Why Do I Write Books? Why Does Anyone, For That Matter?

The most difficult question I ever got at an author appearance came during a festive celebration marking the re-opening of a children's library. It came from a tiny, towheaded girl (maybe three?), still wearing diapers, who peered at me over the microphone and asked me why I wrote books.

I was stumped. It was the first time anyone had ever asked me that question, and I honestly had never really thought about it much. I was speechless (which doesn't happen much!). Why in the world do I write books anyway? Good question! This was much more difficult than the typical questions I get, like "Where do you get your ideas from?" and "Do you always talk this fast?" and "How tall is your wife?"

Why would it be so hard to explain why I write books? I guess it's a difficult question because there's no simple explanation—at least not one that I've come up with after some serious noodling on the subject.

I think most people imagine it would be neat to be a writer, to see your name in print, to have your stories read by thousands. But most people never get around to writing anything. Why not? What do writers possess that everyone else doesn't? To be frank, I don't know why anyone would want to put themselves through the process—certainly not for the fortune, the fame or the influence. (Truth is, I spend what little influence I have trying to convince kids that it can actually be fun to read and that they should do it on a regular basis.)

So why do I write books? Or why does anyone for that matter? Where, in fact, do writers come from? What things in their childhood cause them to become spinners of tales? Were there traits I exhibited as a child that a keen and perspicacious observer would have pointed to and said, "Ah, now little David here is bound to become future writer."

Last night, I stumbled upon an fantastic essay by Julianna Baggott on this very subject. She writes a successful children's book series under the perfectly goofy nom de plume N.E. Bode. (My daughter's fourth grade class is reading one of her books, which put her on my "author radar.") She is also a poet and a writer of books for tall people, too. Her essay appeared in a HarperCollins newsletter. It's fantastic, and hilarious, and eerily insightful. It's really worth a read, so please do so here.

This article is the closest I've gotten to figuring out an answer to that toddler's curve ball. And it may help you identify a future writer who's lurking in your midst—and those traits that drive you bananas just might just be the makings of a future writer of fortune, fame and influence!

Why Are Finnish Kids So Smart?

I visited seven different California schools in February as a visiting author and illustrator. These visits got me thinking about what makes a school successful—and the individual student successful. Heck, I've been thinking about what makes a country as a whole excel or sink academically. So it's no surprise that articles on successful schooling would catch my eye. I'd like to share two of them in particular.

The first is a Wall Street Journal article by Ellen Gamerman about why Finnish students score so high on international academic tests. Fact is, they are at the very top. In the end, the conclusions are somewhat muddled, but it's certainly interesting to examine some of the reasons why Finnish kids are at the top academically, while their America counterparts are mired in the middle of the pack. I found this part of the article telling:

"One explanation for the Finns' success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck...Many children struggled to read the last Harry Potter book in English because they feared they would hear about the ending before it arrived in Finnish. Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing. One college student says she became a fast reader as a child because she was hooked on the 1990s show "Beverly Hills, 90210."

Hmmmm. Could these subtle cultural differences make a big difference on overall intellectual and academic achievement? You can read the article here.

The second piece I spotted in today's San Jose Mercury News. It's an editorial written by a high school teacher in Los Altos, CA named Robert Freeman. While discussing why he thinks the standard "fixes" like increased spending, more testing, better teacher training, enhanced technology and instituting a longer school year will not make our schools more successful, he says this:

"The reason is that all of these "fixes" assume that the student is a product, something to be built, tested and packaged for use. They overlook the two most critical things that matter in education: that character is more important than content; and that it is the student - much more than the teacher or school - who ultimately determines success."

The student must assume responsibility? Hey, now that's a radical idea! Certainly food for thought. You can read Mr. Freeman's editorial here.

Book Snooper or Shelf Enthusiast?

There's nothing I like to do more at a party than to sneak away from the crowd and check out the host's books. (C'mon, I can't be the only one who likes to do this! Can I see a show of hands, please?)

Ah, the unbridled beauty of the bookshelf. If there are just 10 books, that's cool; I'll hang out for just a short while. If it's a whopping collection, I'll be gone for half the night. Am I socially inept? Probably. Am I a complete book dork? Certainly. Am I snooping? Not really—I just like books.

I love a good bookshelf. I can get lost in a home library. Nothing better. Racks of wisdom, adventure, mystery, history, horror and biography just waiting to entertain. All that raw potential just sitting on the shelf, ready to pounce.

But is the bookshelf a thing not long for this world? A moribund piece of furniture, replaced by the 65" widescreen HD plasma with teeth-rattling digital surround sound?

Since most of my books now reside in dusty boxes in the garage and our kids' books have taken over the house, I miss my old bookshelves. This slideshow on the LA Times website got me dreaming of a having a giant wall packed tight from floor to ceiling with books. Maybe that's how I'll know when I've "made it."

Be sure to check out the "flybrary." Could anything be cooler?

So, are books in a place of esteem at your house? If they are, odds are your kids will be reading enthusiasts. Let's just call it "trickle down book enthusiasm!"

Who is Rip Van Winkle? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

Who is Rip Van Winkle?

What is Pandora's box?

Who were David and Goliath?

Lately, I've been asking my older audiences this series of questions. (Older, in my case, means 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders.) Invariably, and without fail, nobody can identify any of these cultural touchstones. Sometimes I get a "that sounds familiar" response, but so far I'm batting a big fat zero.

What's it mean? I'm not sure. But I do remember being very interested in E.D. Hirsch, Jr.'s books in the late eighties; in 1986 he wrote a book called Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and in 1988 he published The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. These books caused a big stir. As I recall, the premise was that Americans were slowly losing that common cultural literacy that tied us all together and helped us communicate and understand each other. There is no question the problem continues today. Perhaps it's getting worse?

Because none of the kids I speak to know who Rip Van Winkle is, I decided to write a picture book manuscript about him. It's called Rip Van Winkle: A Hide-and-Seek Legend. Who knows if it will ever sell, but I think it's really funny and helps promote a cultural icon that everyone should be able to reference and understand. (Fact is, I think it's flippin' hilarious...but I'm not ready to send it to my agent, Linda, just yet!) I should mention that ol' Rip came up at our house because my 12-year-old has begun that Rip Van Winkle stage of life.

Lo and behold, I pick up the this morning's USA Today and there's a sizeable article on just this subject, front page no less! Sounds like a new report came out telling us how clueless our kids are. It's a study released by a researcher named Rick Hess at the American Enterprise Institute and titled Still at Risk: What Student's Don't Know, Even Now.

For an overview of it all, you can read the USA Today article here. You can even take a test and see if you're smarter than a 17-year-old!

And if you don't get that "Bueller? Bueller?" reference in the title of this post, I'm truly concerned about your cultural literacy!

Stockton, CA and Free Rice!

I've just returned from a week of school visits in Stockton, CA. I met lots of fun kids, great teachers, cool librarians and a passel of interesting artists and illustrators.

The school district in Stockton decided to bring an author or an illustrator to each one of their elementary schools during the week to foster an interest in reading and books. So Susan Katz, my booking agent and head honcho of a fantastic company called Connecting Authors, brought roughly 25 authors and illustrators to Stockton for the week. Getting a visit from a goofy, whacky author who draws super fast really makes a difference to these kids; I saw firsthand how my visit got the kids fired up about reading, writing, drawing and cooking up stories. Kudos to the Stockton Unified School District for making it happen!

While there, I heard from some of the other authors about a SUPER cool website you simply must visit. It's called freerice.com and it tests your vocabulary. For every word you test yourself on, the site donates 20 grains of rice through the United Nations World Food Program. It's so fun and easy—and you feel good while doing it! And they even show how many grains of rice you've donated in a rice bowl graphic next to the words. I checked it out on Snopes.com and it's all legit; the advertisers at the bottom of each page end up paying for the rice. (I just donated 880 grains of rice!)

Talk about the power of the Internet! Go there now.

Borders Goes Digital: The Future of Bookstores?

Just got back from a school visit at Mariemont Elementary School in Sacramento, CA and boy are my vocal chords tired! Great kids. Well organized. Amazing posters the kids made showing each of the Joe Sherlock books. And hilarious questions from the kids. The two best were, "How tall is your wife?" and "Why don't you have a cat?"

While in the state capital, I was nursing me gnarled voice box at Starbucks when I ran across a USA Today article about Borders bookstores being in the early stages of adding major "digital" sections to their stores, an attempt to attract younger customers and compete with the likes of Amazon.com. It's an interesting article that highlights the future of the competitive and rapidly changing book-selling business. (BTW, I still think Borders should put a little more "design thoughts" into their children's book area, which I often find confusing, crowded and not sectioned off like Barnes & Noble's children's section—which makes it easier to keep your kids corralled.)

A fews interesting factoids that caught my eye:

• The average customer spends about an hour in a Borders
• More than half the books sold in the USA are bought by people over 50
• Online bookselling still commands an edge over big-box bookstores and will continue to exert financial pressure on Borders and others (mostly because of their DEEP discounts, which bookstores can't compete with)
• More than 100 independent bookstores have opened over the last three years (but they don't say how many closed!)
• Though Borders was the first to add a cafe to a store, Barnes & Noble made a bigger splash when it added Starbucks in 1990.
• Borders has Seattle's Best Coffee cafes, also owned by Starbucks

You can read the article for yourself here.

Babies Watching TV Is A Good Thing?

There's a brief, one-page article in the current issue of Newsweek that practically had me groaning like Frankenstien's monster in the grocery store check out line—the really slow line, of course. I rolled my eyes, smacked my forehead, clutched my roiling belly—oh, that's when they told me how much I owed . . . the article got me kinda mad, too.

I mean why are they bending over backwards to say it's okay to subject your rug monkeys to TV? One "expert" says that it's perfectly okay to have your baby watch a Baby Einstein video as long as a dopey parent stands by the TV, points out certain objects on the screen, then calls out the object's name to the burbling baby. Are they freakin' kidding me? Have they ever heard of this thing called a book? I mean, why not just crack open a flippin' book and save some face!

Just tell me why they never study the benefits of a child watching a half hour of TV compared to mom or dad taking little miss sunshine or little mister sunshine over to the library for a half hour to read picture books together. Why don't they study that, huh? Dang it, I'm getting mad again.

Is it me? Maybe I'm just too sensitive. Maybe this is what happens when you escape the TV trap for 12 years.

And I love that stuff about there being no really good shows for elementary age kids, but they do suggest sitting junior down in front of the History Channel for "The Great Naval Battles of the War of 1812." AS IF! One dude even suggests that an hour a day of the boob tube is cool, but be sure to read with them at least 20 minutes a day, too. Just 20? Wouldn't spending just 20 minutes on TV and at least an hour on reading be three times better? Is reading like brushing your teeth now? Like flossing? Implied message: it ain't fun, but you should force yourself to do it every day.

You can read the online version of the Newsweek article for yourself here. Let me know if you think I'm off.