Are smart and cool mutually exclusive?

After a school assembly earlier this year, there was a beehive of activity going on around me; kids were swarming everywhere. I was signing books and also putting my autograph on tiny slips of paper that kids had ripped out of their notebooks. One little girl told me I was the first famous person she'd ever met. Other kids just stared at me with big bug eyes. This is the kind of thing children's authors live for, right? Then a cute kid caught my eye and said, "Books are for nerds."

All I could do was laugh and say, "Well, then I guess I'm a nerd."

I was struck by the dichotomy: How one kid could be so excited about getting an actual author to sign his book, while another wouldn't be caught dead with a book? How'd that happen?

Getting kids to read can be like that: a big, complicated mystery with no easy solution.

The San Jose Mercury News ran the first story in a fascinating series this week titled Smart vs. Cool. It's about the "success gap" in school, and how different races and ethnicities approach popularity and academic success. It's a MUST read.

Is reading cool? Is doing well in school cool? I sometimes hear about the issues concerning "A students" and how the kids lower down the grade scale treat them. Isn't it interesting how those who are considered "smart" are also relegated to the role of pariah? How destructive is that to the future of America? How the heck did that happen?

When I was in school I was neither smart nor cool. Nor popular. Nor a good dresser. I also had bad hair. When I was in middle school—as many of the kids in this article are—I think I was so lost in my own miserableness that I never quite registered on the popularity radar. I was just that weird, funny guy who was always scribbling cartoons in his notebook. So the pressures on the smart kid are something I've never dealt with on a firsthand basis.

In the end, I guess the question is this: How can we make being smart cool to young people? How can we make reading books the coolest thing you can do?

Talk about a tall order. Any of you smart people out there have any ideas? How about you cool people?

The Impact of Harry Potter

Since practically every muggle on the planet is buzzing about the final Harry Potter installment arriving at midnight tomorrow, I thought I'd point out an interesting subgenre of the Potter hype: what effect has the Harry Potter series had on the reading patterns and habits of children? Also, what has been the series' overall impact on children's publishing as a whole?

This topic is mulled over in this interesting article from today's Washington Post. Often mentioned in these stories is Scholastic's own study on the impact that Harry, Ron and Hermoine have had on young readers. The Post also has an intresting online discussion on this topic here. (You may need to register, but it's free!)

I found the most intriguing concept in the article to be a comment about "postive social pressure" to read the Potter books, which begs the question: is there a lot of "negative social pressure" out there regarding kids and reading? I know my 11-year-old bookworm hears it. Is reading considered cool for today's kids? My daughter anwers with an emphatic "NO!" Is it uncool to be seen reading or carrying a book? "YES!" says daughter, "IT'S CONSIDERED TOTALLY UNCOOL!" The subtle and not-so-subtle pressure that swirls around children reading for fun deserves some looking into.

Another thing: Are the 61% of boys and 41% of girls who have read the hero of Hogwarts books, but who weren't reading for fun before picking up a Harry book, actually reading anything else besides the Harry Potter tomes? Or are these kids simply 100% Harry? That's hard to say with any degree of certainty. But speaking as a children's book author, I say any talk in the popular culture about a book—any book—is a good thing . . . and anything that brings traffic into bookstores is good for EVERYBODY.

Thoughts? Has Potter cast a spell on your young readers? Doesn't a chocolate frog sound good right now?