I'm an old guy heading for the big 40th birthday in a couple of months. I say old because when I look at the literature that I had access to when I was in third grade I can't believe the information and technology today's third graders can access. The two worlds seem so far apart.
When I was in elementary school, I was exposed to literature in three different ways. Teachers would read to me, I would read it myself, or, I would see the story on Captain Kangaroo. Remember that? Those stories that Captain Kangaroo would stretch out like a soap opera for a week at a time?
The stuff that turned me on was the wild, crazy stuff. Dr. Seuss' stories took my imagination to another dimension. He thought, wrote and illustrated the unimaginable. His stories were fun. His concepts and illustrations took me far beyond where Winnie the Pooh could ever take me.
The realistic literature of my youth was boring and uninspiring. Stories about other little kids somewhere in the real world, dealing with day to day life just like mine, seemed to be a waste of time for me to digest. I didn't like stories that involved real people. To excite me, at least a few of the characters had to have special powers or be from some other planet or some other dimension. These fictional aspects opened vast doors of creativity for my mind.
The three stories that have helped me with my life are STONE SOUP, THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES, and GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. All three basically dealt with "real people," but each gave a weird conceptual view to the lives and perspectives of adults. When I was younger, I didn't understand why no one would tell the Emperor that he was naked. No adults ever admitted to me that they often functioned as though their leaders were always right. In the many different versions of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS that I read, it always blew my mind how people could go to war over such trivial issues. Though I didn't understand it at the time, these stories moved me and prepared me to deal with adulthood. The more a book moved me, the more I wanted to read.
Us-vs-Them: What Children Are Exposed to Today
When I was in elementary school, we had three major television networks and rotary-dial telephones. You are reading this article via CD-ROM. There are 500 television channels that can visit our living rooms. There's the Internet with 15,000 or more web sites. Today's kids are in another dimension of exposure and thought.
Each of today's children (in western cultures anyway) has seen thousands of movies, thousands of situation comedies, and millions of commercials. Many children spend thousands of hours being challenged in the interactive, deductive realm of computer games. Children of today experience all of this yet they are often treated as though they are unsophisticated or naive; adults don't recognize and value such exposure. It's THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES all over again.
Children want to be challenged by media. They want to "feel" when they read. They want to think. They want the story to move quickly like the good commercials they see on TV. They are exposed to a new world, yet we adults tend to judge them by our own limited childhood experiences. Publishers, media specialist, teachers, and parents must give children some respect for their media exposure and level of understanding or children will continue to be uninterested in reading. Tomorrow's books for children must be as challenging and as fun as playing today's computer games.
How I Try to Write and Illustrate for Today's Children
I think that reading is one of the most important things that humans can do. The funny thing is that there are no lines outside of public libraries. Right or wrong, when I write I'm sending messages to kids that hopefully will prepare them for a productive future. Most of the books that my computer "Henry" and I write promote reading and
getting along with other people. But we have to "sell" the concepts in fun and exciting words and pictures. We bring in characters from space that read. We take them to different lands and planets. We create frustrating disasters. We make them feel.
When our first book, THE LAST BOOK came out in 1992, I did all of the illustrations on computer. Many adults hated the pictures. They said the pictures looked like graphics in computer games. Well, guess who loved the book? Kids. Kids around the country were sleeping with THE LAST BOOK.
I want kids to know about life, money, work, education and how to create a happy, fulfilling future. But, I'm not going to preach, I'm going to sell in their language and imagery. We're going to move a story line as fast as a $2,000,000 commercial moves. We're going to have visual graphics that will blow kids away. We're working on interactive CD-ROM versions of our books. This type of reading is fascinating for children.
We're in a new exciting electronic age. It is truly the industrial revolution of our times. As a writer for children, I will use all of the new tools, this new magic, to promote reading. As you look at the books, educators, and other influences that will have access to your children's minds and time, consider if they will be attracted or repulsed by the what they see.
Ask Your Local Library Or Book Store About These Titles By Silly Billy
