The Crayon Connection

Hardly any kids came to our afterschool program this past week.  That's not so surprising as we just started them and it may take a while to catch on.  The ones who came, however, drew a bit with a pencil but could not be encouraged to color in with crayon.  I started thinking about this.  Maybe at a certain age they would prefer to work with markers, which deliver a more saturated color.  Then up in the forefront of my mind popped the image of coloring programs on the computer. No problems keeping within the lines, color even and vibrant - not to mention fast.  Kids might not be finding the same joy in drawing and coloring that we did because it's not living up to what they've seen can be done (not that they're actually doing it - actually "coloring") on a computer.  They're just clicking on a space.

True, it requires use of fine motor skills to use a mouse, as anyone like me who has had to learn to do this later in life knows, but I keep thinking they need to be using their hands more.  I have even been asked by a kid, full of energy otherwise, to cut something out for him because cutting was making his hand hurt.   Watching kids of school age who are unable to do simple tasks with pencils, scissors, and tape dispensers worries me.  This story kept edging its way into the mix.  This man lost his ability to read from a stroke, but was able to work around his loss by tracing the letters he was looking at with his finger and then later with his tongue on the roof of his mouth.  Yes, it was slower - but he had not lost that part of the skill.  There is a clear link between the motor skills used to write with the ability to decode the printed word inside the brain.  This was only reiterated to me when I read this blogpost.

Computers are an integral part of our present and future, but we are already past the point where mouse use is a vital skill in computers.  We are now using just our fingertips (those of us - not me yet - who have the phones and tablet computers that do this).  Computers can now obey commands we vocalize.  We are running right past Star Trek science in some categories - even the more recent Star Trek versions.  We don't need to teach skills that are already on their way out.  And if I can learn to use computers at my age (I started after age 30 when you actually needed a huge manual and classes to figure out how to print a letter), these kids don't need to be saturated with those skills. 

Kids will learn to read better if they can connect the movements of their hands with the shapes of the letters. They need to be coloring, which teaches them to control their hands (and used to be deeply satisfying), as a pre-literacy skill.  They need to be writing and drawing with a tool in their hands to learn letters and to learn creativity.  We aren't just killing literacy with computers, but we are killing creativity.

Now, I spend way too much time on computers and I, too, get cramping in my hand trying to write a letter to someone.  I have also seen a great deal of creativity online, but most of this from people who already possess the skills from decades of writing and coloring - people who are already artists.  They aren't creating textures this beautiful with a mouse:

Virtual gown and avatar skin with hand-painted textures.

Let the children use the computers - but for limited amounts of time.  [And, while you're at it, make me get away from mine.  I am only too aware that this is not going to be an easy task.]  Make sure they get access to lots of paper, crayons, scissors, and quiet time.  Maybe you can share that time doing some writing or drawing of your own.  Try it.  It's a skill worth cultivating.  It has more value than you'd think.

201.01.10 - Updated to give a better link. Video no longer available, but NPR story still there.

Under the Magnifying Glass

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Wha-at? You mean there was no Carolyn Keene? As a child I devoured the Nancy Drew books, like most girls, re-reading them and demanding more (to my mother's horror - she wanted me to go to a library and get them, but how could you read and re-read as I did with books if they weren't right there on your shelf? I have solved this problem in adulthood by working in libraries!). I remember hearing that there was a woman behind them, or maybe a man who started it and his wife (turned out to be his daughter) who ground them out under the name of Keene. After that I lost track of the whos and wheres and now have learned that there was a hard-writing, tough woman reporter in the midwest who did the fleshing out of book outlines provided. The syndicate then edited them or suggested edits.
This book is certainly more than one would want to know about the making of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and other older series books. I guess you could then call it "thorough." It's disheartening to read about family squabbles over money when your associations with these books hearken to mythologies like the Easter Bunny. Harriet's sister Edna married and bowed out of the day-to-day running of the syndicate, but managed to pinch pennies from a distance. Having had a sister, I can just imagine ...
I was also right in preferring the oldest versions, the blue books with the orange print on the outside. Later editions of Nancy Drew were dumbed down, eviscerated for political correctness, and even later reduced to advertising for the shallowest of consumerism. The love of the oldest versions led me to historical fiction and period mysteries. I now prefer a little more distance in my reading. Also, the educational bits in the books (which I actually noticed as a child reader and appreciated, "Oh! I'm learning something, too!") were intentional insertions.
Disdain for series literature started early and still exists, but the nay-sayers still don't learn the lesson: kids enjoy reading them, want to read them, and they actually help young readers develop the fluidity of reading, which prepares kids for the meatier stuff they will also have to read. Whether they go on to enjoy more serious "litticher" later is up to them, but they will already be hooked on the printed word.
The book climaxes in a courtroom smack-down (if the meeting of the two long-separated, elderly ladies can be so described) when the original writer (Mildred Wirt Benson) and the Stratemeyer Syndicate head (Harriet Stratemeyer Adams) face off while Harriet attempts to defend her split from Grosset and Dunlap. They each believed themselves to be the originator, the writer of the Nancy Drew stories. Harriet went so far as to refer to Nancy as her daughter. Grosset and Dunlap had stupidly mined the Syndicate's catalog and resisted sharing even a little bit more of the gold with the Syndicate. Harriet left them for a better deal with Simon & Schuster (who virtually raped and pillaged the Nancy Drew franchise after Harriet's death, relentlessly launching watered-down series after watered-down series and never achieved the same 50 year success of the originals).
The "original" Nancy Drew series (as well as Hardy Boys) have been published in facsimile form by Applewood Books, and Good on 'em!
Long live the Nancy Drew in all of us, the real one, the one that captured our hearts in our youth, the time when our hearts were there for the taking.

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Write About It!/Ga Children's Lit Conference

Miriam ("Mimi") Rutland is a published author of a series of books about Miss Pistachio. Her session on teaching writing realistic fiction to kids using their own experiences interested me because of the Be Creative theme of this summer's reading program. I was already thinking about a poetry workshop. Maybe I could do this also or instead - maybe I should just go lie down.

Rutland uses a storyboard approach in her 3rd-5th grade writing clubs. She has them think of three people that are important to them, then three events: vacation, birthday, lost tooth. They have to pick one of the people (who doesn't have to be connected with the event) and describe the person: what they look like, what sort of personality. Then you put the person together with one of the events ... and embellish. Add little bits, like spices.

She says that the hardest thing to do is to start. Sometimes they need to have realistic explained to them (no flying cars or talking animals). Sometimes they need to brainstorm a special event: going to the beach, visiting a friend's house, making a new friend.

And she made us go through the process. She read some of the paragraphs we wrote "anonymously." She was careful to praise what she thought was good or interesting about the paragraphs, which of course reminded me of Mrs. Smith in Kindergarten and how she squashed a classmate's clay cat and told her she had done it all wrong and to "Start Over!" I had been looking at her method of dividing the clay into pieces and making the cat (we all had to make a cat that day - no creativity in that class!) out of them the same way you'd assemble a snowman: ball with smaller ball on top, tiny balls pinched into ears, another piece rolled into a long tail, etc. I looked at my cat, all pinched here and there and messy looking and then at her neatly assembled one and had been at the point redoing mine when Mrs. Smith waddled over in her grey wool suit, ruffled blouse, and black orthopedic shoes and squashed the snowcat flat. It's a lesson for all of us who work with kids. [Not to put too fine a point on it, the lesson is: Don't Do That!]

Rutland's presentation was simple and organized and fit exactly in the time allotted. So maybe there should be short sessions and longer sessions.