Literacy in the 21st Century

Holy crap last weekend was full of literacy-related stuff! Here’s a quick run-down.

In the comics we had Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman’s Zits talking about childrens’ books. Here’s the first two cells:

And Bunny Hoest and John Reiner’s Lockhorns discussing reading skill and its inverse relationship to TV watching:

And then in the New York Times Mazagine, Virginia Heffernan’s “The Medium” column asked “What are kids learning to read when they learn to read online?” That’s more than relevant. I think our classroom is bugged.

Heffernan opens:

“Did you like this book?” asks the computer. It’s a customer-satisfaction question, but it seems more profound than that.

We hesitate. Ben, my 3-year-old son, shoots me a puzzled look. The answer should be yes. Ben enjoys what’s on the screen right now: Starfall, an online medley of free learn-to-read activities. But he doesn’t like the question.

“It’s not a book,” he explains, emphatically, to the laptop. “It’s more like a movie or a video.”

Read the rest — it’s really interesting, especially from a childrens’ lit perspective. And super interesting, from a Proust and the Squid perspective, when Heffernan notes that:

I’d like for Ben to sit with One More Story and come away with the impression that he’d been read beautiful books all afternoon. But Ben tends to ask for One More Story when he wants privacy, the same state of mind in which he likes videos. Books, by contrast, are for when he feels snuggly.

As I said, read it all. It’s well worth your time. Even if you have to read it on a computer monitor.

Among many things that David Byrne has delved into; such as poetry, world music, the modern art movement of furniture, chemistry, etc., this project, entitled “Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information,” was something new to me but not shocking.  I am aware of his broad array of interests and usually find them just as interesting as he does.  …for instance, I spent a good two hours reading up on his analysis of artistic home decor.  Not once before did I ever consider such a topic interesting, and yet, looking at it from his perspective, it shockingly became so.

So, I guess this is the main reason I chose this book, because of the author and his peculiar outlook on things.  And, honestly, I am not, by any means, knowledgeable Epistemology.  But I cannot say that I chose this book because I am a fan of the author.   The book itself jumps right out at you, once you open it.  It is filled with striking colors, intricate designs, random snaps of photography (such as hands, eyes and even a large, close-up portrait of a sheep), diagrams, bits of prose discussing anything from poetry to the neurological make up of the human brain…every page is different than the last.  This book is essentially a hodgepodge of ideas and concepts, which I cannot possibly say for sure, if there is any correlation.  I suppose the correlation is how the brain interprets this information.

After looking through this book a bit more, I find myself more intrigued with it.  Slowly, I am figuring out why.  Here’s what I got so far.  There is no point to it…but it is still evocative.  Byrne might have a point with all these images and words, but he isn’t throwing it in your face.  He allows you to think, he allows you to conclude.  The purpose is, maybe, exactly what the title suggests, to show images that create an emotional stimulus inside oneself.  Regardless, it is interesting.

Choose Your Own Adventure 2: Journey Under the Sea, by R.A. Montgomery. 1978 and 2005 editions.

We probably all remember the novelty of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, favorites in school libraries everywhere. I selected these because I was interested in the differences between the two editions. The 1978 edition depicts a hulking Soviet-era submarine outfitted with a giant flashlight and a few antennae,  piloted by a man seen through a glass dome. We see a scuba diver sucked into a whirlpool, a great white ominously swimming by, and what appears to be the lost city of Atlantis; suggesting the dangers and mysteries of the deep we will encounter as we embark on one of several adventures of our choosing. The cover art of the newer edition is noticeably digitally generated, and looks a bit like an arcade game of the early nineties. There are faceless fish, a couple of disembodied tentacles,  and a submarine casting its headlights into the darkness, but no people. The absence of life represents the starkest difference between the two versions, and perhaps of the cultural shift from one era to the next. The older drawing is like a kooky comic – somehow friendly despite the dangers – the newer spooky in its sterility. The blurb on the older back cover mentions your friends in the sub, the “marvelous mammals [that] sometimes help people in trouble”, and the threat of physical exhaustion. The newer edition is concerned with your ship, and untested new equipment, such an experimental diving suit. This contrast is indicative of the contemporary preoccupation with technology and our resulting alienation from one another and the natural world.

i live here

“there are too many untold stories”

by mia kirshner, j.b. macKinnon, paul shoebridge, and michael simons

this book has many different fonts and two different languages.  it is a book that contains four books inside.  its title scratches out “here,” as this book is the unfolding of four different narratives, coming from the perspectives of refugees and displaced peoples — “from war in chechnya, ethnic cleansing in burma, globalization in mexico, and AIDS in malawi” (quoting from the summary on the back ).

to open the book means to spread out laterally four frames of intrigue, each of which has a jacket and its own “notebook” that covers a different part of the world.

(in the jacket of one of these frames there is what looks to be a composition journal, yet it is glossy and bendy rather than having the prototypical matte finish and a sturdy stature.  on the cover of this journal there is a sketch of a spear-carrying, pilgrim hat-wearing gentile riding a horse.)

to close this book you will notice a gentle magnetic force that will hold this item together.  if you get the chance,  check out this book to hear the stories that aren’t usually told.

Whatever You Want by Rachel Timms and Laurence Hayes  is a “pick-your-own-ending escapade” published in 2003 by 10 Regan Books, a division of Harper Collins.  Originally published in London,  Whatever You Want may be the reading experience that young adults have been waiting for since they outgrew the Choose Your Own Adventure children’s series. I picked it up, hoping that chunky volume would be the more fluid and satisfying read that I’d hoped for but never experienced with the CYOA series.  At first glance, this proves to be true.  Althought the volume contains a similar warning to not read straight through, it also includes the warning:  if the reader finds herself finished the story with any of the endings listed below, she should seek psychatric counseling.  

Already, I’m intrigued and I think my teenage students would be too.  Some of them will hope to stumble upon romance, others,  violent disturbance.  With all of the worst possibilities listed before the story has begun, no one has yet to be turned off.  I believe they will find this method less offensive than the Prologue of Romeo and Juliet  which declares exactly how the characters’  fate will be played out.  Some will hope to find themselves on the shortest path to finalizing the assignment. Either way, I think we’ll give it a go.

Meanwhile, by Shiga, and is a sort of create your own adventure book, as we all may remember from our childhood.  You might remember from those books statements like “if you choose to fight the dragon, turn to page twelve.”  Meanwhile, however, is different from those books in a number of important ways.  First, it is a comic book.  That is, instead of the single picture and accompanying text, these pages are loaded with pictures with the text embedded in the action like a comic book.  Unlike a comic book this book does not have a left to right, top to bottom orientation.  Instead, small “tubular vessels” connect each drawing to another, be it on the same page, or on a different one.  By making choices that are also embedded in the pictures, you can lead your character to a large number of stories, some ending without much incident, others in death.

(more…)

My “thing” is a book called Knock Knock.  It seems like a “choose your own adventure” type book, except it’s all comic strip-style instead of written text.  I picked it up because it reminds me of this joke that I tell alot — I told it to my mom once and now she asks me to tell it to her every time I see her because it absolutely cracks her up.  It goes:

JOKE TELLER:  Knock knock.

OTHER PERSON:  Who’s there?

JT:  Interruptive cow.

OP:  Interru–

JT:  Moo!

At that point my mom always cracks up in amusing peels of laughter.

But anyway…in the beginning of the book, in the “WARNING,” it says to not read it linearly, but instead to follow whatever cues you want based on the illustrations in the cartoons.  Then it says, “Most choices lead to death and disaster.  In fact you’ll probably have to die several times before you fully gain a sense of your situation in life.”  I have found this to be true.  In life and in Knock Knock.

I can’t tell you the author or any information on this book because it’s just not there.  Oh, wait…OK, I just Googled it and (of course) I got bombarded with about a million sites on knock-knock jokes.  So, like I was saying — I have absolutely no information for you on the origin, meaning, author, purpose of this book.  But it’s really fun.

The Watchmen?

Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, the Watchmen is a groundbreaking graphic novel set in an alternative 1980′s in which superheroes–or masked vigilantes– exist as an everyday reality. The Watchmen is a deconstruction of the super hero genre, portraying its heroes as flawed and human. Save for Dr. Manhattan, none of the Watchmen have any superpowers at all. Though I’ve never been a comic-book fan, the Watchmen (from what I know) deals with heavy stuff–human relationships, the nature of power, geo-political struggles, idealism, nihilism… and giant squids. The interesting thing about the graphic novel as a medium is that it combines text and visual imagery, creating a unique artistic product as well as a unique reading experience. The Watchmen is considered the crown jewel of its genre, and hopefully I will have read it before the movie comes out in the spring.