LM_NET: Library Media Networking
Dear Colleagues,
It has lately occurred to me that many of the publishers of
children's books are "dumbing down" (that's not really the phrase I'm
looking for-maybe you can come up with a better term) new books for kids of
the MTV/Sesame Street/fast food/hip-hop generation. All the majority of my
middle school students want to read are skinny books, hopefully with
pictures. They are upset that as they get older, books get thicker and
have less pictures, especially fiction.
So what are a lot of publishers doing? They are taking material
that used to appear in one or two books and spreading it out into half a
dozen. For example, I just got sets of sports books on soccer, baseball,
football, and basketball. There are six slim large print, colorful books
for each sport spreading the material into segments like (football)
"rules", "equipment", "passing","kicking", "offense", and "defense". A few
years ago, all of this material would have been put into just one or
possibly two volumes. Moreover, with the cost of books today, one alone
would have been about $16, but now I purchased 6 at $16 each. So the
publishers make lots more money, too. And my budget is strained more. I
would rather purchase a few copies of one good football book. Spreading a
topic out like this makes it difficult for me to purchase more than one
copy of a set.
There are many more instances like this where a topic is being
broken down into several smaller segments and printed as sets in everything
from crafts to music to animals to looking at an ethnic-American culture.
I find myself buying them because the kids are very attracted to their
bright colorful layouts and the fact that they are quick reads. In every
instance the same attractive layouts could have been consolidated into
fewer volumes at less cost for the total subject. I think most are
beautiful myself and enjoy browsing through them. However, I also see that
these are offering kids quick picture/text bites like music videos and
Sesame Street. Many have short segments in different fonts or boxes setting
them apart all over a page with accompanying brightly colored or
photographed illustrations. You don't read a sequentially flowing text in
many of these new books. I didn't say this is necessarily wrong, just
different from past publishing styles. The bindings are closer to the old
Golden Book bindings that don't last as long as books we used to purchase.
All this use of fancier printing, layouts and color have lent themselves to
the increasing cost of books while quality binding goes out the window.
Are we lowering our expectations to fit the students and motivate
them to read PLEASE!! rather than trying something to bring them to a
higher level closer to what we experienced as readers several years ago?
I know I'm buying these books to get more 7th and 8th graders to actually
take a book out of the library for a change. I have no trouble getting most
of the 5th and 6th graders to borrow books, but they, too, want easier
books for their book reports and research projects. These same kids all
want to go immediately to the computers to use the CD ROM encyclopedias as
soon as they receive any research assignment, so they can find their topic
quickly and print it out without even really reading it. They then
extrapolate sentences from it to create reports quickly, and some have even
turned these papers in right off the computer and tried to get away with
this being their report.
Something happens around 7th or 8th grade, and students' raging
hormones and peer pressure tell them to avoid reading like the plague
unless they absolutely have to. Suddenly many have a "social life" and
reading has no place in it. But these same students have all seen every
major action or horror movie as soon as it's out and watch lots of
television. Is it because the students I have worked with most of my life
are from minority groups in an urban, low economic, environment?
What are your thoughts on what I have presented? Do you agree?
Disagree? Is it hopeless? If we continue in this manner, what will our
collections be like an another 5 years? Student reading habits?
Publishers formats and pricing.
Sandy P. in Philly
"It's got to be the going not the gettin' there that's good." Harry Chapin
in song "Take the Greyhound"
"But then, you could go both ways!" Scarecrow in movie "The Wizard of Oz"
Sandy Pomerantz, Librarian
Central East Middle School
236 E. Wyoming Ave.
Phila., PA 19120
(215) 456-3037
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