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Save the Books!Cynthia Whitcomb I recently heard that last year Americans bought 23 million fewer books than they did in 2002. This is pretty shocking, but don't fall into despair. I have a plan, so keep reading. First of all, how could such a thing possibly be true? Can we blame Oprah for ditching her book club? Not really, since the steepest rate of decline in readers is occurring in the youngest age groups which has had a 28% drop in reading in the last ten years according to an NEA survey of 17,000 participants through their Reading At Risk study. As writers this is of critical concern to us. Publishers are using these statistics to justify buying fewer books, and taking fewer risks on first time authors. And as readers it is even more alarming that our choices could become limited by a Pop 40 Radio approach to publishing. The hits and nothing but the hits 24-7. Is your blood running cold? Mine too. But fortunately we don't have to sit here and feel helpless and depressed about the situation. I have been contemplating the problem and here is a To Do List of Things We Can Do to Save the Books! 1. Read to your children. Read to your grandchildren. Read to each other. If it means turning off the T. V. or scheduling a Reading Hour after dinner or setting up a special reading chair with a good lamp and a place to put your coffee cup, make space for reading in your day and in your home. 2. Books for Kids. Donate books or money to our Books for Kids program. Last year we gave more than 14,000 books to kids who might never have owned a book of their own without this program. Jerry Isom, the hero of this cause, has taken B4K from a tiny program to a huge and thriving one. You can help make it happen. Bring children's books (new or like new) to the W. W. monthly meetings or to the W. W. office. Or write a check to "Books for Kids" and mail it to the W. W. office at 1:address w:st="on">9045 S. W. Barbur Blvd. , Suite 5A, Portland, OR 1:PostalCode w:st="on">97219. 3. Baby presents. If you're going to a baby shower, skip the Baby Gap and shop at your local book store. There are fabulous hard-page baby books. (Sandra Boynton writes our favorites. Check out "1:address w:st="on">Moo Baa La La La. ") A baby will wear that cute jumper for two months tops. She will love these books for two years. 4. Wedding presents. I went to a wedding last week and for a wedding gift gave the young couple a canvas "Powells Book" bag with a $50 gift card. The note said, "To begin your new family's library." 5. Birthday and Christmas presents. You're getting ahead of me now, right? We have tons of wonderful local authors and authors who come through on tour. You can show up at Annie Bloom's or Powells and buy your loved ones a first edition signed by the author for the price of a regular book. (Or the price of a shirt or tie for that matter. Which would you rather own? )I'm planning to give my friends and family Marc Acito's novel "How I Paid For College" for Christmas this year, signed to each of them by Marc. 6. Talk. Promote books in conversation. The next time you go to lunch with friends, instead of asking for the latest gossip or seen any good movies, ask "What are you reading?" Or "Read any good books lately?" And share about the latest books you've fallen for. Word of mouth is a book's greatest asset. Let's not forget to use it. 7. E-mail. You e-mail everyone jokes. If you love a book, why not email your friends? If a friend of mine tells me that she loved a book, I almost always jot it down and check it out. 8. Vacations. Planning a trip? Plan your reading ahead of time. As you're running around buying sunscreen and gum for the plane, pick some great reads and grab the paperbacks. If you have kids, instead of taking the Gameboy for the plane, let them choose their own books from the children's section and buy them. Start the Vacation Reading habit early and it will be connected in their minds for life. Airport/Books. Travel/Novels. Beaches/Reading. We can do this. It's working already. 9. Family Letters. You know the ones you send at Christmas time? Janie's got a 4. 0. Mike lettered in Lacrosse. Why not add Best Book We Read This Year. Janie loved the new Harry Potter. I loved Bel Canto. Costs nothing. Makes the world a better place. 10. Reading Games. When I had 4 kids between the ages of 8 and 13 (Nick and Molly and two stepsons) we'd make up our own summer reading game and they'd get credit for however many pages they read between June and Sept. I added a small cash incentive for every hundred pages read, and kept a notebook of titles and page counts. And each of the kids read over 5,000 pages in three months. And one of them left first grade barely reading and started second grade reading at 5th grade level. And all of them transitioned from reading as a struggle/school chore to reading as a magic door that opens into another world. It thrilled me to tears when Nicky looked up from his book, flushed with excitement."Mom!You won't believe what Duh-Artigan just did!"I was so happy that in his hands a world of adventure was unfolding, that I didn't even tell him it was actually D'Artagnan. We can make a difference. If we turn our attention and our intention to this situation, we can turn it around. J. K. Rowling has done a wonderful thing. Millions of children, through Harry Potter books, have discovered a door into the magic of reading that they didn't know about before. Whether they read a lot of other non-Harry books or not, it is a door they now will always know is there. They now know how to open it. And throughout their lives they will have that option. To reach out, open a book and step through that door. Thank you, J. K. , for opening that door for Molly. And Alexandre Dumas, for opening it for Nick. And to Louisa May Alcott and J. M. Barrie and Lucy Maud Montgomery and Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum and E. Nesbit and C. S. Lewis for opening their doors for me. If you want to pass this Column around on email, just write me and I'll email it back to you. cwhitcomb1@aol. com. And by the way, I just read a book that I totally loved. It's called "How I Paid For College" by Marc Acito. It's touching and hilarious and a real page turner. . . Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |