strip books. But there was a second spinner nearby that contained mass market fiction for adults that held a secret gem: The Guinness Book of World Records, now know as the Guinness World Records Book. Back then it was an inch thick with tiny type and filled with some of the most fascinating stuff, including pictures of the unimaginable. Perfect for casual (ahem, bathroom) reading, car trips and just looking for info to impress friends with. Updated annually by the Brother McWhirter back in my day it's now a brand owned by some entertainment company more interested in selling it's pages off for product placement. Avoid it at all costs.

No, instead hunt down many of the fine books of randomly collected facts out there that have popped up to fill the quality void left when Guinness went south. Dorling Kindersly, DK in the trade, has two very visual offerings: Pick Me Up which covers a lot of useful (and useless) information on a variety of subjects, and Cool Stuff and How It Works which traffics in technology and uses the x-ray-like color illustrations and cut-aways to show the various layers involved. Seeing the inside of an iPod wasn't anywhere near as interesting as seeing what is in the souls of athletic shoes that makes them so springy.

Another pair of books that fills the random information bug is Children's Miscellany and Children's Miscellany II put out by Chronicle Books. Filled with the usual lists, facts and odd little bits of instruction (how to milk a cow?) these digest-sized books are almost perfect -- putting them out in paperback and lowering their price would move them up to perfect status. There are easily a dozen other book-of-facts and almanac-type paperback available waiting to be left around the house where they will be picked up, read randomly, and left somewhere else. And, again, none of it feels like reading, yet kids will read these books for hours on end.

Single topic books

This is my catch-all section for all the possibilities out there. Many kids know about the sumptuously produced Ology books out there (Piratology, Egyptology, &c.) nut many of these and other topics are better explored (and better organized) in more traditional books that aren't looking to use their flash to hide their thinness in content.

For the study of pirates, Lost Treasures of the Pirates of the Caribbean lays out maps and legends surrounding the actual pirating that once went on and where its believed they left their booty. For older readers who can't get enough of the Disney movie franchise the Dover book Pirates and Piracy gives a nice overview of the factual elements blown way out of proportion in popular culture while the recently re-released The Barbary Pirates by C.S. Forester makes for a cracking good read as well.

On the Egyptian front, smaller in size and crammed full of goodness is the DK Backpack Book 1001 Facts About Ancient Egypt. I'm a fan of these 4 by 4 inch square paperbacks on many subjects because they merge the very visual photos and illustrations that DK is known for with tons (or is it tonnes?) of facts. Sharks, space, the human body, dinosaurs... the Backpack Books never seemed to take off but can still be found and are worth the effort.

I don't want to ignore the arts but I could take days making suggestions. First, let me suggest origami. I realize that the instructions are almost 100% visual but it is a form of reading and thinking and worthy of some reinforcement. Similarly, Ed Emberly's drawing books should be required reading for younger grades. Using basic shapes and easy, wordless step-by-step instructions kids can learn how to draw anything from monsters to rocket ships. I think even adults who claim they can't draw would benefit from a course in Emberly's books.

Finally, a story about the summer I decided I was going to learn something new. I decided in June that I would spend the summer learning how to juggle. I imagined it taking quite a bit of time to master the hand-eye coordination necessary to keep three things in the air at once. So on the first day of summer vacation with my Juggling for the Complete Klutz in hand (the book that built an empire, or at least a publishing house) I set out to learn the fine art of keeping things in the air.

Twenty minutes later I had accomplished what I thought would taken me days if not weeks. The disappointment at learning how easy it really was made me feel foolish and I didn't spend the rest of the summer practicing or learning harder tricks. I went back to my usual summer of reading the Guinness Book and other omnibuses of facts and ephemera. Mine is a cautionary tale; it takes more than one activity, or one book for that matter, to fill a summer.

* * * * *

This week's entry took a lot longer to coordinate than I envisioned, and I left off a lot of books and ideas I had jotted down. More for next year, I guess. The point is that there's a lot out there that's non-fiction in book form. In fact, if you go to a book store or library and scan the store with an eye toward separating the fiction from non-fiction you might be surprised to see just how much there is out there.

Next week I'm either donning Shorts or taking out the Trash. We'll see where the whim strikes first.

Last Week: Low Humor
Next Week: Shorts... or Trash?

The amount of people who don't exercise in this country is frightening! So in order to make sure we have the healthiest people ever, and to make sure everyone loves physical activity, and to develop teamwork, this summer all students must play a half hour of baseball every day. And so we know you did it, in September you're going to give an oral report about how much fun you had playing baseball over the summer. That way, if the two things you dislike most are sports and public speaking, we can get you to do these two things -- because forcing you to do it will make you like it. And will make you a better person.

What? You don't like baseball? OK, we'll give you options. You can either play baseball or volleyball. There must be something wrong with you if you don't like at least one of those sports!

That, my friends, would have been a nightmare scenario for me as a kid.

And that is why, when it comes to summer reading, I hate the idea of mandatory summer reading and reporting back.

I believe in matching the book to the reader; and love the challenge of finding something that a self-described "non-reader" will enjoy. And that may be fiction, fantasy, sports, non-fiction, graphic novel, or magazine. Yep, to me, if it's words, it's reading. I'm not going to look down at or dismiss the person who prefers to read science books.

I get a tremendous amount of pleasure out of reading; I love when I can share that. But if someone else doesn't, so what? We have to respect that different things work for different people. Reading fiction for pleasure isn't everyone's cup of tea.

That said, I also think that there are artificial barriers to reading, beyond the obvious such as dyslexia. We have kids who don't read Harry Potter at age six so get tagged as a "non reader" -- and believe that tag long after first grade. Or kids whose reading choices are disrespected, from the classic "yuck, comic books" to the equally prevalent "But he won't read fiction, he just takes out all these non fiction books, why won't he read a real book?" Or the kids who aren't introduced, for one reason or another, to the story that will make them say "yes, this is fun." And I will do my darnedest to make sure that those barriers don't prevent a kid or teen or adult from realizing that yes, they like reading, when the reading material is a match.

I don't think summer reading should be mandatory. And to the extent that it is, I think it should be individual, non-punishing, and persuasive as to the joys of reading. I applaud the schools who don't limit the reading list to a handful of titles, but instead offer hundreds of possibilities that covers a range of materials, including non-fiction.

Links:

My rant was inspired by To Require, Or Not To Require, at Educating Alice

Jumpstarting Students' Summer Reading: Classroom Strategies and Activities to Promote Independence by Franki at A Year of Reading has some wonderful ways in which kids can be persuaded into fun summer reading, rather than forced

Note: finding posts on this has been a bit tricky. So if you posted something about mandatory summer reading (love it? hate it? had to do it but tricks to make it fun for kids?) please let me know in the comments & I'll add you to the round up

I believe in summer reading. Some of the best memories I have about my summers growing up were the times spent at the local libraries, taking books home on a lazy afternoon and reading until my eyes got blurry or my stomach grumbled. I wasn't a shut-in or a book worm -- I would play pick-up games with kids on the block, or down at the park -- but I did spend a lot of time to myself because I was fairly insecure and introspective.

Things have changed and now my kids don't just go a couple doors down to play with their friends, they request play dates which need to be coordinated with other parents. The idea of walking down to the local park and hanging out with other kids was predicated on an environment where neighbors looked after one another and the local park had a paid supervisor to check out balls, games, lanyard materials and whatnot. And the summer reading of my youth, always self-directed and rarely encouraged by my mother, has been replaced with a formalized list of titles handed out at the end of the school year for elementary school kids to stress over as they tussle with parents over having their "fun" summer taken away from them.

Along with the myth that homework actually helps children perform better at school, assigned summer reading sounds to me like a clever way to make kids hate books at an earlier age than they might normally. I don't look back at those summers where I would devour books as a punishment, and my girls currently don't seem to have a problem seeking out a new book the minute they finish another, yet when those lists come out and we look over the titles and descriptions of recommended reading there's always a sense of resentment from all parties.

Why are we molding children as young as 8 to accept that summer is a time to "get ahead?" Won't they get enough of this pressure come high school? And why does the material always need to pass some bar of appropriateness, not just for reading level but for content? Is there no room for "play" in summer reading?

No. I mean, yes, there is room for play in summer reading. If there isn't, room should be made. To this end I am always in praise of low humor and the types of reading materials often regarded as pop or junk culture and always inconsequential. Since the end of World War II it seems there has always been a voice decrying low humor and popular culture in favor of more refined works. After half a century perhaps we ought to acknowledge that a large portion of the population -- I'm looking at you, Boomers -- have ingested and devoured a fair amount of this inferior printed matter and have been none the worse for it. I see no reason to continue to demonize it any further.

Classic MAD Magazine Paperbacks

I grew up on Mad magazine. I read plenty of other humor and comic magazines along the way but it always comes back to Mad because it taught me more than most adults would like to admit or give it credit for teaching. Yes, I was a boy, and there's a fair amount of boy-friendly gross-out humor involved, but what else was teaching me social and political satire? How else would I learn about the value (or lack thereof) of popular culture like moves, television and music were it not through their jabbing, critical parodies? Highlighting the inanities of stereotypes and skewering authority skirted the edge of political correctness but in those humorous examinations of human folly I came to understand my own points of view, began to formulate my own opinions and had a good laugh in the process.

Currently Mad magazine seems to be suffering. Mad's parent company was acquired over time by Time Warner but the magazine was allowed to run independently until it's founding editor William M. Gaines died in 1992. Since then corporate elements have slowly taken over in an attempt to make the magazine more of a fiscal asset. When the magazine, famous for taking on the absurdities of American advertising, began accepting ads themselves in 2001 most readers, young and old, recognized that Mad was dead. Long live MAD!

My local libraries had spinner racks filled with paperback books and among those were the collections from Mad. Some were artist-centric collections and others were thematic, all of them chock full of material that had appeared in the magazine in the (at that time) 20-plus years of its history. For me there were three artists whose books never failed, whose various approaches to humorous illustration still hold up all these years later: Don Martin, Al Jaffee and Sergio Aragones.

The late Don Martin, nicknamed Mad's Maddest Artist, drew characters with elongated faces and hinged feet and often frozen in some of the most exaggerated "takes" this side of Tex Avery. While Martin's work for the magazine was often single-page comic style stories his books contained longer stories that often poked fun at a number of genres, particularly those based on movies. Al Jaffe, the master of the back cover fold-ins for the magazine, is best known for his "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" series, something anyone who works or has worked in retail or customer service can appreciate. It might seem like teaching children how to come up with sarcastic retorts could backfire the larger lesson in these books is to think before asking the unnecessary question in the first place. Finally, Sergio Aragones was the created of the "marginals" the little illustrations tucked in around the corners of the pages of the magazines. In book form his comics dealt in the visual humor of silent movies, a universal humor where the punchline often hinged on the flipping of a stereotype or expectation.

These books were last reprinted back in the 1990's and can be found used usually for under a dollar. For the price of two new paperbacks (one for each of my girls) I can get 8 to 10 of these books, which they will share. Value is a good thing when you're feeding hungry readers.

Comic Strip Collections: Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, &c.

Last year we introduced the girls to Calvin and Hobbes but it only really took with my oldest. An excellent comic overall, if a child already hasn't discovered this gem from previous safaris through the library then I highly recommend it. The play between the real and imagined worlds within the comic and Bill Watterson's magnificent draftsmanship make this a winner, and I don't begrudge Watterson for stopping the cartoon at the height of its popularity so he could go out on a high note. It can be a tricky comic to introduce -- my youngest needed to initially have the two worlds explained to her -- but reaps rewards in revisiting themes that call on a reader to remember personality and character traits from earlier strips. Actually, this is true of most daily comic strips, but few are as gratifying or as deceptively simple as Calvin and Hobbes.

Naturally, the grandaddy of them all would be the Peanuts collection, a seemingly endless series of collected dailies currently being captured in annual volumes by Fantagraphics Books, the comic book publisher. There is a certain charm to the Peanuts strips though after all these years I am starting to feel that their genteel quality is showing its age. Charles Schulz kept adults out of his strips (with one or two rare exceptions) and sparingly used pop culture references which has helped to keep them evergreen. For kids who think they have seen it all it's sometimes fun to bust out some "old school" on them and watch them enjoy it.

I remember the summer I found a yard sale and discovered the paperback collections of The Wizard of Id and B.C., the strip collections of Johnny Hart and Brant Parker. I'm not recommending these books directly except to suggest that there's something to be said about "discovering" something not put in front of you. I had a dollar bill burning a whole in my pocket and that was the price of a whole stack of these paperbacks - 17 in total. You feel like you've robbed a bank when you walk away from a sale with an armload of books like that and I'm always on the lookout for another great deal like that. When I finished with those books I hit the library up for the others in the series they had (which I somehow never noticed before) and then started paying more attention to yard sales. And the comics pages of newspapers, which brought me more reading. Some lessons are learned in books and some are learned in consuming them.

None of this is great literature, though much of it is classic pop culture from the 20th century. Reading comics requires a different set of skills, a combination of reading and observing, drawing pictorial conclusions and making visual analogies. It isn't something we teach children (though we ought to) but it is a language unto itself that teaches the reader as it goes.

There are plenty of other possibilities among the ranks of what has generally been relegated to the lower rung of trashy pop culture. It's all part of our neglected cultural heritage.

Comic Books: Mickey Mouse, Archies, Cartoon Network, & The Great Unknown

A recent news item talks about Maryland schools adding comic books to the classroom, and Disney is the company supporting it. This has been one of my fears about the increase in comics and graphic novels, that large corporate entities would make attractive offers to schools and flood them with materials designed to build brand loyalty. Disney has a long history of being in the classroom -- Boomers will remember the filmstrips in science class about VD, Gen Xers would have seen the movie version -- so they aren't strangers to mixing educational content with humor. But when you take something like a comic book and turn it into a teaching tool you take away what's fun about the comic and you ingrain a sense of skepticism that all comics may be as dry as instructional media

No, comics are meant for the summers. They're meant for lazy afternoons in the shade (all summer reading can be an outdoor activity, weather permitting) slurping on a slushie and letting the time slip. I was never a big fan of superheroes -- I never could understand what any kid saw in these fools with their spandex outfits -- but there's plenty of other types of comics in the world. Kid-friendly titles do tend to be hokey but they also present simplified stories of character interaction. Archie Comics aren't going to break any new ground in humor -- they may be the corniest of the bunch -- but they do provide the basic vocabulary in understanding visual media, good for building those future graphic novel skills.

I recently saw a Betty comic (as in Betty and Veronica of the Archie Gang) that told a story of Betty's older sister getting an actual letter in the mail (as opposed to email) and everyone in the house was all jazzed. Turns out it was an apology note that had been lost in the post for years, and as a result Betty's sister had spent years thinking the boy was a lout for standing her up. Curious, she finds his name in the phone book and calls him (something he should have done instead of sending a note) and the upshot is they are rekindling their friendship/romance. Betty is so excited that she goes to her room to email her boyfriend the story and instead he breaks up with through instant messaging. The punchline from the parents is that while modern technology has sped up ability to communicate (and miscommunicate) it hasn't changed the simple truths about relationships, it's just made them happen faster. Very simple, hokey, kid-friendly and an easily digestable chunk of how technology has changed.

The Archie and Mickey Mouse comics families are safe but might seem a bit stale to kids already acclimated to what television offers up. For them I'm suggesting most of what the Cartoon Network has in comics form. For superhero girl power, The Powerpuff Girls work well though they recently lost their own comic and are now included in anthology comics featuring a number of stories from different shows. Sure, it does feel a bit like television show promotion, but if it comes down to a choice between watching Camp Lazlo or having them read Camp Lazlo, I'll go for the latter.

Best trick: give a child $10, take them to the comic book store and let them choose whatever $10 will buy. A number of comic book emporiums will have discounted racks or bins with back issues sometimes marked down as much as 50%. Unless the child is comic book collector chances are good it's all new to them and they could come away with quite a haul. Better still: go back to the store alone and buy another bundle and mail it to them in the middle of the summer as a surprise.

Older kids aren't going to be interested in "baby stuff" like Mickey and the Gang and will probably insist on scavenging the Japanese manga titles and standard superhero fare. Older girls may especially feel there is nothing for them in comic books (it is a pretty male dominated field) but let them browse, and ask the store employees for suggestions. There are a lot of alternative and independent comics out there with female protagonists or created by women artists. The art in these comics may look very unfinished or at least unlike most slick comic books out there, but don't let that be the guide. As with any book, the cover can only say so much, it's what's inside that matters.

If you are worried about the content that an older comic reader may be attracted to, rather than insisting on approval take a moment to look at the item in question and say "That looks interesting, I'll want to read that when you're finished with it." If there's any doubt about your approval their self-censorship will sink in and make the decision whether or not the material is appropriate. And follow-through, do read the title when they are done and try to understand the appeal without judgment, without questioning. You might learn something about your child you didn't realize, and they might also be telling you something about themselves deliberately.

Again, I believe in summer reading, but I believe that reading in the summer belongs to the individual reader. They'll get plenty of broccoli during the school year, let them gorge on dessert for a while.

* * * * *

I'm sketching out some ideas...

about the books I think about when I think about summer reading. Despite appearances here, it wasn't always about comics! I'm going to try and present some themes about a week apart, leading up to the end of the traditional school year in mid-June. In the meantime, if anyone else has some personal suggestions for non-traditional (i.e. not found in general fiction) Low Humor that is well-suited for kids (and not already in their radar) please feel free to jump into the comments.

Next Week: Part Two -- Non-fiction?