Yesterday I had the pleasure of getting my hands on a copy of this year’s picture book winner of the E.B. White Read Aloud Award, given by the Association of Booksellers for Children. One, by Kathryn Otoshi (What Emily Saw) is as simple a picture book as it is profound.

From the moment you look at the book cover and read the first page, you know you’re about to experience something special. The concept, a story about bullying that uses splotches of color and numbers to speak of the power of one person to initiate change, is highly original, and its execution, flawless. When One stands up to Red, who is bullying Blue, all the other colors who felt for Blue but had been afraid to speak up, follow his lead and turn into numbers who “count.” In the process, Red isn’t ostracized, but told by One that he, too, can count. “Everyone counts!” they all shout.

My seven year-old was clearly touched by the book’s message of inclusion. She said: “It was nice of them to say that. I bet nobody had ever been nice to Red before.” So young and so wise… I have a feeling we will be gifting this book to friends and telling one and all about it.

Read Kathryn Otoshi’s interview at Character Counts, where she talks about what inspired the book. And for more, check out Alison Morris’ post at the Shelftalker: A Children’s Bookseller’s Blog, written when the book came out, last year.

It’s Poetry Friday and I could not find the time to blog about a poem or poetry book. And since I didn’t want the day to end without my contributing something to this beautiful, collective blog effort to promote poetry, I decided to go back to a piece I wrote for PaperTigers in celebration of Poetry Month (back in April), inspired by an interview I read with poet Naomi Shihab Nye. The piece, called “Waking Up on the Right Side of The Poetry Bed,” is a tribute to poetry and reading aloud.

Poetry Friday’s lovely round-up this week is at Charlotte’s Reading. Enjoy!

I grew up in a remote corner of Alaska, without electricity or a telephone, at a time when the Internet would have been considered a maniac’s wild fantasy. Anyone entering our house at night would have found everyone in our family clustered around a couple of gas-fueled lanterns in dead silence, each of us deeply immersed in a book–except for my little brother.

Scarred by an unsuccessful introduction to reading in the first grade, my brother had soon become embarrassed by his lack of skill in a family of bibliovores and was a resolute functional illiterate. The rest of us found this appalling as well as inexplicable and discovering a book that would make my brother a passionate reader became an overriding obsession for us all.

Not too far away there was a tiny library that was our family’s idea of paradise. Even my brother loved it, since it contained picture books and illustrated encyclopedias–and as it turned out, a sizable collection of Tintin books.

We were not a family of comic book readers, but when my brother came home with his first volume of Tintin, poring over the pictures and painfully puzzling out the words, it was a big day for us all. It was the moment that my brother became a reader and Tintin became a household saint.

As a bookseller, I love to find books for the uneasy reader and Tintin is always high on my list of suggestions. A colleague of mine specializes in turning reluctant readers into bookworms and in an upcoming interview she will tell us how she does it. What about you? What titles do you suggest for the uneasy readers of your acquaintance? Let us know!

Issues of literacy, post-literacy and how words and pictures fit into children’s lives nowadays are frequent topics of discussion in the blogsphere this year, including on our PaperTigers Blog. Since we began blogging some 9 months ago, Marjorie’s Books at Bedtime has been suggesting ways to make reading a vital part of children’s lives. Janet’s The Tiger’s Bookshelf also weighs in on the subject periodically. Readers share their views, and with nary a naysayer to date: it’s not likely that our PaperTigers community would deny the countless benefits of being exposed to books and stories from a very early age!

We can’t teach babies and toddlers language by putting them in front of the TV. Children learn language, and learn to love language, by being spoken with. Words come to have meaning in the context of important relationships (with parents, grandparents, teachers and/or other caring adults.) After a young mind, and (if we are lucky) soul, has been touched in this safe, nurturing context, a love of reading usually follows naturally. Reading aloud to children is a concept most of us espouse. But at the end of the day (quite literally at the end of the day, in many cases), it can be hard to make the time. It is one thing to know the benefits from a daily dose of books and reading and another altogether to see these benefits in action, translated into kids begging to stay up late to finish a book, or to be read “just one more page!” What a joy it is to hear those words! They are a good indicator that a love of language has been born and will keep on manifesting itself into and throughout adulthood.

The CCBC-net listserv’s recent discussion of nostalgia (as a new trend in children’s books) ended up turning, for a few days, into a thread about memories of reading to children and being read to. CCBC librarian Megan Schliesman (quoted here with permission) offers an insight about the apparent change of subject: “I’m struck by how our discussion of nostalgia in books has turned to one in which so many of us are thinking fondly of being read to and of reading to children. I find there is something essentially nostalgic in the idea of gathering around to listen together to a story, but all of us who read aloud also know that it’s an act that transcends nostalgia, which so often places a divide between child and adult. Instead, reading aloud brings together individuals who might be otherwise divided by age or experience or background.”

On the same thread, Megan Lambert, Instructor of Children’s Literature Programs at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, mentioned that candid anecdotes about the reading life are just as important as empirical evidence when it comes to the importance of reading. (She is writing a book about this.) “…I recently heard Vivian Gussin Paley speak on the importance of play in the life of the child, and she put out a call for an army of anecdotes about play to counteract the trend toward No Child Left Behind, standardized tests, etc. We need to document the power of reading aloud in this way too. Studies and data and all the rest pointing to how reading aloud creates strong readers are important, but so too are stories that we can all tell about powerful shared reading experiences.”

Absolutely. We all need stories to tell, to listen to, to share. So let the importance of reading in children’s lives be a talking point. One that will continue as long as there are readers and books.

For up-to-date round-ups of articles and blog posts on the subject of reading and literacy, Jen Robinson’s Book Page is the destination. Here’s her latest.

(Image credit: illustration by Elizabeth Gómez, from the book Moony Luna, written by Jorge Argueta.)

Posting a blog entry is like going to a party–you never know who you are going to meet or what kind of interesting conversations will come up. (And of course there’s always the dreadful possibility that you will be a wallflower and nobody will respond to you at all.)

The Tiger’s Bookshelf has been lucky. During the past two months there have been a number of rich, varied, and thoughtful responses to some of the blog entries that blend into a longer, continuing conversation.

Corinne and Michael Miller both pointed out that if you want your children to read, read to them and let them catch you reading, since they will model your behavior. Corinne also mentions the importance of making television and computers a secondary source of entertainment, with books being a family’s primary pastime and the library being a primary destination.

Sally Ito observed that a family can become its own book group, by “sharing the page.” Although all of different ages and with different tastes, her family is drawn together by the books they read aloud, and those shared books lead to the broadening of individual tastes–reading fairy tales to her daughter, Sally said, prompted her to pick up Italo Calvino.

Alison and Corinne both brought up the importance of a teacher reading aloud to a class, which is another form of book group, and one that brings together children of different reading abilities and different interests, uniting them in the excitement of a good story.

Holly decried the fact that books are so easily pigeon-holed into age categories, while so many books found in children’s sections of libraries and bookstores are ones that adults enjoy too. She applauded the idea of moms and daughters sharing books, which is an idea further discussed by Aline, who loves reading to her daughter and asked when is a good time to begin being part of a book group? Is five too young?

What do you think? Can a five-year-old be part of a book group? Can television and computer time become secondary to reading? Can adults and children, whether they are related by family ties or by reading tastes, discuss books together in a group, on equal terms as readers of the same book? And how has the reading that you have done with your children affected your own reading choices?

Let’s talk.

PaperTigers’ Books at Bedtime section of our blog is now a part of the new, exciting Tiger’s Bookshelf, which was launched this week. We welcome Janet, our new blogger, who is encouraging young people to join our virtual book-club – see her introductory post for background and details. Books at Bedtime will continue to recommend books for reading aloud (not just at bedtime!) and to celebrate this new development, we are launching our PaperTigers’ Reading Challenge to carry us through to the end of the year.

So here’s the deal:

Choose one book from or about each one of the five geographical areas shown on the PaperTigers map and …

have them read aloud to you,
or read them aloud to your children/class/bookgroup,
or read them yourself

between now and 30th June.

The books can be picture-books, poetry, fiction, non-fiction… the choice is yours.

Let us know your list and then what you thought of them when you’ve completed the challenge.

You can find lots of ideas in the PaperTigers Reviews section and here are some links to other reading lists that might help you – or pop into your local library for some inspiration. Then, when you’ve made a note of the many books you’d like to choose, there’s always the sticking-a-pin-in method… and of course there’s no reason why you can’t start all over again with another five books when you’ve finished!

We’ve decided on three different challenges in our household: one family readaloud then each of the boys will choose their own reading list… Deciding on the logistics was the easy part; I’ll let you know soon which books we actually whittle our lists down to. And we look forward to hearing about your adventures on the PaperTigers Reading Challenge too!