Bee Happy

Recently I was subjected to Bee Movie again (my 7-year-old had the remote) and it reminded me of several very interesting articles about bees. The most recent describes the insect's apparent affinity for mathematical word problems. From that article, (in Discover, here: http://tinyurl.com/38vvbgf) you can buzz right over to '20 Things You Didn't Know about Bees,' also from Discover. (Here:  http://tinyurl.com/23sscy)


In both cases, you can bee sure the reading has a point. (Ouch!)

Hyperlocal Media: the good, the bad, and the huh?

Hyperlocal media is a cool new phrase. But it's not new, and I'm not convinced it's all that cool.

Every employer, neighborhood association, or PTA that ever had an internal newsletter - or an employee-centric intranet - has a handle on hyperlocal media.

Enter Patch.com, a newish product from AOL. Patch claims to be something new in journalism; it aims to be a complete online news source for one zip code at a time.

I'll give Patch this: its editors are qualified journalists, and the ones I've read can write, well.

That said, a 'complete' news source needs more than one contributing editor; it needs more than one perspective on what constitutes news and where and how to gather and disseminate it. News should be, by definition, worth reading. Even when you're covering "news" in a single zip code, every dog lost/cat found isn't newsworthy. Of course, many Patch sites have several contributors. Unfortunately, most of them are sending in press releases about rummage sales and library story hours.

Your local Patch may be worth reading, don't get me wrong. And for the record, I love dogs and libraries. (Full disclosure: Cats are OK. I don't do rummage sales.)

But didn't societies create newspapers to see a little further than their own backyards? I may not think I need to know today's Euro or Yen valuation, it would behoove me to think about it occasionally. But I sure love reading my local paper to find out what's happening in neighboring school districts, nearby cities, the state capital - I could expand, but you get the point.

Hyperlocal media surely has a place on the great, big, WorldWideWeb. But even hyperlocal news deserves unbiased, professional treatment. Patch doesn't appear to offer that, but it's still young...we won't know how it will 'grow up' for several years.

SportsInk.com is a site with a similar idea (and some important differences) that's grown quickly in Northeast Ohio. SportsInk covers high school sports in the greater Akron/Canton (OH) area. In that way it's hyperlocal.  It's also all but off the hook when it comes to many of those balanced-reporting type questions. It's not just journalism; it's sports journalism.

So what? How good or bad Hyperlocal Media is allowed to get is largely up to you, the readers. Are you  tuning in to hyperlocal sources? Will you continue? Speak up. (Folks in the business call that UGC. You can call it whatever you want - I call it posting a comment, and yours are most appreciated.)

~~~~What are you reading?~~~~~

Juggling books

I learned how to juggle while I was going through my divorce. I mean that literally; I attended a one-day workshop on juggling.

I am not so adept at juggling books, literally or figuratively. In spite of that, I'm too impatient to wait until I finish one book before I start another. At the moment, I'm somewhere between the covers of:

Your Negro Tour Guide by Kathy Y. Wilson
Just Listen by Mark Goulston
Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan
Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart --> this one is off to a very nice start

What about you? What RU reading?

This Game Has Gone On Long Enough

Reading Terry Pluto's feature on Bernie Kosar, I thought, a dedicated journalist could use this to show how a narrative piece can tell an engaging story without crossing the line into PR. But not me, not today. What struck me was that Kosar, at age 46, has trouble standing up and sometimes struggles to find the words he needs to express himself. 

According to Pluto, Kosar (who played his last professional game in 1996)  "has dealt with the aftermath of concussions suffered while playing. There are some headaches, some brief memory loss, some occasional involuntary twitching." Kosar says, "I struggle sometimes to say exactly what I want when I'm tired." 

Folks, that's called brain damage. The Alabama High School Athletic Association defines concussion as "a type of traumatic brain injury (TBI) caused by a blow or jolt to the head that can range from mild to severe and can disrupt the way the brain normally works."

Look, I know virtually all sports are contact sports. Serious injuries happen on every kind of court and field everyday.  But football is special. Football players experience more brain injuries than athletes in any other sport (according to The American Journal of Sports Medicine). 

The phrase "crush your opponent" was made for football.  

If you want to foster violent behavior, encourage boys and young men to learn that might is right and bigger and meaner is better, by all means, get thyself to the nearest football field and cheer on the home team.

I love sports, but football isn't very sporting, really. 


How many middle-aged men with seriously beat-up bodies and overly-thumped heads do we need to see before we evolve away from smash-mouth football?

Are you proud to say bashing heads is our American pastime? I'm not. I suggest we return the word 'football' to the Brits (and the rest of the world) and until we can come up with something a little more sportsmanlike, play their game. Who knows? Once our brains (and our bodies) are taking less abuse, we might figure out how to make entertaining commercials year round, rather than just during the Superbowl.

-------

Additional reading on concussions in sports

Concussion in High School Sports, CDC, May 25, 2010

http://www.cdc.gov/concussion/headsup/high_school.html

The Impact of Concussions on High School Athletes, Committee on Education & Labor, May 20, 2010 

http://edlabor.house.gov/hearings/2010/05/the-impact-of-concussions-on-h.shtml

Study: Kids Competing Too Soon After Concussions (and second impact syndrome can be fatal) 

Time Magazine, January 2009

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1873131,00.html

Gifts for writers/lexiphiles

Kiss and Tell and Haikubes, both available in Chronicle Book's Fall/Winter catalog, could be perfect gifts for a writer, English teacher, librarian, book club leader, or other word-lover in your life.

Haikubes is a set of 63 word cubes players can roll like dice to dish up ingredients for an original haiku. From the folks behind the Cranium games, the cubes are available in August. US $25

Players of Kiss and Tell compete to tell the sexiest/sultriest/silliest story, according to the story component  cards they are dealt. Available in November; US $19

Futbol fans rejoice!

Check out five titles all about futbol/soccer, reviewed by The Plain Dealer's Karen Long. Sounds like enough good stuff to keep you reading for a couple of months after World Cup 2010. Enjoy!

Got a soccer player at home willing to work to get better? 

Check out Matt Smith's Epic Soccer Training program. Guaranteed results; 8 week money-back offer.

Follow This

Ye gads, books can pile up! Like garbage...which is a messy segue into this brief review of Malena Watrous' If You Follow Me.  To be clear, the book isn't garbage but it contains an extensive thread about gomi, (garbage) and the rules that govern its disposal in Japan.


(Thank you, Sherry, for recommending this book; I enjoyed it!) 


As a writer, I'm impressed with Watrous' first novel, based on her personal experience teaching English to Japanese children. While the story could be just a fish-out-of-water tale, it's really about love, loss, letting go, and learning to deal - while you're also a fish-out-of-water learning how to sort the damn trash, Japanese style. (Aside: I've read that the Japanese system is highly efficient and about as environmentally friendly as garbage systems can be. Of course, to be so requires reams of rules be followed t.o. t.h.e. l.e.t.t.e.r.)


If... isn't your average love story, and, frankly, isn't as much of a story as it is an extended slice of life. To her credit, Watrous chose an immensely interesting slice, and created the characters and setting so brilliantly that they shine, even when action is somewhat slow. 


Though its appeal will likely be lost on most male readers (it's not chick lit, but it is for chicks)  I highly recommend this paperback, light and comfortable enough to tote around and enjoy wherever you find yourself reading this summer. 

-   -   -   -   -   -   -   - If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous
-   -   -   -   -   -   -   - Harper Perennial (c) 2010
-   -   -   -   -   -   -   - US $14.99

Language lovers will appreciate that each of the book's chapters is 'titled' by a Japanese word or phrase. Readers learn sekushii means sexy, taoreru means to fall or collapse, and reizoku means refrigerator - and Watrous can elaborate on all three.

History in a Hurry

Gimme Rewrite Sweetheart and Front Page Girl are good old-fashioned books, meaning you can't judge 'em by their covers.

Doris O'Donnell and Don Bean have lived - and written - enough history to fully appreciate the current state of journalism, and both are honest enough to admit they can't predict the future of the game. When O'Donnell and Bean started writing for Cleveland newspapers, that's what it was called: the newspaper game.

There were three - count 'em, three - daily newspapers in Cleveland when Bean and O'Donnell got started in the game. The players weren't perfect and the papers weren't unbiased, but they had plenty of watchdogs on staff. As Bean ruefully points out, in his reporting era  reporters would measure the depth of the concrete on the street. And if it wasn't what the taxpayers had coming to them, well, somebody would print it.

In her book, O'Donnell describes discrimination in the business, certainly, but she also describes a business with a lot of principles. Regardless of sex, reporters were supposed to consider themselves representatives of the community. While female reporters were expected to wear white gloves and hats and to say "Yes ma'am" and "No sir," they were also tough enough to measure the concrete on the street and find out just what was buried in Sam Sheppard's backyard. (That's a teaser. Read the book.) They were also given an unbelievably long time to get a story. It's unbelievable today, anyway.

Bean and O'Donnell both spoke at today's meeting of Ohio Professional Writers, attended by about a dozen current college students (journalism majors) and many more with hair long gone gray, fellow journalists who were getting their first beats about the time O'Donnell and Bean were retiring.

O'Donnell likes to say journalism is history in a hurry. And while it's hurrying faster than ever before, it's not dead yet. We can hope that among today's budding journalists are some visionaries who see the value in the old, and a way to make it new again.

The plea from this graying writer: HURRY.

Lois Lowry's Having a Ball

I'm embarrassed to admit I've just gotten around to  Lois Lowry's latest, The Birthday Ball, a delightful new middle grade title that's lighthearted but not easily dismissed. As always, Lowry's writing is just right for her audience. Something of a reverse-Cinderella tale, it was published in April by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, The Birthday Ball will appeal very much to girls and not very much to boys, I'm afraid. Amazon offers an interesting Q&A with the author here.

The Birthday Ball had to wait until I finished the non-fiction NurtureShock, chock-full of important info about kids and their development.  http://what2readornot.blogspot.com/2010/05/welcome-shock-makes-great-teacher-gift.html

An obvious hint for hard-pressed shoppers: Lowry's latest would make an ideal gift for a tween girl's birthday.  And a timely tip for parents: NurtureShock makes a nice gift for teachers. 

A Welcome Shock Makes a Great Teacher Gift

NurtureShock, by psychologists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, is some of the best non-fiction I've ever read. Each chapter is essentially a meta-review of current large, long-term studies on childhood development issues like sleep, sibling rivalry, achievement tests, and so on.  It could have been drier than toast. Instead, it's enjoyable reading; the authors and editors deserve lots of credit for bringing it to the mass market. Now let's all just take a few days to read it...

If only! Look, even if you don't plan to read it, consider the title as an excellent end-of-year gift for the terrific teachers in your life. (Or even for the bad ones.) The science is solid and the studies worthy of considerable thought and attention. The authors make the clearest case I've ever heard for pushing back the starting time for high school classes, for one thing. And yet they don't make the case - they simply present the information in clear, interesting prose and the book is so well-organized that it's not overwhelming.

I truly believe that the more school psychologists, teachers, and parents that read this book, the better off we'll all be. As a bonus, if you give NurtureShock to your kids' teachers as a gift, I'm pretty sure you'll make the parent honor roll. ;D 

Restaurant News: Green AND Smart

This week I loved reading about a startup called Earthscraps that has a very practical approach to recycling in the restaurant business. Learn more in the article that appeared in the Kansas City Star on April 20.

The article provides some real food for thought. And what a way to take a bite out of the trash problem! (OK, I'm cut off. No more puns for me today.)
- - - - - -
The Kansas City Star article was highlighted in a brief from the National Restaurant Association, a trade magazine or "industry rag," which I enjoy reading. What trade rags do you read?

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet Provide a Puzzle

Reif Larsen's debut novel, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, is a doozy. After reading quite a few reviews and most of the book, I'm sure I'm not the intended audience, but I'm not sure who is. Penguin spent plenty to produce and promote the book - 370+ pages of it - and ultimately, labeled it for middle grade readers.

But is it for middle grade readers? An unfortunately small number of them, I think.

Larsen's wildly imaginative story introduces 12-year-old genius TS Spivet who is, according to his 16-year-old sister, a total spaz. (And I think she's right.) Just pages into the story, TS faces a dilemma: he's won an award from the Smithsonian, but he can't bring himself to share the news with mom, affectionately (or not?) known as Dr. Claire. TS is the kind of kid who diagrams everything, from beetles to books to his sister shucking corn. IMHO, the corn schucking sort of throws the whole setting into a twisted knot; it takes place in the present day. Anyway, the award dilemma serves as framework for the plot, as TS takes off cross-country (from Divide, Montana to Washington, DC) to accept the award, meeting some interesting characters along the way.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is well written enough to make those characters interesting and the very, very quirky main character endearing, and the story - which occupies a gray area between fantasy and reality - entertaining. In short, it's worth reading. But for whom?

TS might appeal to the same middle school students who liked Artemis Fowl, but the fact that TS is only 12 will preclude some older kids from reading the book. And while the book would certainly appeal to smart MG students (3rd-6th grade) the sepia-toned diagrams in the margins of most pages are not exactly eye candy.

And then there's another little problem: parents. By page 36 the word "shit" appears, and it's spoken quite a few times afterward by both TS's older sister and their father. Also in the first chapter, there's a reference to AIDs. So the question remains, who will read The Selected Works?

Well, as usual, I'm late to the party. TSWTSS was published in 2009 and is now available in paperback. I doubt it has performed as well as Penguin had hoped. But TS is quite a character. If Larsen has been dreaming up and writing down others, we'll hear from him (and perhaps TS?) again.

See a more complete review and additional background on the book and author from The New York Times.

The Tooth Fairy Meets El Raton Perez

A new picture book by Rene Colato Lainez offers a nice twist to the tale of the Tooth Fairy. 

  ~ ~ ~~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~

My little guy has been wiggling a tooth so long, I can't believe it hasn't given up and fallen out yet. (And when it does, he'll need a new hobby.) Surely, at some point - before he goes to college, I hope - the Tooth Fairy will visit our house.

Apparently, the fairy doesn't visit Spain and Latin America; El Raton Perez does. He's a mouse who travels by rocket ship to homes of children who have recently lost  (healthy) teeth. He collects los dientes using his lasso, if necessary. 

Lainez didn't create the resourceful rodent; El Raton Perez's first appearance in literature was in 1894, in a book said to be written for a young King Alfonso XIII. (Alfonso ruled Spain from 1886 to 1931.)

Published by Tricycle Press/Random House, The Tooth Fairy Meets El Raton Perez explains what happens when young Miguelito loses a tooth. El Raton had taken his mama and papa's dientes, and those belonging to Miguelito's abuelos, too. But Miguelito lives in the Tooth Fairy's territory now, and when both El Raton and the ever-vigilant fairy arrive at the same time to collect the tooth, a brief tussle ensues. 

Spoiler alert: they work it out. If you'd like to add a little depth (and a Spanish accent) to the Tooth Fairy tales you tell, I recommend este libro.   

A Little Help with Spring Reading

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the grass hasn't rebounded yet - in other words, it's the perfect time to relax in a lawn chair and read unaccompanied by the roar of lawnmower beasts. Enjoy it; it won't last long. A quick read to make the most of this time: The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Employing three female narrators to describe Mississippi race relations in 1962, Stockett delivers a novel that rings true. The women - two experienced domestics and a recent (white) graduate of Ole Miss, make the story anything but dry. Surprisingly, it's not bitter either,  although it could've been. The paperback isn't available until January (2011) so grab it from your local library and dig in. The grass is growing...

If I Built a Car Revs Imagination with Rhyme

 Need a gift for a boy (or girl) who loves cars and other things that go? I'd recommend this for ages 3-8. It's a nice title for elementary classrooms, too, for use during poetry lessons. 

----------

Every parent knows some of the best conversations with kids happen when you're only making eye contact in the rear-view mirror. (Talk about distracted driving!)

That's the setting for Chris Van Dusen's colorful If I Built a Car. 


The imaginative young passenger-slash-designer in If I... envisions a swimming pool on wheels that flies, cooks for its occupants, and comes complete with a robot (named Robert) who drives for sleepy humans. That's just about everything I'd like to see in my next vehicle...as a jaded adult, of course, it's hard not to envision all the recall notices owners would surely receive. Sigh. Well, let's just hope the next generation of imaginative engineers are real QC-oriented. 

The rhyme works on every page, which is no surprise as the book earned the 2006 E. B. White Read Aloud Award. Van Dusen isn't quite in Mary Ann Hoberman's league when it comes to children's rhyme (but who is, really?) though  I think Car holds up quiet well next to just about all of Jack Prelutsky's stuff. Van Dusen's illustrations are excellent, whimsical yet full of movement. (Making Van Dusen a good choice to illustrate Kate DiCamillo's Mercy Watson series.) 


I'll finish with a tip for the frugal: This is a Scholastic book, meaning you can pick it up at many school book fairs (where a fair portion of the $ goes directly to the school and is usually used to buy more books) or through the class order forms that come home in the kids' backpacks. What's better than a great book at a great price? 



Got a good book-for-a-gift idea to share? Lemme know!

Reader beware

 Have you read about the possible/probable link between sweetened carbonated beverages and pancreatic cancer? Will you?  Probably not.

If you do read about it in a consumer magazine, however, you probably won't recognize it. The study, conducted in Singapore on more than 60,000 people over 14 years, found that those who drink more than two cans of carbonated sweetened beverages (pop) each week are more than 87% more likely to develop pancreatic cancer than those who drink less.

Unfortunately, about all you're likely to see in a glossy monthly or your local newspaper is this: "Researchers in Singapore say there may be a connection between sweetened carbonated beverages and an increased likelihood of pancreatic cancer." Worse, you might see the results twisted into a PR campaign touting the virtues of drinking diet (artificially sweetened) pop.

Readers, please beware.

Gift books cater to everyone

So I'm flipping through Chronicle's various catalogs during lunch, and I found myself giggling out loud throughout the gift book catalog.
You got your basic diaries, your diaries with a twist (one line a day for moms), your diaries for pot smokers (the rather obvious title is How High Am I? A Journal)... no, I'm not kidding... then you've got your stationary sets, flash cards, office stress management boxed sets (including a stress ball wrapped in plastic - but I gotta tell you, that shrink wrap always puts me on edge!) and the Doodle Diet, which is not a book but a "set" of 40 (disposable) placemats so you can doodle, of course. Rather than eat, I presume.

Safe to say if you need to buy a gift for anyone this year, there's a gift book for that - and most are under $20.