Hope your holidays were great. Christmas happens to be one of my favorite days of the year.

And my family outdid themselves this year. I got some great books myself, gave a couple good ones—including one of my all-time favorites, To Kill a Mockingbird—to my son, Jack. I also received some of the world’s best ice cream, from Graeter’s in Cincinnati.

So now it’s time for thank-you notes! I know, thank-you notes can seem like a total drag and, these days, with the speed and ease of email, IMs, cell phones, and texting, it seems downright old-fashioned and inefficient to actually commit pen to paper, but I personally think part of enjoying books comes from an appreciation of this old-fashioned, first-hand, and magical experience of turning our own thoughts into words.

To that end, even if thank-you notes are a hard-sell with your child, have you ever considered getting them a blank notebook? Here’s a thought and a letter you’re welcome to adapt for your own young reader:

Dear ___,

You ought to keep a journal. Do you know what a journal is? It’s basically your own book. And it’s a place where you can keeps things you want to remember. Things like [and of course use your own examples here, these are just for-instances]:

• How much the Cowboys are going to win by in the next game
• What sorts of table scraps Rex likes best
• The right amount of ketchup one should use on one’s burger
• What is the best joke you heard at school this week
• What day of the week you get your allowance on
• How many Whiffle balls you’ve hit into the next-door-neighbors’ yard
• What sort of cake you want for your birthday
• What Mom or Dad said to you that ticked you off the other day
• Best fishing spots at the river
• Secrets that nobody should know but you

My point is that if you have a journal and practice writing in it—just like with our bike or smacking Whiffle balls into the neighbors’ yard—you’ll get good fast.

And writing’s a good thing to be good at. It helps you remember things, it helps you get your ideas to across to other people (so you can get into good schools and get good jobs and stuff like that) and it can even be pretty good fun.

And you don’t have to write in this journal when you don’t feel like it. You can glue pictures you’ve cut out of magazines, things you’ve printed off the computer, hide money in it, or even smash leaves or bugs into it if you like. Or you can neglect it for weeks or months at a time.

Anyhow, why don’t you give it a try, and let me know if there’s anything I can help with? I’m proud of you being such a good reader and writer.

JP

Thank you, Terrie and Sandi, for replying to that last post and, Jocelyn, I’m impressed you found that excerpt for the next Maximum Ride book. For all you parents who aren’t aware of the Maximum Ride series, it’s written for readers of all ages, from 10 to 110. I’m careful with the language and content and everybody seems to love the books.

Staying on the subject of Maximum Ride, I just returned from Hollywood and can tell you the books are headed to the silver screen. Avi Arad, who made Spiderman, and Sony Pictures will be making the movie-version.

Ironically, just last week I blogged about how movies often aren’t as good as the books, but hope does spring eternal and sometimes movies-based-on-books are pretty good. I think the Harry Potter films, for instance, are entertaining.

And that sparks another idea that may be useful for those of us embarked on turning kids into readers.

Find a movie your kids might be into that’s based on a book. For example, The Spiderwick Chronicles will be out in February. Or The Golden Compass is out now. Or try Holes, which you should be able to rent. The important thing is to find a movie your kid wants to see and to harness their interest by giving them the book before they see it.

Oh, and if you have some suggestions of great books that have been turned—or are getting turned—into decent movies, why don’t you share them? Maybe we can build a list here for us all to reference.

JP

You may have heard Ingmar Bergman died this past summer. Or you may not have. He was a very smart, creative man, and a favorite of critics and students of film.

But I believe he’s probably not as famous as Walt Disney or Steven Spielberg because he made what most of us call “art-house” films. His films are popular with “expert” film watchers, people who watch tons of movies and are looking for more than just a good, clean, popular entertainment, but they don’t hold any major box-office records.

All that to say, if people’s first movie-going experience was with Ingmar Bergman films, I suspect movies wouldn’t be as popular as they are today.

This is something we know about books, too. Part of the reason they’re not as popular as movies these days is because too often, for instance, an eighth grade English teacher assigns a paper on Silas Marner or some other “classic” chosen by academic professionals, but that is not suitable for fledgling readers. And then that class comes to the conclusion that reading is a drag.

This happened to me, and I daresay it’s happening every week to untold thousands of kids around the world.

And that is yet another reason why it’s so important that we parents, as we’ve been discussing, make the effort to be the first to introduce our kids—who we know better than any teacher ever will—to the right books.

To that end, I should mention that for all of you who’ve been looking for some concrete recommendations from little old me, you ought to check out a piece I did for Parade magazine (which is carried in a lot of local papers) this weekend.

They’re running a letter I wrote to my son, Jack, and a list of some books I truly hope he loves.

Have a great week,

JP

Hope you liked that reading-late tip from last week. As Michelle, Terry and Zanna (who commented on it) I think would agree, there is something special about staying up with a book. If you’re at all open to the thought, please give it a try with your kid and—in a month or so—let me know how things worked out.

This time, I thought I’d just pose a thought-starter that occurred to me while Sue and I were up in New York so I could do publicity stuff for the latest Alex Cross novel, Double Cross, and meet with my publisher—about this year’s awards for volunteers, booksellers, teachers, librarians, and other people who are out there spreading the joy of reading. (If you’re in this category, or know somebody who is, please go to pattersonpageturner.org.)

Jack, my son, was a little mad at us for going without him—especially since I had a talk at the original Apple Store in SoHo and he’s an Apple fanatic—but fourth grade comes first. (If you have iTunes, give it a *free* listen here.)

While we were at the Apple event, he e-mailed Sue with his spelling homework. He did well except for spelling “perilous,” which he had as “perilles,” but that’s not an easy word.

English, of course, is full of not-so-easy words, and it’s no wonder lots of people never get proficient at reading, much less confident enough to enjoy books.

But, of course, if we hadn’t learn to read, we’d all probably still be living in trees and caves, and maybe I’d be logging rather than blogging.

All that to say when we get our kids reading, we need to remember it’s a big challenge, perhaps the single biggest challenge in their entire education. And that’s why we need to be really smart and take advantage of the best tools out there to encourage them.

More to come next Thursday on just that subject.

JP