Oh, what  a crazy time it is. Mr. T turns ten today, and Lulu turns sixteen on Halloween. Multiple cakes and celebrations are involved. Also, I’m trying to fabricate a Thor costume primarily from duct tape. But that’s the sticky stuff of another post.

I haven’t managed a post here in a few weeks. But after writing my last one, on making reading and writing enjoyable on a daily basis, I undertook a little experiment. For a few days I tried to note whenever I saw Mr. T involved in an act of reading or writing. There is no way I caught every occurrence; who knows how often the kid picks up an atlas when he ought to be putting on his pajamas, or labels a map before running out to the backyard?

THREE DAYS OF READING AND WRITING: AN INCOMPREHENSIVE LIST

Reading

Lots of independent random reading. A Cartoon History of the Universe, Volume 3. Assorted comics and graphic novels. The Story of the World, Volume 4. (T found this one on a shelf in our office and picked it up when he saw that it covered WWI and WWII, two eras in which he’s interested but we haven’t explored together. Cracks me up that he chose to immerse himself in what some would consider a textbook.) House Mouse, Senate Mouse by Peter J. Barnes.  Scholastic Almanac 2011 and National Geographic Kids Almanac 2011. Interesting thing about T: he doesn’t tend to read many novels, although he loves comics and graphic novels. For a short while I worried about that, until I realized that for every novel he doesn’t read, he probably reads a dozen nonfiction books. He especially loves atlases and almanacs, and all manner of science and history books. At the library, I check out armloads of books that might intrigue him and leave them lying around the house. I strew them, as Sandra Dodd would say. I’d wager that a giant chunk of T’s knowledge has been gleaned from strewn books that he’s picked up and read.)

Family bedtime read-aloud: Wildwood by Colin Meloy. (Because Mr. T’s parents are Decemberists fans and we lived in Portland for a time.)

Daytime read-aloud: Adopted by Indians by Thomas Jefferson Mayfield. This is a bit of an aside, but I have to share: Mr. T and I are exploring California history this year, and going on monthly trips to historic sites with a few other families. We’re reading this book along with our study of local native people. So interesting! It’s the true story of a Texan boy who came to the Gold Rush with his family, and was taken in by a local tribe. Apparently Mayfield never told his story until just before he died, and a teacher-friend transcribed it for him. It’s fascinating to hear about San Francisco before it was even called San Francisco, and to hear what the Central Valley looked like when it was practically untouched.

Bedroom audiobook: The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien. This is the book of the month for T’s book group. T would never have the patience to read it at this point, so I checked out the audio version for him. Sixteen disks! Actually, T often “reads” his book club books via the audio version. Is this cheating? I don’t think so. Can T engage in a discussion on the book at his meeting? Yep. Seems like that’s the point.

Car audiobook: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly. T almost always chooses the audiobook we listen to in the car; I really wanted to hear this one so insisted on picking for a change. What a fantastic first-person narrative! Reminds me a lot of the young female narrator in the recent film version of True Grit. Calpurnia uses lots of wonderful, old-fashioned words that should never have become lost to us. Big surprise: T likes it, especially the admiration for Darwin and the natural world that Calpurnia and her grandfather share.

An information packet about Fort Ross, a local historic site and the location of an upcoming living history overnight that T and I will be attending. T’s taking a class with other kids who will be attending the trip. Reading the packet was an assignment for the class, yet T kept dragging his feet about getting it read. Instead of nagging him, I read the packet aloud. Suddenly he found the content fascinating and it prompted all sorts of discussion. And I reminded myself that reading aloud is sometimes what it takes.

Reading about Lego Ninjago online. To some parents, I suppose, this could seem like frivolous commercialism. The thing is, T isn’t reading because he’s lusting after the toys. (Although he wouldn’t mind a few of the small sets for his birthday.) No, what interests him is the Ninjago world and all its inhabitants and their interactions. (How do I know? I asked.) It may be online reading, commercially produced, but still, T is reading and absorbing and considering the information. Pretty much the same as he does when he reads an interesting book.

Practice questions for upcoming Geography Bee. My young geography freak is considering entering a local bee, so he and I took turns reading and answering questions from last year’s bee. And yes, he puts me to shame.

Discussion while reading The Elements by Theodore Gray. T loves this book, and picks it up regularly. This time, as he was reading, he piped up: “You know why I like this Elements book? It has really good writing. It’s complicated, but they simplify it so much that you can understand it. It feels like the writer is talking to you, like when he says, (reading aloud): If you find this section too technical, feel free to skim it–there isn’t going to be a quiz at the end.” A casual conversation about writing style in a scientific book, begun by a kid? Love it. (Another aside: Recently I asked a friend’s 13-year-old if there were any nonfiction books with writing she admired, and she also named The Elements. Good stuff.)

Writing

a variety of Google searches:

1. Many searches for images of Thor, as Halloween costume research. One led us to the very fun site of comic book artist Chris Giarrusso. Fantastic place to visit for comic-loving kids.
2. A search for the word used when meeting with a king, which neither of us could recall. (“Audience”).
3. A search for a map of “the ancient world”. T looked this one up independently, and it led him to a geography quiz site, which led to a good 45 minutes of reading and answering questions online. (See, that’s just one example of reading that I missed documenting above.)

Are Google searches writing? Most definitely, I would argue. In order to search successfully, you need to refine your goals and tinker with your terms. The ability to find information is crucial for kids in this digital world.

Continued work on his nonfiction piece on Lego Universe for our Writer’s Workshop. T is just beginning to type some of his writing on his own, and is very motivated to do it. Exciting.

The Workshop itself. Practically two hours of discussion about writing! Also a writing exercise: Think of something you like to do, and make a list of how to do a great job at it. T’s subject? Playing Lego Universe, of course. (Third aside: yes, yes, I’m still working on that e-book about how to facilitate writer’s workshops! Will get it up here in the next few months!)

A questionnaire for developing his Fort Ross character, required for the Fort Ross class. Not writing he wanted to do, and he did a minimal job.  I had to encourage him to move beyond one and two-word responses. (What do you look like? Handsome!) Still, I didn’t push too hard; I think that would have only made him dislike the activity altogether. This goes to show the difference between assigned projects and self-chosen ones, like the Lego Universe writing mentioned above. I’d hate to think of how T’s writing might (or might not) be developing if he were in school and not given many opportunities to write on topics of choice.

Many lists of invented characters and maps of invented worlds. I find these scattered around our house like dust bunnies.

Writing and responding to friends in the text box while playing Lego Universe.

A thank you postcard to his grandparents.

* * *

Funny thing is, these were three very busy days, three days in which T and I had minimal time working together. Still, I’m amazed at how much reading and writing actually took place. I also notice that most of the examples here fall outside the scope of traditional reading and writing instruction. Reading comic books and Lego websites? It’s reading! Googling Thor and messaging while gaming? Writing! There were times in which I helped T out, scaffolding the learning for him: reading aloud when he didn’t want to read something, finding audiobooks when reading was challenging, not pushing too hard on a class assignment. Also, there were many small acts of reading and writing: casual conversations, Google searches. Sometimes I think we parents don’t notice these small moments, but a reading and writing education can be built on them.

Consider noting the reading and writing going on in your days. It can be surprising! I’d love to hear a few random examples of how reading and writing creeps into your lives. Your examples will help readers better understand the point of my last post: You can help your kids love reading and writing every single day.

Mr. T conducts research for a Lego-themed writing project. (Really!)

* * *

“90% of teens enjoy the writing they do outside of school, a figure that is consistent between boys and girls as well as older and younger teens.”

Writing, Technology and Teens, Pew Internet & American Life Project

Ninety percent. That’s a pretty impressive percentage. And when the Pew folks talk about “outside of school” writing they’re referring to traditional fare, such as journaling, letter-writing and poetry. That 90% doesn’t even include all the other writing mentioned in my last post: the texting, the profile and status updates on Facebook, the tweets. If you look at the mind-boggling statistics that littered that post, teens clearly enjoy that sort of writing too. (There’s some interesting conversation in the comments section of the post as well. Go read!)

As I pointed out there, these days teens value the written word. That’s big. It means that when it comes to teens and writing, parents–homeschooling and otherwise–and teachers have a hook.

We just have to pay attention to the writing formats that kids value, and start from there. What do text messages, blogs, Facebook walls and tweets have in common? They’re all writing aimed at an audience, and inviting response. Imbedded in the writing is the notion that someone will respond, and that, I’d argue, is what makes those formats compelling to teens (and to many adult writers as well.)

Traditional school writing, such as the rickety, follow-the-formula research paper, doesn’t have that motivating audience. Who’s the audience when it comes to school writing? Usually, a single teacher. For the purpose of a grade.

“Teens tend to enjoy the writing they do for personal reasons more than the writing they do for school. Half (49%) of teens enjoy the writing they do for themselves ‘a great deal,’ compared with just 17% who enjoy the writing they do for school with a similar intensity. In total, nearly one third of teens say they enjoy their school writing ‘not much’ (22%) or ‘not at all’ (10%).”

Writing, Technology and Teens, Pew Internet & American Life Project

So, how can you make kids’ “academic” writing as engaging as the writing they do on their own? You start with the formats kids are already using.

I’ve been reading The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks. In this book, Hicks offers chapter after chapter of possibilities for using digital media with kids’ writing. He shows how to set kids up with RSS feeds to follow topics of personal interest, how to help them use social bookmarking to keep track of information they want to remember, how to start them writing blogs, wikis and cooperatively-written texts. It’s a book written for classroom teachers, but I imagine it could be useful as well to a homeschooling parent, or a parent who wants to help a child find more writing options than he or she is being offered in school.

Need a more concrete example? Here’s a wiki written by Hicks, intended to be used by groups of kids when exploring a new nonfiction topic. As you can see, kids are linked to tools to help them create websites, infographics, instructional videos, timelines, maps and a bibliography using social bookmarking services.

A homeschooling family might use this wiki differently. They might start with a child’s existing interest, and then parent and child could explore some of these links together in search of a format that the child finds compelling. Mr. T and I did this last week. He’s been curious about the various species in the cat family and thought it might be fun to make some sort of chart on the topic. We looked at the infographic links and found a service for him to use. I helped him get started on the chart; eventually he was able to complete it on his own. We’re talking about the possibility of him starting a (password-protected) blog, so he can share future graphs and other projects with friends and family.

Infographics, in particular, are a hot means of sharing information these days, and provide a whole new format for visually-driven kids. What’s an infographic? Check out this one which I found last week via twitter, on videogames and education. Or look at this very thorough, informative post on Creating Infographics with Students at Langwitches. (Lots of other inspiration on using digital media in education there too.)

In my workshops for homeschooling parents, I encourage them (repeatedly!) to start with their children’s interests, and to consider the writing opportunities suggested by those interests. For instance, when H was a young teen and interested in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance series, he applied for and received a volunteer position writing for Shurtagal.com, the fansite for the series. H helped write an early wiki of terms and characters from the book. This was something he did almost entirely independent of me. Was it valuable writing instruction? Absolutely.

Likewise, starting at age eleven, Lulu held a volunteer position writing for the New Moon Magazine website, New Moon Girls. Her position involved not only writing content, but also “attending” online planning meetings conducted entirely via written chat. This was something that Lulu was highly motivated to do; it was also incredibly helpful in her development as a writer.

My role in both of these instances was simply to recognize that my kids were intrigued by these forums, and to encourage them to try to get involved. I helped both with their applications; they took over from there.

Does your child write in an online format? What? Where? Please leave a comment! Let’s chat about all the possibilities out there for kids.

Digital writing has so much potential–for kids to write independently, for kids to work in small groups. There’s just too much to cover in one post. Consider this a teaser. I hope to do some big bellyflops into specific digital topics here in the future.

Sadly, meanwhile, many schools still teach writing via formulaic, five-paragraph-essay-style assignments that are boring to write and even more boring to read. Which seems a shame in an era when kids are naturally engaged in other formats of writing. And in an era in which the ability to write is becoming more important than ever. One more quote:

“…two-thirds of principals in a recent survey said they believe their school is preparing students to be competitive in the global workforce. But most tech-savvy students didn’t share that view.”

Maya Prahbu, “’Digital Disconnect’ Divides Kids, Educators”, eSchool News

If these tech-savvy students didn’t learn their tech skills in school, where did they learn them? Most likely, they taught themselves. Likewise, many students will teach themselves how to write well, through the digital forums in which they participate. But wouldn’t it be nice if those same kids could take their enthusiasm for writing, and apply it to their coursework? If more teachers were like Troy Hicks, using kids’ interests and media that’s relevant to them as guiding principals of instruction?

Homeschoolers and other parents, you don’t have to wait for schools to come around. You can nurture this sort of writing education right now. Pay attention to your kids’ interests and open your mind to the writing possibilities. And then try to encourage. Ever so gently.

More to come.

Earlier today I was despairing the fact that I probably wouldn’t get a post up this week. Mr. T has been at day camp, playing orc in the redwoods, and meanwhile I’ve been working like a squirrel in September on my conference workshops. Didn’t think I’d have time to write here.

Then I remembered that Annie of Alphabet Glue kindly offered to contribute a giveaway copy of her e-magazine to you, fine blog readers, and I decided that I could find enough time to share that fun with you.

Alphabet Glue, Volume 2 has lots of good stuff for summer. As Annie so fetchingly writes in the Introduction: “There is a book list for beach or backyard, a jar full of ideas for summer storybuilding, and of course, some bookmarks to help you keep your place when the pool, berry picking or the sprinkler are calling your name more loudly than your latest read is.”

Or you could let the Table of Contents entice you:

A reading list for summer

Review as You Read Bookmarks

Story Starting Jars

Hidden-Binding Accordion Books

Story Lanterns

Make a Compass

Kid Detective Reading List

Do-It-Yourself Detective Kit including:

Secret Code Cards

Writing in Invisible Ink

Anonymous Letters

Costume Magnifying Glasses

A Detective’s Notebook

I’m sure that many kids will be captivated by the special section devoted to kid detective stories, and its accompanying Do-It-Yourself Detective Kit.

But for me, as a parent, I always love Annie’s lists of recommended books. Just the sort of thing I like to have beside me, as I search my library’s online catalog. On her Seasonal Shelf for summer, I spotted a book that brought back memories from a June, eleven years back: Children of Summer, Henri Fabre’s Insects by Margaret Anderson. It’s the fictionalized story of real-life, 20th century Provencal entomologist, Henri Fabre.

June 2000 was the summer that Chris and I took our first European trip with the kids. Or at least two of the kids–Mr. T hadn’t been born yet. One morning at the library, preparing for the trip to Paris and Provence, I looked for books about France to bring along. And somehow, utterly serendipitously, my finger scanned a shelf and landed upon Children of Summer. Which is how a week or so later, I found myself on a little iron bed, in a little stone house, in a little town in Provence, reading a magical bedtime story to my children that took place just outside the ancient wooden shutters that we’d opened to the juin evening.

H. at the Musée Picasso, Paris. 8 years old.

Lulu painting with watercolors in the Luxembourg Gardens, age 4.

Magical stuff. As literature combined with life can be.

Alphabet Glue is full of ideas for letting literature draw magic into your family’s life this summer. Leave a comment between now and midnight PST on Sunday, July 17 midnight PST on Friday, July 22 for a chance to win your own copy. And if you’d like, tell us in your response what book you and your kids are loving this summer. (Update: I’m extending the giveaway signup until Friday, July 22, midnight PST. Don’t know what I was thinking with such a short comment period! Thought I’d choose the winner before my birthday post, but since I typically post only once a week or so, it just wasn’t fair to give my readers only three days to get in on the fun!)

If you don’t want to count on luck, head over to the Alphabet Glue site and pick up a copy for a mere $4.

Wishing you some sweet summer nights reading with your kids.

Update: The random number generator says that April is the winner! Congratulations, April, I’ll pass your information on to Annie.

Surely this photo is more interesting than the expected stack-of-books photo. I just put it here ’cause I like it. It was the view from our patio the other night, the sort of view that makes you reflect on anything good you might be reading, and think deep, literary thoughts. And then realize that it was probably just the red wine you had with dinner.

Heather, over at Beauty That Moves, kindly posted a link to this here Wonder Farm recently. If you’re here via that link, hello! Nice to meet you. Come on in, and feel free to poke around.

Heather occasionally asks her readers to share what they’re reading, and I love scrolling through the comments on those posts. So I thought I’d ask the same.

What books are grabbing you these days?

Me? I’m inhaling Lit by Mary Karr. Her memoir of getting drunk and getting sober and becoming a writer and a mother in the meanwhile. I’m not a fan of memoir unless the writing is stunning, and Karr’s is. Having a background in poetry will do that. She writes lines like this:

What’s a typical journey to college? I couldn’t tell you. I hope my son, Dev, had one last summer. His dad was staring owlishly into the computer screen, trying to download music, while I slipped folded shirts into fiberboard drawers and ran extension cords. Before I left, Dev heard a series of moist-eyed platitudes till he said, Mom, don’t Polonius me with this nagging. Still, he hugged me–his huge form ripe with shaving lotion–hugged me right in front of his backward-ballcap-wearing roomies. Dev’s parting words: Love you. Don’t forget to mail those CDs.

My passage involved three blue-ribbon hangovers and the genial loneliness of a South American novel and an image of Mother charging out of a liquor store in blinding sun holding a gallon of vodka aloft like a trophy.

On the morning Mother’s yellow station wagon deposited me at a dorm and pulled away from the curb, I was seventeen, thin and malleable as a coat hanger wire, and Mother was the silky shadow stitched to my feet that I nonetheless believed I could outrun. I didn’t cry when she pulled away, for there were cute hippie boys playing guitar cross-legged on the lawn, but my throat had a cold stone lodged in it. I was thirsty.

Man. After starting with a library copy, I had to buy the book so I could do my usual highlighting tricks with lines I admire. Trouble is, the story draws me in and I leave my highlighter lying.

I’ve also picked up poet Robert Hass’ The Apple Trees at Olema. One of my dear poet friends is a great fan of Hass, so I grabbed the pretty paperback with apple and bird on the cover at the library and am glad I did. These lines made me read twice:

Afternoon cooking in the fall sun–

who is more naked

than the man

yelling, “Hey, I’m home!”

to an empty house?

thinking because the bay is clear,

the hills in yellow heat,

& scrub oaks red in gullies

that great crowds of family

should tumble from rooms

to throw their bodies on the Papa-body,

I-am-loved.

Funny that both of these snippets are about transitions in parenting. Guess I can relate. Mostly, this evocative writing reminds me that my journals are gathering dust. I write here, I write on my projects, but less and less in my journals. Both of these books are encouraging me to pay better attention, and to scribble down details. So I’ll remember. So they’ll find their way into my writing. Because detail is what makes words memorable and is the surest way to engage a reader. The right detail is like a foxtail caught in a sock. Seed snared and carried along.

So tell us, my friends, what’cha reading?

I’ve been meaning to report back on how Mr. T’s ultimate guide turned out.

Rather than writing The Ultimate Guide to the Trojan War as he’d planned, he titled his opus The Ultimate Guide to the Ancient World. Why just cover one little war when you can take on the entire ancient world? His plan is to add more sections as he pursues more ancient history.

He had a good time making that cover.

We talked about what he might want put on the front of his book, and looked through a stack of books on the Greeks. We admired photos of Greek pottery engraved with characters from their myths. I thought a scratch art technique might give a similar look, and found instructions here.

T took a goofy pleasure in covering that cardboard in pastel–first the terra cotta color, and then the black. His hands became satisfyingly blackened.

The fun part about scratching the art is that if you make a mistake, you simply reapply more of your upper color and try again.

The effect really did resemble ancient Greek pottery.

T had become fascinated with the Greek alphabet–we listened this song a gajillion times–and decided to write his title in Greek letters.

I had to spray the cover with a stinky, undoubtably toxic acrylic spray so that readers of T’s book wouldn’t wind up with hands like his.

Many of T’s ideas from our initial brainstorming session wound up in his book. There were several writing-intensive pages with interviews, history and such. But there was also some graphic fun. Such as character cards:

Any work of T’s wouldn’t be complete without a Pokemon-esque analysis:

And because this was T’s book and not his mama’s, there needed to be weapons.

This is my favorite page. Both the concept and design were entirely T’s.

It’s a chart of the Iliad’s gods and who they favored. T did lots of re-reading of a kids’ version of The Iliad to get this right. The alliances are mind-numbing. I’m glad I have a chart to help me out.

We decided to “bind” the book using Circa discs from Levenger. What’s neat about this method of bookmaking is that you can add and move around pages at will, which allowed T to insert pages as he finished them. It’s a rather expensive way to make a book, but I’d already gathered many of the supplies for my own Circa notebook.

(Check out that notebook, two years later. This is where I’m organizing ideas for my book. It’s a good two inches thick already, and that’s just notes! The book-writing is happening on my computer.)

Mr. T enjoyed writing his guide, and was proud to show it at our history fair. (Although, as we’ve learned in the past, a book isn’t always the most eye-catching display at a fair. There’s so much to see that you really have to captivate visitors with big and showy! Next year.) These days we’re having a fine time learning about the Aztec, Inca and Maya. I asked T if he might want to incorporate this into a new section of his guide, since it is The Ultimate Guide to the Ancient World, after all.

“Nah,” he said. “I want to do something different. But I don’t know what yet.”

Bright idea to come, surely.

I loved reading your comments after my last post. So many great book-fueled conversations you’re having with your kids! I wanted to share another conversation with you, this time one from a recent writer’s workshop. (I’m paraphrasing this to the best of my recall. Wish I’d taken notes!)

That morning, one boy read his story about a baseball game. He’d written the piece in present tense: I throw the ball to second base. Matt catches the ball and the runner’s out.

It was an interesting way to approach the story, and I pointed it out to the kids. I reminded them what “present tense” means, and I asked what effect that tense has on the piece.

“It makes it more exciting,” one girl offered.

“Let’s compare what the piece would sound like in past tense,” I said, and I read a paragraph from the boy’s story, changing the tense as I went.

Now the kids could hear the difference. And many of them had comments.

“Present tense makes it seems like it’s happening right now.”

“You don’t stop to think. The story goes faster.”

“It makes it more like a real baseball game.”

Yet, I said to the kids, most books you read are written in past tense. Why do you think that is?

This is where the conversation got deep. Let me point out that this is a group of ten eight to twelve-year-olds. Many are beginning writers themselves; several still dictate their work to parents. But they had plenty of opinions on the matter.

“In past tense the story goes slower.”

“In past tense you can stop the story and get inside the character’s head. You can’t do that in present tense ’cause the story keeps going.”

“If a whole book was in present tense, you’d never know what that the character was thinking. You couldn’t stop for very long.”

“If you didn’t know what a character was thinking, the book would be more like a movie. It would just tell what was happening all the time.”

And so the conversation went, for several minutes.

“Can you think of any longer books written in present tense?” I wondered.

One girl mentioned a book she’d read, Shiver, which she thought was in present tense. (I checked, and it seems to be written in past tense. But it would be interesting to explore why the book left her with that impression.)

At some point here, I’m not sure where, the conversation turned. This is one of the beauties of talking books: you never know where your conversation will spin and shoot off. You just don’t get that gorgeous tapestry of threads when your literature studies come from a curricular set of questions. Suddenly we’d moved on to another rarely-used writing approach: second person perspective.

So, instead of I throw the ball to second base, you get: You throw the ball to second base.

“That’s weird,” one boy said.

“It’s like the writer is inside of the reader’s head,” said another.

All agreed that it would be hard to read a whole book written that way. We talked about how it could be an interesting technique to try. I told them about a homeschooling article I’d had published which was written in second person. (That was such a fun article to write–and the format so brazenly stolen from Lorrie Moore’s short story “How to Become a Writer”–that I encouraged H to write one of his college application essays in second person, and he cranked out “How to be a Filmmaker”. It was a great way to get a kid who doesn’t like to talk about himself talking about himself.)

That morning I ditched the writing exercise I’d planned, and the kids tried writing a short scene in second person, present tense. One boy’s scene of you going into an ice cream shop was particularly memorable.

What strikes me about these workshop conversations is the same thing that strikes me about those one-on-one conversations with my own kids that I wrote about in my last post. When given the chance, kids can engage in meaty conversations about literature. Many of these discussions are eerily similar to ones I’ve experienced in adult writing classes I’ve taken.

“You don’t learn to write by going through a series of preset writing exercises. You learn to write by grappling with a real subject that truly matters to you.”

-Ralph Fletcher, What A Writer Needs

And, I would add, you learn to write by reading and thinking like a writer.

(If you’re curious about writer’s workshops, keep stopping by the wonder farm! I’m currently working on a book chapter on facilitating workshops, which I’m hoping to release as a stand-alone e-book. Just doing what I can to foster the proliferation of homegrown writer’s workshops–because I think they’re rather magical in their ability to motivate kids’ writing.

And if you’re interested in being an advance reader for the e-book, willing to offer me constructive feedback, please let me know!)

Here’s a crazy idea for a post. I’m going to tell you about a book that you probably don’t need. And I’m going to give you a link to a review that you can probably skip.

I’ve been doing lots of reading about teaching writing in the last few months, as I work on my book. I very much appreciate the thinking in books by Jeffrey Wilhelm and Michael Smith. Recently I browsed a copy of their Fresh Takes On Teaching Literary Elements: How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View and Theme from the library. Rather than try to summarize the book myself, I’m going to let this handy-dandy helpful review do the work for me. Go ahead and read it, if you’re interested.

Then again, maybe you don’t need to. Because this is a book for teachers. And it’s a fantastic book for teachers. But in reading it, I realized that homeschoolers and other parents don’t really need this book. We have it easy.

We don’t need to devise lessons to learn about literary elements. We can explore them as they come up, as we lap up wonderful books with our kids.

What’s that you say? You don’t know how to explore literary elements? You don’t, for that matter, even know what I mean by a literary element? (I’m not talking about fictional appearances by hydrogen and sulphur, surely.) And could I quit with all the teacher-y talk?

Okey doke, let me tell you a story instead.

The other night, T was supposed to be getting ready for bed. You know, putting on his pajamas, brushing his teeth so we could climb on his bed for our nightly read-aloud. Instead, he came running into my bedroom, hollering,

“There are so many parallel characters in Percy Jackson and Operation Redwood! Think about it!”

Before I had a chance to process what the heck he was talking about, he began breathlessly explaining how Percy is like Julian, and Annabeth is like Robin…

When he paused for half a second, I asked where he got the term parallel characters. It’s not a phrase I remember using with him. I didn’t even realize that he knew how to use the word parallel correctly.

“I don’t know where I learned it. Maybe I made it up. It makes sense though, right? ‘Cause look at this.”

And he showed me a little chart he’d made–when he was supposed to be brushing his teeth–with characters from  the Percy Jackson books, their sequel book, The Lost Hero, and Operation Redwood, our current read-aloud.

For once I wasn’t irritated by the kid’s typical tendency to get sidetracked. He was talking literature, and he knows that’s always a free pass in his mama’s coupon book. He went on to explain to me how Percy, Julian and Jason are characters on a quest; Grover, Danny and Leo are their sidekicks; and Annabeth, Robin and Piper are the girls along for the ride. (And a big part of the brains in the respective operations, I might add.)

The fact that he’d worked through this notion, and charted it, while I thought he was putting on his jammies left me feeling rather gobsmacked.

But here’s the thing: if you talk about books with your kids as you read them, they’ll begin thinking more deeply about books. I’m not talking about formal lessons; I’m not suggesting you take a list of literary elements with terms like characterization and foreshadowing and begin pointing them out as you read. Your kid might want to stop reading with you altogether if you pull that sort of thing. You might even get a book thrown at your head.

No, I’m just suggesting that you and your kids talk about what you like and dislike about books as you read them. The more you discuss, the more specific your conversations will become. Chatting about A Series of Unfortunate Events‘ Count Olaf may lead to a conversation about whether he’s a likable character or an unlikable one. You might find yourself talking about the point of a villain in a story, or even the irony of a villain who’s funny. Next thing you know, you’re driving to the park, listening to the third book in the series on audiobook, and your kid tells you to stop the disc because he wants to point out which words in a specific line make that villain funny.

And you thought you were just driving to the park. And enjoying an audiobook. Nope! You’re helping your kid learn the elements of literature!

My guess is that parents who enjoy books with their kids have these conversations naturally. Pay attention to them, and see where they take you. Try starting up a conversation. Begin with something you like or dislike about a book you and your child are sharing. You might say something like:

“I like this main character. She’s feisty. Do you like her?”

“This book took a long time to get going. When do you think it started to get interesting?”

“I don’t think that character would have done that, do you? It doesn’t seem in keeping with his personality.”

“I’m liking this book, but I don’t think it’s as inventive as the Artemis Fowl books are.” (This line walked out of my mouth last week. And led to a grand conversation.)

It’s crucial, I think, that your statements or questions are authentic wonders on your part. Don’t say something unless it’s something you’re really pondering, or it will come across as You trying to play Teacher. Once you start posing such questions, your child is likely to do the same, and it’s your child’s observations that you really want to nurture. The fun happens when the two of you disagree with each other, or when the whole family disagrees, or when you and your kids disagree with what an author has written. Defending your perspective, you’ll delve into the writing. You’ll find yourself examining what the writer is doing–and the tools the writer pulls from his or her toolbox. Those tools are precisely the “literary elements” that educators refer to, those concepts featured in the subtitle of the Smith/Wilhelm book mentioned above: Character, setting, point of view, theme. And so on.

In their book, Smith and Wilhelm write about the importance of “transfer”. The following quote comes from the National Writing Project review linked above:

Smith and Wilhelm name a number of kinds of “transfer” that teachers might hope for in the teaching of literature: “We want [students] to transfer the knowledge they have gained about people and stories to their understanding of the literature they read, and to their writing. We want them to transfer what they learn from reading one text to their reading of other texts. And we want them to transfer the understanding they’ve gained from reading to the way they think through problems and their lives.”

They then name a central problem in all teaching: “Although teachers often count on the fact that transfer occurs, the evidence suggests that it typically doesn’t.”

It can be a challenge for teachers to create meaningful lessons that will impact kids in a classroom. This book does a good job of it. But think about it: when literature learning comes from conversations in the home, you can be pretty sure that transfer is occurring. The conversations stem from the kid’s own observations! It’s a more casual, child-led sort of learning, but it’s valuable learning. Real learning about literature and how it works.

I think that we parents tend to discount this sort of learning. After so many years in school, we often have a (perhaps unconscious) belief that formal learning in classrooms, or from pre-determined curricula is somehow superior. But learning based on the child’s own curiosities and discoveries is rich and meaningful. And that sort of knowledge can accumulate into something bigger than you might expect. Years of enjoying books and talking about them can cultivate a deep understanding of literature and how it works. You don’t need canned activities and lessons to make that happen. In fact, canned activities and lessons can’t possibly reach your child like your own parent-child conversations can.

This is one of the big ideas I’m planning to focus on in my book, and I’m hoping to write more about it. Please share your thoughts!

If you feel a bit rusty on literary elements–or what goes on under the hood that makes literature satisfying–I have a book recommendation: Live Writing, by Ralph Fletcher. I’m sure there are plenty of good books out there on this topic, but I like this one because it’s insightful, it’s well-written, it’s cheap–and it’s written for kids. I’m recommending it for you because we all know that the easiest, breeziest way to learn anything is to read a children’s book on the subject! Plus, you might leave it lying in the path of an older child, and find him or her appreciating it as well.

I hope you’ll pay attention to the conversations you and your kids have about books, and try to nurture them. And if your kid neglects his responsibilities in favor of chatting literature, I apologize. But not really.

Next up: another literature conversation, this one from one of my recent writer’s workshops.

A few things that have me worked up these days:

eggs! They’re wet and just-hunted for in this photo–you may even spy a tiny slug on one or two of them. (Which is what comes of them spending a few pre-dawn hours hidden in the backyard.) We used natural dyes on all of them but those green ones. I do love the pop of that phony green. Looks like it’s egg salad sandwiches for dinner tonight. I’m trying a new recipe, which uses yogurt instead of mayo, and comes from…

super natural every day. I’m loving this cookbook. I have Heidi’s first cookbook, which I’ve enjoyed as well, but this one may be even better. For Easter breakfast we made the Baked Oatmeal with blueberries. Yum. We’ve also prepared and lapped up the Farro Soup and the Harissa Ravioli. I took a big chance on Pan-Fried Mung Beans with Tempeh, knowing that it sounded like something from a 70s commune, but was unexpectedly directed by the resident teenager to please make this again! At Heidi’s signing at my local bookstore, I told her that as a longtime vegetarian, I have my gourmet cookbooks and my hippie cookbooks–and am very grateful to now have her cookbooks, which elegantly combine the two. Heidi knew just what I meant. She was absolutely lovely and gracious.

teenage style. Easter afternoon. Love their independence.

more teenager appreciation. In the form of a note, left on my desk.

ollalieberries and honey in my future. My girls are so busy these days. This one’s working our ollalieberry bushes. I have one strong colony (the swarm I so comically captured last year) and am hoping to catch another.

a simple, tasty recipe for said honey. This one comes from the classic The Cheese Course, by Janet Fletcher. It’s basically honey and walnuts on little Cabecou goat cheeses, but there’s one special, somewhat time-consuming trick, which removes the tannins from the walnuts. You pour boiling water over the walnuts and let them sit for half an hour. Then you put them on a triple-thick paper-towel-lined pan, and bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, and for an additional twenty minutes at 250 degrees, until the nuts are dry throughout. You toss them with the honey and drizzle over the goat cheese. I’ve also done the same over gorgonzola; both got raves at parties. Let me just say that when the cheese was gone, fingers were seen swiping plates.

collaborating brothers. My boys have a long history of working together on H’s film projects. I figured those days had ended for the time being, given that H is at school clear across the country. But never underestimate the power of Skype. Last week, Mr. T did some voice work for an audio story for H’s sound class. We loaded up Skype and H sent the script as a Skype transcript. He gave T direction via headphones and I recorded it on Garage Band. It was sweet to see them working together again–and fun to see how H’s direction class has influenced his abilities to get what he wants from an actor. And he’s always baffled at how T manages to nail what he asks for–yet the two of us can’t convince the kid to try acting for others. Someone’s missing his calling.

an alphabet glue winner! The giveaway issue goes to Wendy, who answered my request for a favorite shared book with, “How could i forget one of my all time favorites – barn dance – by bill martin jr. and john archambault. it is like singing a song!” I’ll send your email address on to Annie, Wendy, and she’ll send along your e-magazine. Congratulations! For those of you who missed out on the giveaway, I hope you’ll still check out Alphabet Glue. You can read more on the website, or in my last post. It’s good, book-loving stuff!

So, what has you all atwitter?

I’ve never sponsored a giveaway here on the wonder farm. I’m giddy to see how it goes.

I first heard of the new, downloadable quarterly magazine Alphabet Glue on my friend Molly’s blog, A Foothill Home Companion. (Molly never fails to inspire.) As soon as I read about the magazine, I wrote to its creator, Annie of Bird and Little Bird, to see if I could offer a giveaway here too–because I know I have readers who would appreciate it. And she kindly agreed.

You simply need to read the magazine’s tagline to know why I like it so much: activities and inspiration for kids who love books (and their grown-ups). If I could give one bit of advice to a new parent, it would likely be love books together. Which is not quite the same advice as read books together. Although if someone asked me to distinguish between the two, I’d have a hard time putting words to it. But no more. I could simply offer an issue of Alphabet Glue to show what I mean.

The magazine is full of ideas for loving books together. There’s an excellent spring reading list. A library scavenger hunt. A full-of-potential template for creating houses for favorite story characters.

And bookmaking! There’s little I love more than making books with kids. In this issue you can learn to make a felt bracelet book.

Or a tiny box accordion book.

But Alphabet Glue is more than a series of fun activities. Annie really understands the role that stories play in a child’s life. In her introduction, she writes: Children spend much of their waking lives immersed in story of some kind, and this is part of what makes childhood so very special. Yes! Annie also understands that loving stories is as much about creating them as it is about reading them. In one activity, Mix and Match Story Cards, she has kids shuffle up cards with characters, places and problems to make up their own stories. I love that she includes blank cards for kids to add their own components. And I especially love that she includes a list of books with “magical places”, “wonderful characters” and “fantastic problems” for inspiration. (I may try this one with the kids in my writer’s workshop.)

Scrolling through my issue, I felt a little sad, knowing that my own kids are a little (or a lot) too old for most of these activities. I wished I could post photos of my kids doing the activities, as other giveaway bloggers have done. Then I remembered the tiny box accordion books that my own kids have made over the years. Sometimes we made the boxes ourselves, as Annie’s project suggests; sometimes we used old matchboxes.

This one is called The Doll’s Tea Party. Made by Lulu about ten years ago.

Made way back when H was obsessed with Pokemon.

Looking at these old, beloved projects, I realized that Annie and I are kindred spirits. I hope that you read Alphabet Glue and feel the same way.

(Edited to add: to get a sense of how these activities can inspire, check out this lovely post at Time to Craft.)

You can get your own copy of Alphabet Glue here for $4. You can also take a chance to win a copy!  To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment, and tell us the name of a book that you and your child have loved together. Next Monday, April 25, I’ll randomly choose one commenter to win a copy. Good luck!

So much interesting discussion on my last post! Do check out the comments.

Such doubts we have about video games! Which makes sense: it’s something that we parents didn’t grow up with, which many of us don’t understand, yet it’s becoming a basic part of childhood for many of our kids.

People always fear the unknown. And the media plays on fear. Stories that feed our fears and amplify them attract readers. Which is why it’s easy to find so many stories on the negative aspects of video games. How they’re addictive, how they keep kids from learning.

I respect any parent’s decision to keep video games out of their kids’ lives. But I respect that decision even more if the parent has really explored the issue first. Both sides, negative and positive. I think the truth is that most parents have only looked at the negative side of gaming. Or maybe, like me, they’ve allowed gaming, but they haven’t been happy about it. For me, the positives have only revealed themselves slowly, over the years.

But I think we’re doing our kids a disservice not to look at the entire picture of gaming. Because our kids are growing up in a different world, and there’s a good chance that video games can help prepare them for that world.

(I’m hoping that my friend Carrie L. will read this post and comment. Recently she had a conversation about gaming with a twenty-something young woman who works at Google–a Stanford grad, I think– and the conversation really changed her perspective.)

If you’re willing to explore the positive side of video games, my readers and I have some recommendations.

I mentioned this one in the comments. It’s a book I just found at the library, on the positive aspects of video and computer games: Don’t Bother Me Mom–I’m Learning! by Marc Prensky. It’s fascinating. I especially like that it promotes discussion between parents and kids about what the kids are doing when they play games.

Reader Carrie sent a link to this episode of Science Friday, from just the other day. It’s an interview with Jane McGonigal, who wrote the recent book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. I haven’t read the book, but I think you can get a pretty good sense of where she’s going with it in the interview. Compelling stuff. (You can listen or read a transcript.)

My friend Molly also sent an NPR link, from Morning Edition: Video Games Boost Brain Power, Multitasking Skills.

No one commented specifically on what T said in that last post, but I’m still fascinated by it. (I think the video game topic makes us parents just throw up our arms and get panicky.) T was using video games as a metaphor for how to learn. The fact that he thinks of video games this way makes me realize how much I’ve underestimated their value.

“I like learning the way I do when I play video games.”

I asked him to tell me more and he said this,

“I don’t like someone telling me exactly what to do, but I don’t like being in the dark either. I like having my path clear, but my goal unclear.”

In other words, he likes knowing which way he needs to go, but he also wants to discover in the process. That strikes me as a very creative, meaningful way to learn. Video games gave him this metaphor–wow!–but he wants more of his learning to be like this.

It’s also been interesting to watch how video games play out in T’s life. Often, he’ll play onscreen for a while, and then he’ll turn off the game but continue to play it “live”, moving around the room, re-enacting scenes and acting as one of the characters. He’ll extend the story as he pleases. He’ll also sit down and draw characters from the games, and then he’ll dream up his own characters to add. Or he’ll take an idea from a game and write (or dictate) his own story. Playing the games is just the beginning; T’s own imagination fleshes out the game worlds, and invents new ones. (Are video games T’s only source of creative inspiration? Not in the least. I’ve written about how the ancient Greeks are a current passion for him. Although that passion was certainly fueled by his playing of Age of Mythology… Games and books and learning and life are all wound together for him.)

Because writing is a particular interest of mine, I’ve read lots on how gaming can engage boys with literacy. I have several recommendations: Boy Writers by Ralph Fletcher; Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men by Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey Wilhelm; Misreading Masculinity: Boys, Literacy, and Popular Culture by Thomas Newkirk. All point out how we miss an opportunity if we don’t allow boys’ fascination with games to become fodder for their writing. If boys can bring their excitement towards games to their writing, their writing often bears the same energy and passion. And for boys who don’t have a drive to read and write, gaming can provide motivation.

Do you have a sense of how much kids write when they’re playing video games–at least older kids who play more complex games? They often communicate with others as they play together online. Many post questions on forums for help, and some write game reviews.

I turned up an interesting tidbit while researching an article I’m writing. It came from this transcript which interprets writing test scores from the 2007 NAEP. (The National Assessment of Education Progress, also known as “The Nation’s Report Card”.) I’m not a fan of standardized tests because I think they can undermine how and what we allow kids to learn on an everyday basis, but it is interesting to look at them as a means of considering group shifts over time.

“According to our 2007 results, the gap between male and female 12th-grade students is getting smaller. Twelfth-grade boys are improving their scores at a faster rate than 12th-grade girls. However, the gap has not changed for 8th-grade students. Eighth grade boys and girls are improving at about the same rate.”

The transcript doesn’t offer an explanation for why twelfth-grade boys’ scores are improving, but I have an inkling. My guess is that in the last few years, boys have been writing more than ever before in daily life, with texting, Facebook and gaming. People like to dismiss this sort of writing as lazy and error-riddled, but they fail to see the bigger picture: the more you write, the more comfortable you get with writing, and the more your writing improves. I’m guessing that older boys are gaining a facility with writing from their everyday lives, and it’s spilling over into their school writing. My guess is that twelfth grade girls have already developed a certain level of written literacy for school–as evidenced by their long-running higher-than-boys writing scores–so their real-world writing isn’t making as much of an impact. Also, on the whole, they’re not doing as much gaming, and hence may not be writing casually as often as the boys. (The fact that eighth grade boys didn’t have the same increases may have to do with the fact that younger boys, in 2007 anyway, probably weren’t doing as much casual writing as the older boys. Just my hypothesis.)

Literacy is only one benefit of gaming. The books above offer many other benefits: collaboration skills, ethics, creative thinking, economic skills… There’s a lot to think about. H was the kid who really had to educate me on all of this. And when I consider his filmmaking interests, I realize that they are closely tied to all the time we allowed him to explore with the computer, both with games and with playing with applications like iMovie and Garage Band. H developed skill and agility on computers that led to real-life interests and plans.

I don’t mean to sound as if I’m saying Video games are great! You should let your kids play them all day! Not at all. One thread that came up again and again in the comments is the notion of balance and moderation. I’m right there with you on that. Quite honestly, it would be much easier to simply forbid gaming, or to let my kids monitor themselves. Monitoring kids on games can be a real pain. So much time spent researching the “right” games, so much time spent telling kids it’s time to get off. So much time. But I’ll keep monitoring this way. I think we all learn from our conversations about moderation. I’m helping my kids to learn balance; they’re teaching me to respect something that matters to them that I don’t fully understand. It’s worth the time.

I think that we parents sometimes look nostalgically at our own childhoods, wishing our kids could have the same freedoms that we had: freedoms to ride bikes across neighborhoods, to play unsupervised in creeks and fields and abandoned buildings. (Michael Chabon’s essay The Wilderness of Childhood is a beautiful exploration of this.) But I read somewhere recently (oh, where did I read it?) that kids today get their freedom in their lives online and on screens. I suppose that those of us from earlier generations would find this notion unspeakably sad. And I think it’s important that we try to find ways for our kids to develop freedom and independence in the real world. But I wonder if most kids today would find that notion of screen freedom depressing. I don’t think so. The virtual world is part of their real world, and we oldsters may never fully understand that. But I think it’s important for us to try. We can offer the best of our own worlds to our kids, but they’ll be more likely listen if we let them do the same for us.