Tag Archives: reading

October 27, 2015   Kemi Faderin   reading, teachers, YA  
6

First Post!!

Hello DGLM blog readers!! I’m so excited to be the new financials and sub rights assistant here at DGLM, and I look forward to lending my voice to discussions about books, reading, and writing! Because this is my very first post, I thought I would share a little more about myself and tell you all about how I got to be here at DGLM–the road to the industry, you could say.

All of us have that one book that hooked us and refused to let us go. For some of us, it happened early (for a good friend of mine it was Junie B. Jones when she was 8), others find their book much later in life. It doesn’t really matter when, but that one book makes you who you are today. Mine came to me when I was thirteen and was just about to leave the heartache that was middle school. My father had just passed away that previous summer, and I was trying to make sense out of nothing.

In the middle of May, my 8th grade reading teacher assigned the last book of the year: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Instead of shoving the book into my backpack, like I had done all the others, I stared at the cover with surprising interest. The faces of four young boys stared back at me, and each one of them looked so lost- very much like how I felt. I decided to start reading it on the bus ride home, and before I knew it, it was bedtime and I had read past the assigned homework page.

By the end of the week I was finished.

My teacher was very impressed, mostly because I had never shown any interest in reading before. She gave me another book of Hinton’s, That Was Then… This Is Now. I ate that up, too. She continued to give me Hinton’s books to read until the last day of school, when she gave me her copy of Tex to keep. That summer, I found myself wanting to imitate Hinton. I think I wrote about six short stories, none of them any good, but I’ve kept them all as a reminder of the moment I made sense out of nothing. I started going to the public library, and when high school came around, I sometimes skipped lunch to hang out at the school library to read and write.

I’m not sure what it was about The Outsiders that got me. Maybe it was the instant connection I had with Ponyboy, because he, too, had lost a parent (both actually). All I know for a fact is that there was a magical instant that day in May when I had unconsciously chosen my path; somewhere between “Paul Newman… and a ride home.”

So, what about you? What book made a serious reader out of you, and when did you find it?

 

 

September 01, 2015   Amy Bishop   children's books, debate, e-books, millennials, problem solving, reading  
2

Reaching A Younger Generation of Readers

This past spring, a few English majors from my college (including me) got the opportunity to have lunch with M. NourbeSe Philip, a Canadian poet and writer of all genres, and she asked the small group around her, “Do children still read books?” By books, she meant hard copy books, not digital versions. As some diehard English majors are wont to do, the table exploded in reassurances that yes, hard copy books were still very much present and who reads off Kindles/Nooks/iPads anyway? From there, we embarked on a cultural and social discussion about the importance of children holding a book in their hands, why hard copy books will probably always exist., etc.

Four months later, I started babysitting for a charming family who moved to NYC from Hong Kong with two gems of boys. (I’ve honestly never seen better behaved children in my life and they do homework when asked to without much griping. A dream!) My main reason for being there—other than giving their mom a break—is to get them to try and read more. Their mom mentioned with a wry grin that they prefer using the iPad or computer to picking up a book, and do you think you could install a love of reading in them, please?

ipad-ereaders

As a kid who didn’t have access to digital reading, I’m a hard copy book reader myself. But I’ve found myself reading manuscripts on my iPad because those are digital and it’s a matter of convenience. The majority of people I know who are big readers have some kind of digital reading device. And last summer, I had a conversation with an agent at another literary agency about audiobooks and how to reach a wider, more digitally driven audience. “Certain demographics,” he said, “aren’t going to pick up a book. They’re going to be plugged in. How do we reach them?”

I think I’m going to bring my small charges to the Strand and turn them loose. I’m hoping that being surrounded by books will get them excited to choose a book to bring home. (So yeah, it’s a little bit of bribery, but you know. Babysitting is half bribery, to be honest.) Fingers crossed that somehow in my time with them, they start being enchanted by books they can hold and smell and turn pages in.

So that being said: any suggestions for books for active boys around ages 5 and 7 who love soccer, Legos, and have lived in two countries already?

Any predictions on how kids will be reading in ten, fifteen, twenty years?

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