The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Reading, Texting, Books

Monday, April 27, 2009

Reading, Texting, Books

When people find out I write YA, the one statement that is inevitably made is: "If you can get teenagers to read." My boys don't read novels, not even the ones their mom writes. (Though I did catch Son #1 reading a draft I left open on the computer and he actually ASKED ME A QUESTION ABOUT PLOT - heart be still...)

Their reason is reading seems too slow, too quiet. They like movies and Spark notes. It was pretty much that way when I taught middle and high school. And they do really like it when I explain symbolism to them, as long as I keep my explanations under a minute and don't ask them if they "get" it. Well, maybe they don't LIKE it exactly, but they smile and nod, and say things like, "Huh, Mom, you're really into this, aren't you?" They don't try to shut the door to their rooms, so I take that as a like.

Yet, they do read a lot, just not novels. All the myspace and texting is literacy, only a different kind. I don't think basic literacy has changed at all, just the medium has.

I felt like my son stopped by the computer and read my draft because he associates the computer with fun things. When I announce happily that I am going to the library, doors close and children instantly vanish in a sudden, StarTrek kind of way.

Over Easter, my brother told me he had two books out. The boys grew perfectly still. I know what they were thinking: "Are we going to have to read those?"

I was thinking: Say what?

He's an illustrator, not a writer, but I took a look anyway. I'm so immature, I kept clicking on the pages to make them turn. And my kids liked looking at it, too, probably because it's visual and not wordy. (And their mom doesn't ask anything like, "So the river -- what do you think THAT means. Water, the soul...) They were allowed just to look. And I'll bet you can tell we were raised right by a beach.

My whole family is weird. For a long time, my brother collected cans. The kids always told me I seemed really normal after they visited their uncles in Staten Island. We had no idea he was doing this.

I know these are just previews to allow you to browse a book electronically, so maybe I'm wrong and the medium isn't changing. Maybe this is just the way marketing is changing and this is how we make decisions now. I'm not sure if this is going to be the way we read.

I like books;I dislike Kindle and reading fiction on the computer. Email and that kind of thing are fine, but leisure reading should not involve a keyboard. I like holding books and carrying them with me wherever I go. I like turning pages and feeling the weight of the book in my hand,though I'm sensing that I am slowing devolving into a dinosaur. Maybe I'm going to be the last person lurking in the bookstore.

8 comments:

Crystal said...: Hi Anne,

Just found your blog! I'm like you with regard to reading. Nothing beats holding the physical book in your hand. I like turning the pages, too, and being able to flip back to a section that's so good you have to re-read it. Don't worry, you WON'T be the last person lurking in a bookstore because I'll be there, too!; Monday, 27 April, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Hey, Crystal! Thanks for stopping by! That's great -- we'll be a fringe group hanging out in the bookstore.; Monday, 27 April, 2009
Christy Raedeke said...: What did your parents do to raise such oddly creative children? (And, I'm sure you know, I say "oddly creative" with the greatest reverence and respect.) Were you a no-TV household? No sugar? Were they creative? What's the secret?; Tuesday, 28 April, 2009
Anonymous said...: So how is it you are Anne SPOLLEN and your brother is Chris SPOLLEN and you are married?

Loved Shape of water btw and picked it for my free choice book report.

chelsea : )

PS You really are a talented family. I write and draw also.; Tuesday, 28 April, 2009
Adrienne said...: I like your brother's tin scuptures! You are a talented family.
I like books too. Reading on the computer gives me a headache. So far, my kids still like to curl up with a good book.; Tuesday, 28 April, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: Believe me, you won't be the last one in the bookstore. There'll be a whole bunch of us in there, fearful and nervous; you'll be able to spot us right away because of the smell of pulp. And the sound of fluttering pages...

You're right about the medium changing. My students WILL NOT spend any time at all on the written passages in their textbooks, but once they're in front of a computer, boy, watch them go! It really is amazing. My kids do read books, but they're much more comfortable than I am with computer text. (And symbolism leaves them cold; 20 seconds is too long.)

I'll have to go back to your brother's structures: my computer is not allowing me to look at them for some reason.; Wednesday, 29 April, 2009
Katie Anderson said...: Wow. chris's book is so cool!; Thursday, 30 April, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Ahh, Christy, it's a delicate combination of eating blocks of Velveeta cheese, participating in Irish Catholic mysticism, watching old Twilight reruns and having lots of eccentric relatives to study. (Sadly, we have now become those eccentric relatives...)But that's our recipe.

And Chelsea, you should get extra points for finding the author on the Internet! I'm glad you liked the book - you sound creative and I think creative kids like Shape of Water.

My brothers and I (there's another brother knocking around, too) have the same last name because I never changed my name when I got married.
So my kids have my husband's last name -- that's why/how I can write about them pretty freely here; no one ever connects us because they all think of me as Mrs. XYZ (my husband's last name and the kids' last names) --they don't even know I go by Anne Spollen.

Ok, Adrienne, you are invited to my lunatic fringe party as they close the last bookstore. We'll be like those people who strap themselves to the trees to stop the logging companies.

Mary, you're coming to the party as well. I'm serving mojitos and vegan finger foods.

I think we should accept that kids are the Internet generation and go with it. So many of my friends (they're all teachers) keep complaining about kids on computers. It's like the Internet is inherently evil or something. And you are so lucky that your kids read! (paper I mean)

Thanks, Katie! You should go to his house -- it pretty much looks like that everywhere you look. It makes me look like Martha Stewart in comparison (well, pre felon Martha I mean); Thursday, 30 April, 2009

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

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