It's All about the Kids, 'bout the Kids

You know The Bush School Library has all kinds of resources for parents and teachers too, right? We have books and videos encouraging adults in their work of raising and educating children -- everything from Experience and Education, by John Dewey (who inspired Helen Bush) to Madeline Levine’s Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies,or “Fat Envelopes”.

We have Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had without Going Nuts with Worry, a book by the World’s Worst Mom. (Lenore Skenazy is not really a bad mother, but the online controversy when she let her child ride the subway alone? OMG.) We have that wonderful French documentary, Babies. Four babies from birth to walking, four countries, four very distinct parenting styles.

I’m thinking about this today because I was looking up Kylene Beers this morning. (Do you know her? No reason to if you are a parent. If you are a reading teacher, I highly recommend checking her out. We have her book, Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading. My friend, a second grade teacher in Los Angeles, has been singing her praises for a year now.) So, anyway, like I said, I was looking her up this morning and here were the first words I read:

. . . a couple of weeks ago, I came across the Meghan Trainor music video hit “All About That Bass.” To be honest, I found that song because of the brilliant riff by some high school kids titled “All About Those Books.”  That song sent me in search of the original.  Now, with both lyrics in mind, I find myself humming “It’s all about the bass/books” all the time. And those lyrics set my mind in motion: what is _____________ all about? No surprise, I fill in that blank with the word “education.” What is education all about? I answer that with it’s “all about the kids.” That’s it. It’s not about a test. Not a blue ribbon. Not racing to the top.  It is all about the kids. When we lose sight of that, well, we simply lose.

Wow. There is it. What is best for our kids? There are lots of answers to this. Here are some of mine: Clean air, clean water, good food. Shelter, love, confidence. Opportunity, trust, faith. How do the actions we take as parents, educators and taxpayers support our children? Not our pocketbooks, not our schools, not our egos . . . our children. We love them with tender voices and soft hands. We feed them with food, stories, ideas, choices. We shelter them with a clean environment and safe spaces. We let them take risks appropriate to their age; we let them fail and experience disappointment and give them comfort in our arms. We celebrate their successes. We accept them for themselves, this amazing gift that the universe has loaned us for a time.

Audio Books

How do you read? Do you prefer reading with your eyes or your ears?

I like print. I like going at my own pace, noise from the rest of the world doesn't affect me, and I can see how names are spelled (which helps me remember them). I do listen to books, but I've taken to noting in my reading log which books were listened to because I'm never sure how much of what I enjoyed (or didn't) was because of the format.

I have started using audio books strategically because apparently I'll listen to anything. (Yes, I am one of those people who listen to public radio pledge drives.) I find I can persevere with listening in a way that I can't with sight reading. For example, for years Middlemarch had been on my to-read list. I had read and loved George Eliot's Silas Marner as a teen so I knew I liked her writing. Her epic story of a small English community with an independent woman as its central character seems like it would be right up my alley, but I tried two or three times and never got past book one. "What? You immerse me in Dorothea's story and then Lydgate? Fred and Mary? Who are these people? Where's Dorothea?"

When The Toast suggested a Middlemarch book club last year, I was determined to participate, and the audio book on CD got me over my reluctance, all the way to the realization that the book is called Middlemarch, and not Dorothea, for a reason. At some point I became impatient, grabbed a print copy and just finished it, but truly, I wouldn't have gotten there without the engagement that first came by listening.

And so, audio books are my go-to for non-fiction that I want, or need, to read. It's how I read the fascinating story of Henrietta Lacks and Norman Maclean's analysis of the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire. The Worst Hard Time informed my understanding of my parents' Kansas childhoods and Hawaii's history gained new poignancy for me through Sarah Vowell's distinctive voice.

Sometimes I'll tire of the pledge drive, grab a novel on CD off the library shelf to get me through, and a brilliant narrator will bring a story to life in a way that can't compare to the voice in my head. Neil Gaiman reads his own Graveyard Book and Alan Bennett his Uncommon Reader. They are masterful! Stephen Briggs knocks Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett out of the park. Currently Lisa is listening to The Book Thief and reveling in the reader's rendition, to the point that, though she's engaged enough to want to switch to reading print (it's faster), she can't, because she'd miss out on his narration.

Isn't it great that we have all these options? CDs, books, digital. What and why do you choose what you do?

A Cautionary Tale

Stop the presses! I'm actually reading a non-fiction book!

Yes, you read that right. Me, Lindi, who is a confirmed fiction lover and non-fiction hater, is reading Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, by Joseph Ellis, and what's more? I'm enjoying it.

It all started innocently enough with watching Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney in John Adams, the HBO mini-series. They claim it's based on the biography by David McCullough, but it's not a documentary, so that's safe, right? They are big Hollywood names; it's HBO. (Of course, I know to beware PBS and the History Channel!) I thought it would be more like that old Kevin Kline/Tracey Ullman comedy, I Love You to Death, based on a real-life Pennsylvania couple's story; i.e., the skeleton of truth is there, but it's fleshed out so that it's actually fun to watch.

Which is how I found myself addicted to John Adams. Little did I know it was a gateway drug, leading me to late-night forays into Wikipedia to check facts and before I knew it, there I was skulking in 973.3 for something to take home for the summer. I'm so ashamed.

Young people, be forewarned: you too may find yourselves reading something you never imagined you'd read for pleasure!

Thinking about reality

One of our long time library friends loaned me Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices, by Leonard S. Marcus. What a fascinating read!

I'm sure you all know of Madeleine L'Engle's books -- A Wrinkle in Time, Meet the Austins, A Circle of Quiet, etc. etc. She was a prolific author of books filled with the wonder of family and the world. Ms. L'Engle was an outspoken defender of the freedom to read and generously gave of her time to other writers, readers and librarians.

As was made public in a notorious New Yorker article published in 2004, she also was an accomplished editor, excising unpleasant or unflattering truths from her journals before publication and retooling memories to suit herself. In Listening for Madeleine, Marcus interviews people from all parts of Ms. L'Engle's life to try to capture the full story of a larger-than-life personality, and presents the resulting stories pretty much as is. I was rapt.

He's taken some flak, Cynthia Zarin (of the New Yorker profile) has taken some flak, Ms. L'Engle's daughters have certainly taken some flak, for exposing misery and ugliness in her life, but I'm grateful. These interviews remind me that people are multi-faceted, that memory is flexible, and that learning and growing as a human being means we must work through our personal demons, sometimes in very public ways. I am sorry that her family was harmed by her writings and her denial, and yet I still love The Twenty Four Days before Christmas and A Ring of Endless Light and Two-Part Invention.

A Wrinkle in Time introduced young readers to the concept of other, unknown dimensions. I appreciate being reminded that people, too, have many dimensions, known and unknown.