James Patterson - The Fine Art of Pageturning

Have you run across any of those D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything And Read) programs at schools or other places? Basic idea is that you carve out some time when everybody has some uninterrupted reading time, and make a fun thing of it.

I remember some past PageTurner winners—including All Hallows High School in the Bronx—have done quite wonderfully with them.

Of course, they don’t work so well if the kids aren’t armed with good books they can engage with. That is, if the books aren’t there, and they aren’t fun reads, the time reading isn’t likely to be fun, either.

I mention this because somebody just pointed out that my friends at FirstBook and some others are involved in a D.E.A.R. website that offers materials and guidance for people looking to try it out.

Actually, if you know any schools looking for books (for kids ages 10 and up) I happen to be giving away some Maximum Ride books myself right here. Kids seem to have been enjoying them, and some schools have done some pretty fun book-oriented stuff with them.

JP

I was in Marrakech once. Marrakech is the location of the summer palace of the Sultan. According to Koranic law, the sultan has to meet with his subjects each day to hear their complaints.

Because of the custom, a public square has been built outside of the palace. The square fills up every night at sundown. It's quite a show.

On this particular night, I sat in the public square, sipping a pastiche, watching people bartering for camels, monkeys, spices, perfumes.

Suddenly, the huge crowd parted, and a 6'8" man in indigo and saffron robes, with indigo dye from the robes tinted into his skin-a totally amazing looking man-appeared in my sight line.

So my British publisher goaded me into starting a Facebook page. Apparently it’s all the rage. Do you guys have one? Do please feel free to become my “friend.” I can’t promise I’m going to remember birthdays and things, but here’s the link.

One thing I do enjoy about the site, though, is that lately people have been using an application that’s all about... books!

You can make a virtual bookshelf by picking out books you’ve read, are reading, or would like to read, and folks can easily come by and chat with you about them.

I don’t know if your kids have Facebook pages— and I’m not suggesting they should, necessarily, especially not if they’re younger— but if they do, or are about to get one, you might suggest they try out this application. It’s kind of fun.

Please let me know what you think.

JP

Well this writer’s strike sure is something. Good thing it doesn’t apply to book writers. I don’t think I’d be a happy camper if I couldn’t write every day.

It does, of course, have some real-world impact on me. I don’t know if you heard that ABC is doing a TV-series adaptation of my Women’s Murder Club series (which is for grown-ups, not kids!), but of course that’s on hold now after they showed the first batch of episodes this fall.

And though it hasn’t worked its way through the pipe yet, the strike might end up causing fewer choices at the movie theater in a matter of months. Being the compulsive movie-watcher I am, I wouldn’t be happy about that, either.

Which reminds me, you know that notion we had about finding books that got or are going to get turned into movies? A friend found this link: http://www.kidsreads.com/features/books2movies.asp

Hope that’s useful, and please let me know how that goes if you get a chance to put it to use.

JP

Can’t write much this week—Sue and I are taking a little long-overdue holiday away from home and if she catches me writing here, well . . .

But I did want to highlight a clever post Beth made last week. She writes,

“Here's an idea: have kids do reports on video games every day in school for years; keep logs on them and take them apart, diagram their dialogue structure, make everyone in the class work at the exact same pace (too slow or too fast) and generally take all the 'fun' out of the games.

You might find the kids turn to books for enjoyment instead of those 'boring' (frustrating) computer games!”

Whether or not it’s possible to ruin video games for kids in this way, I think we can all recognize that books do sometimes die an ignominious death in our nation’s classrooms.

And while they certainly don’t always get ruined in school—there are a lot of great teachers making books exciting for kids and turning them into readers—it does happen. It happened to me back when I was a student, and it’s happening to thousands of kids every single day.

And it’s exactly why, as parents, we can’t just assume that our kids are going to learn a love of books in school, and why we have to undertake this particular mission ourselves.

Fortunately, it’s a rewarding one . . . and one that’s very, very do-able.

More soon,

JP