Books (July 2004)

How do you find books for the readers in your family? In sixth grade, I had a school librarian extraordinaire. Our building was brand new, and so was the library – not a thing on the shelves. Every week, the librarian unpacked another shipment of books. And every week, when my class came in for library time, there she’d be with another novel of fantasy and adventure set aside, just for me.

Such personalized service is getting harder to come by, but luckily the Web offers a host of features that are almost as good. The most obvious, of course, are found on Amazon.com and the other popular online booksellers, such as Barnes and Noble and Powells. Look up a book you’re curious about, or one you know you enjoyed, and you’ll be presented with computer-generated information on similar books that interested other customers, as well as customer-created lists of similar books they recommend. If you’re wondering whether your 10-year-old is ready for that children’s classic you loved when you were his age, or if your favorite author’s latest lives up to her previous work, online booksellers let you check what other readers have to say about it. Most importantly, they’ll tell you what the blurbs from Hornbook or School Library Journal can’t: whether the book really grabs young readers, not just if it’s “good for them.”

There are websites dedicated to helping families find books that are fun and rewarding. Many parents turn to the book catalog Chinaberry, started by a mom looking for “positive and uplifting” books for her own children, specifically for their intimate, in-depth reviews, sorted by age from birth to teens to adults. Jim Trelease’s newest edition of “The Read-Aloud Handbook” has just come out; go to his website and click on “The Treasury” to sample books for families perfect for sharing. I love former teacher and school librarian Esme Raji Codell’s sassy style; the author of “How to Get Your Child to Love Reading” has written some wonderful books of her own, and shares her favorite reads on planetesme.com. The site Reading Pen Pals, created by teacher Justine Henning, offers reviews of great fiction and nonfiction, like Harriet the Spy and Fast Food Nation, listed by title and author. Adult reviewers not only encourage young readers to draw on their background knowledge, make connections between themselves and the story’s characters, and compare themes with those in other books, they’ll often respond to kids who send in their own opinions.

But don’t count libraries out: their websites often link to great reading resources, and they’re the best place to let kids do their own searches. The Juvenile Series and Sequels Database of the Mid-Continent Public Library in Missouri, with over 22,000 titles, can satisfy the craving for “More!” whether it’s Amelia Bedelia or The X-Files. Series are classified as Juvenile Easy, for young readers just beginning to read, Juvenile, appropriate for grade school through junior high, and Young Adult, for high school-aged readers. And if your teens are ready for books that push the limits of young adult fiction, point them towards Reading Rants, a website created by New York City school librarian Jennifer Hubert for kids who are wondering if there's life after Judy Blume and Brian Jacques. Jen’s lists have names like Graphic Fantastic, Fanging Around (vampire stories), and Nail Biters (teen thrillers) – they’re not for the faint of heart.

If that’s STILL not enough, check out the links on the Saratoga Springs Public Library’s Reading Central webpage. There’s BookLetters, with reviews, interviews and discussion guides; a whole page of Websites for Readers, from The New York Times to Sparknotes, and including teen, romance, and mystery fan sites; a link to the quirky “Who Reads What?” site, where you can find out what’s on the nightstand of everyone from Kofi Annan to Raquel Welch; and much more. In fact, thanks to the Internet, you’ve got the nearest thing to my sixth grade librarian right on your computer, 24/7. And she’s never too busy to help!

Online Reading Bonus! Get a preview of the marvelous Daniel Pinkwater’s upcoming novel The Neddiad -- “My best work so far,” the author promises -- at www.pinkwater.com/theneddiad. Chapters have been posted weekly since August, and will continue until its publication in April 2007. There's also a forum for your comments -- and Pinkwater, the "Grand Poohbah," will respond!

Urban Legends (Feb. 2003)

I’m lucky. I hardly ever get spam, the email equivalent of junk mail, clogging up my mailbox. But what I do get, on a regular basis, are emails people forward me with stuff I just don’t want to read.

Sometimes they’re messages warning that my computer’s been infected with the Teddy Bear virus, or urging me to avoid antiperspirant or heating cups of water in the microwave. Others promise free goodies, like a $50 coupon for dinner at Applebees or new Nikes just for forwarding the message to “everyone I know.” Some want me to forward a picture of a lost little girl, or help a dying boy collect the world’s largest number of emails. A few have tried to get me to add my name to chain letter, or an email petition to save public radio or allow prayer in schools. And then there’s the jokes – don’t get me started on those!

Even if every one of these emails, written by people I’ve never met and forwarded to me by well-meaning friends, relatives and acquaintances, were filled with absolutely vital information, I still wouldn’t want to read them. I prefer to get my news from sources I know, which is why I’ve always used mainstream media outlets --TV, newspaper and radio websites -- as my home page. For the past few years I’ve used Google News because , which carries stories from thousands of newspapers and TV stations around the world. I can check the headlines several times a day just by going online.

But the fact is, almost every forwarded email I’ve ever gotten is either inaccurate, an outright hoax, or an Urban Legend. How do I know? Whenever I get one of these things, I check it with the experts: David Emery’s Urban Legends and Folklore section on About.com and the Urban Legends Reference Pages run by Barbara and David Mikkelson at Snopes.com.

Long before the Web existed, I discovered the Urban Legend phenomena in some great books by folklore specialist Jan Harold Brunvand. ULs are easy to spot, once you know the signs: they’re neat little stories about a celebrity or a friend of a friend (FOAF, in ULese) that have some kind of a twist, usually with a moral, at the end. According to Brunvand, some of these whoppers, like The Vanishing Hitchhiker, a “ghost story” you may have heard as a kid, trace their ancestry back to the Dark Ages. But now that we’re in the Digital Age, tales that once took years to circle the globe now take mere days via email.

About.com and Snopes are the best of the UL and hoax websites because they keep track of the latest emails to make the rounds AND they check with the people or companies involved to find out what the real story is, with links to online newspaper articles or official statements where you can see for yourself. Both have archives where you can look up that old classic that may have landed in your mailbox years after it started. Other UL sites exist, but many of them aim more for humor than verification. (One entire site is dedicated to variations on the famous email scam from Nigeria which asks strangers to help sneak money out of the country in exchange for a “reward.”)

You can also do your own sleuthing. The email I got promising a free meal at Applebees included a bogus “link” to the company’s website. I went to the real website and found a pop-up box which described the email as a hoax. Any new, legitimate virus alerts are sure to show up on the Microsoft website or any reputable high-tech news source. Norton, the anti-virus software, also lists hoaxes. For the government’s take on health-related stories, go to the Centers for Disease Control website .

So what about that caution about anti-perspirant causing breast cancer? Ignore it. The kidnapping? Never happened. That dying kid? He got better years ago, and the continuing flood of emails have caused the charity’s website to crash more than once. And the Teddy Bear virus? It works by convincing YOU to delete a perfectly normal Windows file.

As for those chain letters and petitions -- who’s really collecting your name and address, and what for? And those jokes … well, let’s just say people have different ideas of what’s funny.

Please – think twice before forwarding an email to everyone you know. Chances are good everyone doesn’t really want it.

Foreign Language (May 2006)

Yes, you can get by almost anywhere in the world with just English. But learning to speak a foreign language, even if you never get beyond basic pleasantries, can make a visit to another country so much more meaningful. And becoming fluent in a foreign language, or two, is not only a useful skill: it’s also a window onto other worlds. You don’t even have to go abroad to hear many languages, as the Modern Language Association’s map of languages spoken in U.S. proves. Of course, immersion is the best way to develop fluency, but if you’re not ready to move someplace where English isn’t spoken, the next best choice is to listen to native speakers as much as possible, and that’s where the Internet comes in. With a high-speed connection you have access to audio, video and animated lessons on almost any language you can think of, for both children and adults. What’s more, even if you never leave home, the Internet can bring foreign countries to you, through foreign-language news and cultural sites. So grab your passport, I mean your mouse, and go!

Americans are particularly bad when it comes to learning other languages. Only 9 percent of us can speak a second language fluently, compared to half of Europeans, according to The National Virtual Translation Center. And most langauge instruction in the U.S. is confined to Spanish, French and one or two other European languages. The NVTC was formed in 2003 when the government realized that mastery of foreign languages is useful not only in trade and foreign relations but in national security concerns as well. NVTC’s Languages of the World website contains information about hundreds of languages, including their origins and families, writing systems, with links on each one.

Other places to look for foreign language websites include iLoveLanguages, a catalog of more than 2400 links that include online lessons, translating dictionaries, native literature, translation services, software, and language schools. The University of Richmond’s "Global Village" is for anyone interested in communicating with, visiting, or learning about other peoples and cultures in a dozen different languages. Then there’s Polish teacher Magdalena Pospieszna's Language Links, whose wide selection of sites include Esperanto and Latin.

Not surprisingly, given Britain’s proximity to Europe, the BBC’s website is a wonderful resource for interactive foreign language instruction for English speakers. We’ve used their video and audio files and animations for kids for learning French at home, but they also offer Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Gaelic, Spanish, German and Italian instruction for all levels, and “holiday phrases” for vacationers in 37 languages. The BBC World Service news broadcast is also available in many European languages. Britain’s Channel 4 also has a site where you can play animated games at Chez Mimi (French) and Hennings Haus (German).

Some foreign language instruction books and textbooks have interactive websites where you can listen to pronouciation or test yourself with online flashcards that are useful even without the book. McDougal Littell’s ClassZone includes maps, an online workbook, webquests with links that help you complete a task such as planning a vacation abroad, and self-checking quizzes for French, Spanish and German. And the educational publisher Usborne has online pronunciation guides and links to interesting websites for those languages as well as Italian, Russian and Japanese.

The World Wide Web is also helping to preserve languages that are in danger of extinction, including many Native American tongues. For instance, as part of a project about people of the Arctic we found excellent sites with audio pronounciation guides, traditional stories and other features on languages spoken by Inuit and Yupik tribes. Other lesser-known languages are also well-represented. For another project on the Himalayas, I came across complete video lessons on beginning to intermediate Tibetan.

Along with lessons, there are many other ways you can use the Internet to practice and improve foreign language skills. Here are some suggestions by About.com’s French Language website:

• Incorporate the language into your routine every day by making a word-of-the-day site your homepage.
• Read newspapers online from the area you’re studying. (Google News offers versions from several different countries; go to the bottom of the page.)
• Visit sites that stream or archive foreign language radio and television broadcasts or webcasts. (Some channels have kids’ sections with games and cartoon clips.)
• Listen to music in the language you’re studying on artists’ websites or sample CDs on sites like Amazon.com. (In the week before Christmas we learned a whole slew of carols en francais.)
• Search for foreign-language movies you can rent or borrow from your library (slapstick comedies work well in any language).

So let the Internet broaden your horizons by introducing you to new and different languages. Bonne chance!

Family Online Picks:

Modern Language Association map (www.mla.org/cgi-shl/docstudio/docs.pl?census_main)

NVTC (www.nvtc.gov/lotw)

iLoveLanguages (www.ilovelanguages.com)

Global Village (www.richmond.edu/~jpaulsen/cvanetgv.html)

Magdalena Pospieszna's Language Links (www.pospieszna.com)

BBC Languages (www.bbc.co.uk/languages)

Chez Mimi and Hennings Haus (www.ltscotland.org.uk/5to14/c4modernlanguages)

McDougal Littell (www.classzone.com/disc_worldlanguages.cfm)

Usborne (www.usborne-quicklinks.com/usa/usa_menu_areas_pages/languages/languages.asp?type=subject&menu=s64)

Children's Book Authors and Illustrators (August 2004)

When I was in school books seemed to just mysteriously appear on library shelves. I thought Dr. Seuss was a brand name, like Dr. Scholl. Nowadays, kids know all about the people who create children’s books, and treasure their favorites. Just like pop stars, authors and illustrators today have their own websites, and sometimes fan sites made in their honor as well. There are lots of places to look for info on your kids’ favorite writers and artists, news on upcoming work, and ways to contact them or get them to visit your school. Now that school’s back in session, you’ll find these sites a great resource for book reports or writer and artist biographies. Some even invite fans to email them – and there’s nothing like getting a message right back from one of your literary stars!

But don’t expect an answer from Jo Rowling; the author of the Harry Potter franchise is too busy working on the final book, as well as her growing family. Still, on Rowling's website there are chatty messages for fans, news clips on Harry-related topics, fun activities and mysteries to solve. It’s a really neat glimpse into the tremendously fertile (and somewhat messy) mind of one of the world’s most popular authors.

Many other author/illustrators spice up their sites with animations, online games, and printable coloring pages. Tomie dePaola (“Strega Nona”), Jan Brett (“The Mitten”), and Dav Pilkey (The Captain Underpants series) are three of my family’s favorites. Others you may have heard of include DB Johnson (“Henry Hikes to Fitchburg,” based on ideas from philosopher Henry David Thoreau) and the team of Vivian Walsh and J.otto Seibold (“Olive the Other Reindeer,” “Penguin Dreams”). For kids who like their fiction spooky, there's the busy website all about author Lemony Snicket (“A Series of Unfortunate Events”). Or “Talk to DP” -- cult hero Daniel Pinkwater, creator of picture books like “The Big Orange Splot” as well as young adult classics like “Lizard Music” – at the P-Zone, and get a personal message back.

One of the best places to look for information on children’s book authors is the site run by Bethany Roberts, herself a writer of kid lit. It not only lists children’s book creator websites, it also has links to articles about for people who want to write for children, story tips for kids, and lists of other children’s book author web portals. Other places to try include Children’s Literature’s “Meet the Authors and Illustrators” page, and the Children’s Book Council site, with links to authors and illustrators published by members of this industry group. Or try the Author Yellow Pages' section on children’s writers.

Finally, be sure to take a trip to Planet Esme, realm of Esme Raji Codell. A former teacher, bookseller and school librarian, she’s the author of “Educating Esme” and “How to Get Your Child to Love Reading,” and in my opinion one of the most insightful writers on kids and books today.