I have blogged extensively as to how the iPad changed my perceptions about reading, technology, media consumption, educational opportunities and, well… all kinds of things. I’ve talked about how I was a
skeptic until I held the thing in my hands. And then I bought myself an iPad
within the first 2 weeks it was out and I haven’t looked back since.

As it turns out, the iPad changed my perceptions of being a professional writer as well. (An unexpected insight.) Doing something “different” with my newest book Cinder-Smella thus became
an appealing idea to me once I had written the text.

First, a little history about me as an author. I’ve now published in a variety of ways. I’ve self-published, I’ve published with the big dogs in the industry (Disney, Scholastic, RB Education, Penguin) and I’ve
blogged for two years now (a form of modern-day publishing for sure) at a
fairly voluminous rate.

In essence, after having written Cinder-Smella the opportunity arose for me to invert the traditional publishing paradigm… so I decided to go for it with this book.

I’ll explain.

For hundreds of years books have become manifest through being printed and bound. Nowadays, eBooks offer people the opportunity to not print or bind a physical book but rather publish it in a digital text format.

But in the world of picture books, I saw a clear imbalance between the quality of the final product and user experience. While reading a book like Freakonomics or Pride and Prejudice on a Kindle, Nook,
iPad (or what-not) is somewhat of an apples-to-apples user experience (yes,
they are different but the two reading experiences are somewhat in the same
ballpark) reading a picture book such as Green
Eggs and Ham or Knuffle Bunny in
physical form versus Kindle, Nook, iPad, or so-on, is not an apples-to-apples
experience. Clearly, the printed picture book trumps the eBook experience (in
my opinion).

Of course, nowadays we are seeing an explosion of children’s book apps that allow kids to paint within the book, have the story be read to them via the character’s voice, and interact with the text in all sorts of
enhanced, digital ways. But (again, in my opinion) comparing apps to printed
books is not an apples-to-apples experience either.

(NOTE: I am not weighing in on “which is better”; I am just saying they are not comparable as the user interface differential is too great.)

But what if I crafted Cinder-Smella to be an apples-to-apples picture book experience much like Freakonomics is an apples-to-apples reading experience? This idea intrigued me a lot. 

That’s when I realized that what I was really talking about was writing the first children’s picture book specifically designed for the Kindle.

As it currently stands, e-ink screens are awesome… but they are not all in color and reading a picture book is often a lesser experience on eReading devices. But that’s only because I had not yet seen anyone construct a
picture book with the Kindle (and other eReaders) specifically in mind.

And so, with my publishers at eReadia (a new company formed in the past year that believes – and really gets – the digital reading revolution) we decided to try and break new ground.

Indeed, innovation excites me.

The question became, could we format Cinder-Smella so that grandparents and parents with Kindles and iPads and Nooks and so on could read a picture book with their little ones that didn’t feel like a second rate experience?

Clearly, all writers today are thinking about how eReading is going to impact the way our audiences have access to the works we create. So for me, publishing Cinder-Smella in a
digital format first – and then publishing it in a printed book format second –
struck me as an interesting way to dip my toes in the waters of a quickly
shifting landscape while still working hard to publish and author high quality material.

So yes, Cinder-Smella represents my (perhaps, the) first children’s picture book specifically designed to be a kick-butt reading experience on the Kindle. (Clearly, the iPad offers a reading experience that is downright wicked
– the color Nook, as well – but they are designed to be different machines than
the Kindle.)

So far, the reviews for Cinder-Smella have been great but clearly this project represents a new way of doing things in this new era of publishing. Printed books are coming, but the digital has
arrived first with this title.

And don’t think that I don’t realize that without a printed book, there is a “stigma” attached to the publication. More on the perceptions of printed books versus digital books tomorrow.

So yesterday I blogged about my new Kindle and how much I dig it. And then a friend sent me a link to Project Gutenberg and I realized that, WOW… there is so much INCREDIBLE reading I can do.

And none of it costs an extra dime.

Makes me think of school libraries. Sometimes, there are not enough copies of a book for every kid. Sometimes the title I wanted to teach is checked out by another teacher. Sometimes the school doesn’t even own the title so I could never bring it into my class even though I knew it was a book that could be used to rock the house.

Look, there is an inevitablity to eReaders of some sort finding their way into our schools in a permanent manner – and there is a ton of upside to us speeding up that process on many, many fronts.

And for all those who fear the death of the canon, just click here to see what the top 100 books being downloaded at Project Gutenberg are right now.
Either we English teachers own a heck of a lot of eReaders or someone is reading the classics because they are, well… worth reading.

I’ve said it a thousand times: great books will survive due to their merit… not as a result of ELA teachers shoving them down the throats of kids who are mandated to sit in hard, uncomfortable chairs and be quiet for 55 minutes a day.

Project Gutenberg is showing tales of a demise that hasn’t demised much at all. I digg it!

(BTW, on a side note, at dinner the other night I met a woman in her mid-30′s who was almost done reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Goodness, do I love Dumas. And then we got around to my favorite Frenchy of all time: Victor Hugo. And lookie who is currently number 35 on the list cited above. Niiiice!)

I’ve spent a lot of time on the iPad bandwagon this year. I scored one for myself within the first few weeks they were out and have LOVED the thing – and touted the thing – ever since.

My wife even got me a monogrammed iPad sleeve for the holidays. Cool, cool, cool!

But someone else scored me a Kindle as a gift and you know what, I really, really like the thing. A lot! Though I wouldn’t use it to jump online in any fashion (though it has a limited ability to do so) as a “reading only device” it really rocks.

Better for overall reading than the iPad, that’s for sure.
Now this is not a “me fessing up to eat crow” post because if I were to outfit a school and our nation’s students I’d still go with the iPad hands down, but reading books on the Kindle’s e-ink screen has already won me over. I like it, I will use it, and it will find a place in my “bag”.

Of course, I can’t even tell you how many people have told me how their volume of reading has practically tripled since they scored a Kindle as well. I can now see why. Between it’s usability and its portability, the device does gives voracious readers like me a chance to haul around tons of books in a way that up until a few years ago was simply not possible.

In fact, I remember back in my 20′s when I wanted to disappear for a bit, I headed down with a one way ticket to Central America with just a back pack and a lot of baggage. Emotional baggage, for sure. But physical, too. Jeans, t-shirts, shorts, soap, none of those things really weighed me down. But I HAD to carry books with me. I mean I carried like 10-15 of them at a time. Literally. People who saw what I was schlepping thought I was bonkers – clearly, they accounted for 35-50% of my travel weight – but I swear, those books saved me. And when I’d cross into towns with used book stores, I’d swap my Maugham for some Coelho, grab all the Castaneda I could locate, spend evenings with Dostoevsky and Dante and on and on.

Now I think to myself, “If only I had a Kindle then.”

Yes, the printed book will always have a space in my life – this is not an either/or world in which we now live – but the Kindle, the iPad, the color Nook (I don’t own one, but it looks quite intriguing to me, too) well… these devices are changing the manner in which we interact with and access literary content.

However, the question is, if you change the means of interaction, do you also change the content as well? This is still a “yes and no” type of territory for me.

Anyway, for now, yes, I’ve added another gadget to my reading life… and it’s only made me want to read more and more.
Welcome, Kindle.

I remember seeing Kelly Gallagher do some PD once that really stuck with me. Especially when he demonstrated how prior knowledge and range of vocabulary affects comprehension.

Kelly used the term “Uncle Charlie” in a passage of reading to exemplify a point he was making. Being that I am kind of a baseball guy, I knew that the author of the passage was referring to the pitcher throwing a curveball in the piece.

However, many in the audience were befuddled because they didn’t come to the passage with much prior baseball in their back pockets.

Thus, Kelly’s great point. He posits that extensive reading and exposure to a wide latitude of articles, pieces, ideas and so on broadens people in a great many ways – and without that extensive scope of reading, there is a ceiling over our heads… the less one broadly reads, the lower the ceiling. (BTW, I am paraphrasing… probably badly but that’s why Kelly is inimitable and I tackle more fiction than non.)

That leads me to a very funny email I just received. (It’s below.) Of course, I think it’s really funny because I come to the piece with the background knowledge needed to see the humor… so some of these are really LOL hysterical to me.

However, if you know nothing of history, international culture, or war in the 20th century this might sail right over your head… just as Kelly’s Uncle Charlie reference did to many in the audience that day.

(Side note: Of course, I get sideswiped all the time by references to things which I simply “do not get”. As culture becomes more fragmented, a legit question arises about, “What should we all know?” The coming Common Core Standards are somewhat of a response to this idea. But really, what percentage of your kids would laugh if they read the following… and of the ones that did not laugh, is limited knowledge about pretty important events in the not so distant past the culprit? Or is it that I just have a warped sense of humor and the line about the Germans is only funny is you have a screw loose?)

Terror Levels Alerts Across the Globe

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats, and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved”. Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross”. The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940.

The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the B@stards”. They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 400 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide”. The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender”.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing”. Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides”.

The Germans have increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs”. They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose”.

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels .

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Americans meanwhile, and as usual, are carrying out pre-emptive strikes on all of their allies “just in case”.

Canada doesn’t have any alert levels.

New Zealand has raised its security levels – from “baaa” to “BAAAA”. Due to continuing defense cutbacks, New Zealand has only one more level of escalation, which is “I hope Australia will come and rescue us”.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries” to “She’ll be alright, mate”. Three more escalation levels remain: “Crikey!”, “I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend” and “The barbie is cancelled”. So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

With reading on my iPad, I am really digging it for non-fiction texts because often when I read NF, thoughts bubble up of people with whom I would like to share a thought, idea and so on.

The iPad makes it a one device “bounce over, shoot a quick email, copy and paste passages if I’d like, and then right back to my book” experience.

I love that.( Cause, like I said, when I read NF, I seem to think of other people to whom I’d like to share/connect these ideas to which I am being exposed.)

That’s an unexpected treat for me.

With fiction reading I rarely do that. I am far too immersed in the characters, story, narrative and so on.

NF though is about ideas – and since it taps a different part of my brain, I guess it also taps a different way that I process the information… and want – or do not want – to share it.

More and more ereading and print book reading are becoming apples and oranges.

eReading provides things like video embedded text, hyperlinking, ADD style reading (whereby, I read, check my email, read some more, check a sports score, read some more, buzz in on the news, read some more and so on.)

Print book reading is singular and if I want to multi-task, I need to put my book down.

Fiction doesn’t seem to trigger in me the desire to put my book down to do other things nearly as much as NF does.

Hmm… it’s interesting now that I think about it.

Either way, to remove judgement about either of these two means of reading seems like the best approach to me. One is not necessarily better than the other. (For a skilled reader, that is. For a kid with low literacy skills, learning to concentrate and focus and hold one’s attention for long stretches of time appears very critical to me… I am not willing to throw that skill under the bus for young adults at all! But does it have to be a printed book? Well, it certainly removes the temptation to use the “device” to bounce on over to something else if the device – by that I mean, the book – doesn’t offer any “bounce on over to” function. )

The world is changing right under our eyeballs. Of that there is no doubt.

I subscribe to a lot of magazines. I have for a while. I really like them.

But a few renewal notices came in the mail today and the truth is I am not sure if I am going to renew. And why?

Because, in a way, I am reading more now than ever. And so are our students, I believe. (But does reading the web really count as reading? Lots and lots of people who do reading studies seem reluctant to include web-reading as a valid form when they draw their conclusions… a blog for another day, I guess.)

The truth is, all of my web reading is just blowing to smithereens my magazine reading time… cause book reading has a place as well for me in my life and there are only so many hours in a day.

So, should I renew? It’s not really the money. Magazine deals make subscribing affordable enough. It’s not really that the writing or content isn’t something I enjoy, either. Each magazine to which I subscribe has a “voice” and I like each of them for it.

But I have a stack of unread issues – and I mean a stack – that I want to read but never got around to sitting in my magazine rack.

I mean if I just paused my subscriptions for a year, that would give me time to get all caught up, right?

But if I pause, let’s be honest… do I ever go back?

Yes, I love magazines… but I fear I am about to become a former customer.

A price war has broken out with E-readers. And the most famous E-reader in the bunch, the Amazon Kindle, has just dropped in cost from $259 to $189 in order to keep pace with the fast-growing competition.

You can read more about this price war, as well as the Nook, the Kobo and so on, here.

But the reason this story interests me so much is because people are already starting to talk about the idea that if a customer buys enough content for one of these machines, they might just give the physical E-reading device away to them free. Or at least at a very, very low cost.

Think about computer printers. It’s an akin business model being talked about right now. The cost of the printer isn’t making the big bucks for these companies; it’s the fact that they can milk us all and charge us an arm and a leg for all the subsequent ink we buy once we own them… and that’s what keeps the real cash flowing into their coffers.

Might academic publishers – especially the textbook companies – soon begin to play this game with our schools?

You know they have to be thinking right now about selling a package whereby their textbooks are digitally pre-loaded on “free” E-Readers which then become an all-in-one purchase for a school. ELA, Science, History, Math… is the day not coming where the big companies make the pitch that they
can transform your school into a 21st century institution by giving you a free E-reader if only you buy ALL of their curricular content.

It would be green.

It would be digital.

It would cover all core academic areas.

It would turn heads.

Of course with some of these companies it’s still going to be like putting lipstick on a pig. I mean watered-down, sanitized, one-size-fits-all curriculum is wrong-headed and ineffective no matter how you package (or re-package) it. And of course, by not providing a device that can access the internet, you are leaving a host of amazing learning opportunities on the table for teachers and students.

Yet once you own the “free” device, they can then continue to sell you their new/extra-curricula/latest-greatest thing (think “ink”). After all, once they plant this free E-reader flag in our schools, it’ll be a decade before anyone re-buys new digital reading devices anyway. (Counting on the sloth of our schools has got to be one of their business strategies. Heck, I am sure behind closed doors, they factor it in now.)

Perhaps, if they give it to you “free” they will even program these machines to only read proprietary material. Sure, it’s an E-reader, but maybe it will be an E-reader that only reads “approved” content.

Good selling point to our schools, right? “Protect your kids from the dangers of the world wide web by controlling what they intellectually digest… by Ronco!”

And only Ronco.

Trust Ronco to teach you about the world!

Then again, if they do make these machines web accessible, then why would schools need to buy all the excess content these big, behemoth companies continually provide? Why couldn’t we just buy chapter 3, 6 & 11 in Math, Chapters 2, 4 & 7 in science, chapters 1-4 in history and then go open source/supplementation style with the rest of the curriculum? After all, so much excellent FREE content is available on the web that it’s a literal shame more schools do not have the tools to use it. Plus, many, many educational publishing companies have been over-selling us materials for years (they bloat their books to charge more, I am sure of it), yet we now live in the age of iTunes whereby if I do not want to buy the whole album, I don’t have to… I can just buy the song I want.

Can’t I also just buy the song I want when it comes to education?

Isn’t that some sort of rule in capitalism and free market activity?

Ultimately, this seems to lead me back to the iPad and all of its amazing capabilities. When I look at tablet computing, E-readers already appear obsolete to me. Sure, they may survive in a niche marketplace (I do like the way they read; e-ink is cool and easy on the eyes) but it appears to me
that a swan song is already getting ready to be played.

In the article I cited, they called it a “race to the bottom”.

Kindle, we hardly knew ya.

All in all, I have no idea how all of this is going to shake out… but if you think the past 5 years was characterized by upheaval and unique possibilities (think about the invention of YouTube, the iPhone and Twitter) just wait to see what happens in the next five years.

Buckle up, Folks – one thing for sure is that the inevitable shift to schools that use more digital ink and less printed paper ain’t gonna be smooth.

Why I wrote The Hoopster

Let’s be honest. To a certain extent, we are raising a generation of non-readers. I hate to sound like an old coot but these kids today with their computers, their iPods, their cell phones and their video games, they are just not reading as much as they used to anymore. It’s as if Guttenberg never lived.

And the consequences are dire.

(Okay, I’ll concede that kids today are Screen-Agers. Yes, they are reading their screens all the time in a literal way but it’s not the type of reading that promotes critical thinking. It’s like eating Doritos for dinner. Yes, it’s food but it most certainly lacks vital nutrition and if salty chips are all you eat your health is most assuredly going to suffer.)

Goodness, I don’t even know who I’d be if I hadn’t read some of the books that I have in my life. And many adults, I realize, feel exactly same way.

Quick activity: List your top two or three favorite books of all time… and then X them out, as if you had never read them. Ask yourself, who would you be if you had never read these works? For me I can say without reservation that I’d be much worse off as a human being without these books in my life. From Dr. Seuss to Victor Hugo to the Bible to Walter Dean Meyers, I mean it’s almost unimaginable who I’d be without these texts.

This realization is what led me to write The Hoopster. Knowing how immense the positive impact of one simple book could be to the lives of my students – and knowing how valuable it is in this day and age to be literate and be a reader – well, that’s what got my juices going. I wanted my students to read books.

And I wanted to be the one to write “that book”, the one that would turn them on to reading and make them realize, “This is cool!”.

Heck, it had always been a secret dream of mine to become an author, a dream that I had somehow put on hold as I got older, took a job, got married, blah, blah, blah.

It was at this juncture of my life that I realized I was being confronted by my own hypocrisy.

I mean I spend my whole life telling people to go after their dreams, to reach for the stars, to not let anything hold them back from striving for the brass ring and yet here I was with a dream of my own and I wasn’t going to go for it? The irony was just too thick and I knew I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t at least made an effort.

So I set to work.

I outlined. I plumbed the depths of character. But really, my whole aim was to simply gain the approval of teenage boys – particularly teenage boys of color, the hardest to reach demographic of all. (Hey, why no shoot for the moon, right?) I mean these were the kids sitting in the chairs of my classroom anyway. I wasn’t writing for the critics. I was writing for a much tougher crowd. To gain the approval of multicultural middle and high school boys.

Now that would be the motherload!

Action. Suspense. Humor. Heart. I flexed every literary muscle I could. And then I handed my novel to Dontae.

“Yo Dontae, Man,” I said in a sort of California-causal way. “I wrote this book for folks like you and your boys. Would you mind checkin’ it out?”

I handed him the manuscript.

“Yeah, sure I’ll check it out, Mr. Alan,” he replied.

A day passed. Nothing.

Two days passed. Nothing.

A week went by.

You know how when you are waiting to hear feedback from someone about something and you start to get all itchy? Let’s just say it felt like I was wearing a wool sweater knit by a fat aunt with bad teeth and lots of caked-on make-up. At day 10, I cornered Dontae in the hall. (Obviously, maturity and patience are not my greatest strengths.)

“Yo Dude,” I said trying not to sound like an addict fiending for a fix. “Remember that book I gave you? Did you even read the first page?”

Dontae looked up at me with innocent teenage eyes, the kind of eyes that always remind teachers why working with kids is the most fulfilling type of job on the planet there is.

“Aw yeah, Mr. Alan,” Dontae said in a relaxed tone of voice. “I read it in two days. And then I gave it to Richard and he read it and gave it to Joel. I hope that’s cool.”

I paused, stunned.

Oh my goodness. They’re bootlegging my book around the school.

“Uh, yeah, Dontae, that’s cool,” I said, unsure of how to respond.

“Yo, when you gonna write another, Mr. Alan. Beats that boring shi… I mean stuff in the library.”

“Uh, I’ll get back to you, Dontae.”

And that’s how The Hoopster was born.