Joanna Murphy

My son doesn't read books on his own and I've been pondering this. I'm just wondering if
anyone else's kids have had a similar pattern and what has happened in the long run. I
have no attachment to whether he reads books or not, except that it's something that
brings so much enjoyment to my life--I don't judge books as inherently better than other
media, for example, just another option amongst many--but an option consistently not
chosen, so I'm just curiously pondering that.

As background, DS (almost 13) began homeschooling at 7.5. We were very loose and
exploring unschooling, and then really went with it by the time he was about 9. Sometime
around there he took off with independent reading and blazed through 2 or 3 series like
The Magic Treehouse books. Then he read all of the Harry Potter books straight through.
That was by about 10. He hasn't really picked up a book for pleasure since then. He gave
a few a try after HP but nothing compared for him, so he lost interest. He, of course,
reads all the time for information. I have no "concerns" about reading--it's just more of a
curiosity about the lack of interest in all the fantastic stories that are out there--it seems
like there is just a profusion of good stories that fall in line with many of his interests.

When I was a kid I read all the time. My mother would let me stay home from school to
finish books because I'd become so wrapped up--I still do, and read all the time. But
books are what we had. So what I'm wondering is has other media filled that need? There
are such great stories available now in movies and t.v.--we've started renting the seasons
of good tv series that we hadn't seen before. He's loving MacGuyver! And I love t.v.--we
all do--and movies, and... I've been thinking lately about how people just love stories,
and t.v./movies gives stories life in a different way than books. They are all different,
though. Watching t.v. and movies doesn't make me any less interested in a good book,
because the experience is different.

Anyway, I just wanted to toss this out there and see if others had anything to say. Thank
you, Joanna

Joyce Fetteroll

On Apr 18, 2008, at 1:21 PM, Joanna Murphy wrote:

> My son doesn't read books on his own and I've been pondering this.
> I'm just wondering if
> anyone else's kids have had a similar pattern and what has happened
> in the long run

First, the most helpful thing anyone can do for their kids is accept
that they're all different. Why *should* everyone like to read? Not
everyone likes to listen to music. Not everyone even likes ice cream!

Also the preteen years are a time of transition from kid interests to
more adult interests. They often do flounder around looking for the
right something. Though I suspect what really happens is they get old
enough to appreciate what's available in what interests them. It's an
awkward age and hard for them to find the right mix until they grow
into the mix that's available.

And I think, as you say, we're generally drawn to stories. Stories
have probably existed since there were fires to sit around in the
evening ;-) But, even for those parents who are in their 30s, while
TV filled a niche in story telling when we were kids, you were at the
mercy of the networks of what story you could experience and when. If
you wanted a fantasy wednesday night, the only choices were books
with a huge variety to choose from.

Now, of course, there's an explosion in story media and availability.
TiVo to watch whenever you want, series to buy, video games, books on
tape, even internet dramas :-) And they're becoming more
sophisticated. Though visual media are different from novels -- where
you can get inside a character's head -- the story telling has
improved dramatically just in the last 2 decades. I remember a post
on a blog that pointed out how simple the stories were -- Twilight
Zone not withstanding ;-) -- in weekly series up until the recent
decades. The characters were exactly the same from week to week. The
only time there were changes were when actors left or a real-life
pregnancy had to be written in ;-) And usually the changes didn't
work well because the series were set up to exist in a world where
nothing much changed.

When you think about it, only "stupid" housewives were trusted with
complex storylines in their soaps ;-) And you can easily pick out the
shows where the producers were saying "Trust us, people aren't as
mind numbed as you think!" M*A*S*H*, Dallas (or was there a "night
time soap" before that?), Hill Street Blues ...

Slowly it's shifted to where we *expect* the characters and lives and
worlds in most TV shows to change. We're trusted to keep track of
multiple ongoing story lines. While shows may not generally have
reached the level of nuanced storytelling of many of the literary
classics, they're certainly as complex as Gone With the Wind. :-)

I remember watching some Japanese imported cartoons back when I was a
kid (Kimba, Speed Racer, Star Blazers with no idea they came from
Japan) and feeling there was something special about them. I can look
back now and see that the writers trusted me to be able to follow an
ongoing story line (even if they were dumbed down by the American
producers for the stupid American kids ;-) And, goodness, what the
Japanese trust *they're* kids to handle is phenomenal: 300+ Pokemon,
hugely complex storylines starting with Dragonball and now the too-
complex-for-adults Naruto and Bleach.

While visual storytelling may not be for everyone, I suspect it's
more natural than following a story reading. But even so, have there
ever been so many books available?

Joyce

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Sandra Dodd

-=-My son doesn't read books on his own and I've been pondering this.
I'm just wondering if
anyone else's kids have had a similar pattern and what has happened
in the long run. I
have no attachment to whether he reads books or not, except that it's
something that
brings so much enjoyment to my life-=-

We saw that at our house, too. One of the reasons I liked Keith
better than the guy before him was that guy-before didn't read, and
Keith did. (I was reminded of that when yesterday I found my notes
from the time I was deciding between before-and-Keith. I read them
twice, tore them up and burned them in the hot tub stove. Some
things shouldn't be read by people's children.)

I wrote this, a while back, when I had an epiphany about why I had
valued books (and band) so much, and why my kids don't need to:

http://sandradodd.com/bookandsax

For me they were escape, privacy, the best way to learn.

My kids have freedom and privacy and learning.

I know kids with all that who still read lots of books, and I knew
kids who could've used those things and didn't read books. There are
other factors. But this seems the big one with my kids.

Holly wants to read Snow Angels (we saw the movie) and it's on
order. She was talking about Stephen King as an example of author-
within-an-author, which I'm going to add to my art-within-art page
along with Kurt Vonnegut/Kilgore Trout.

And now I'm rambling, but all those rambles are samples and examples
of why my kids don't need to have something to do while they're
forced to sit in one place for an hour or six.

Sandra

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Sandra Dodd

-=-Dallas (or was there a "night
time soap" before that?)-=-

Peyton Place

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

graberamy

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> -=-Dallas (or was there a "night
> time soap" before that?)-=-
>
> Peyton Place
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

For some reason I was thinking of SOAP with Billy Crystal?? My dad
and I loved watching that show! I forgot all about that until just
now <bwg>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_(TV_series)

amy g
iowa

Joyce Fetteroll

> > Peyton Place
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
> For some reason I was thinking of SOAP with Billy Crystal?? My dad
> and I loved watching that show! I forgot all about that until just
> now <bwg>


Ah, yes, I did remember those! :-) Soap was the right era (77-81).
Peyton Place was more like the Vikings showing it could be done and
Dallas, et al, were Columbus <g>

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera

The primetime serial

Primetime serials were just as popular as those in daytime. The first
real prime time soap opera was ABC's Peyton Place (1964-1969), based
in part on the original 1957 movie (which was itself taken from the
1956 novel). The popularity of Peyton Place prompted rival network
CBS to spin off popular As the World Turns character Lisa Miller
Grimaldi into her own evening soap opera entitled Our Private World
(originally titled "The Woman Lisa" in its planning stages) in 1965.
Our Private World ended in the fall and the character of Lisa
returned to As The World Turns.

The structure of the Peyton Place with its episodic plots and long-
running story arcs would set the mold for the prime time serials of
the 1980s when the format reached its pinnacle.

The successful prime time serials of the 1980s included Dallas,
Dynasty, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest. These shows frequently dealt
with wealthy families and their personal and big-business travails.
Common characteristics were sumptuous sets and costumes, the presence
of at least one glamorous bitch-figure in the cast of characters, and
spectacular disaster cliffhanger situations. Unlike daytime serials
which are shot on video in a studio using the multicamera setup,
these evening series were shot on film using a single camera setup
and featured much location-shot footage, often in picturesque
locales. Dallas, its spin-off Knots Landing, and Falcon Crest all
initially featured episodes with self-contained stories and specific
guest stars who appeared in just that episode. Each story would be
completely resolved by the end of the episode and there were no end-
of-episode cliffhangers. After the first couple of seasons all three
shows changed their story format to that of a pure soap opera with
interwoven ongoing narratives that ran over several episodes. Dynasty
featured this format throughout its run.

The soap opera's distinctive open plot structure and complex
continuity also began to be increasingly incorporated into major
American prime time television programs. The first significant drama
series to do this was Hill Street Blues. This series, produced by
Steven Bochco, featured many elements borrowed from soap operas such
as an ensemble cast, multi-episode storylines and extensive character
development over the course of the series. It and the later Cagney &
Lacey overlaid the police series formula with ongoing narratives
exploring the personal lives and interpersonal relationships of the
regular characters.[8] The success of these series prompted other
drama series and situation comedy shows such as St. Elsewhere to
incorporate soap opera style stories and story structure to varying
degrees. The legacy continues in more recent series such as The West
Wing and Friends.

The prime time soap operas and drama series of the 1990s, such as
Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and Dawson's Creek, focused more
on younger characters. In the 2000s, ABC began to revitalize the
primetime soap opera format by premiering shows such as Alias,
Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and Ugly Betty. These shows
managed to appeal to wide audiences not only because of their high
melodrama but also because of the humor injected into the scripts and
plot lines. In the fall of 2007, many new primetime soaps premiered
on U.S. television such as Dirty Sexy Money.

Joyce

Sandra Dodd

Charles Dickens did primetime serials. Reading Charles Dickens
novels is the equivalent of watching a full season of Lost or Boston
Legal all at once, having not seen them as they came out.

He wrote sections at a time and they were published in the paper, and
he got feedback as they went, as TV producers and writers do. Part
of the reason they're used in U.S. schools (or were for a long time)
is that they painted a critical picture of England (Americans were
still in the mood for that, mid-19th century, when there were still
people living who had been involved in the American revolution), and
in the 20th century, because they were so descriptive of 19th century
life that schools got a two-for-one from them (more than two) in that
kids learned history and had lots of important ideas to ponder, and
could feel very grateful they weren't growing up like Oliver Twist or
Nicholas Nickleby.

Now they look like classically bound novels and that's "literature,"
but when they were new, most of his books were serialized in the
popular media. He would have been doing TV and movies had there been
any.

Sandra

Bea

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> Charles Dickens did primetime serials. Reading Charles Dickens
> novels is the equivalent of watching a full season of Lost or Boston
> Legal all at once, having not seen them as they came out.
>


I was going to say the same thing about The 3 Musketeers (and its 2
sequels), by Alexandre Dumas, père. These are studied in school as
classics, but I'm sure at the time they were written they were "just"
entertainment (and, like Dicken's novels, they were first published as
a series in a newspaper.)



Bea

Ed Wendell

Then came radio series such as the Lone Ranger? Families would gather around the radio and listen to stories. Though those were probably more like a series with each episode had a beginning and an ending. Some did have "To be continued...." at the end and that particular story line would be continued the next time.

Many of the comic books from my childhood (in the 60's) were serial stories. I guess they still are. Zachariah likes the old war ones we find at the comic shops - and some Star Wars.

The Japanese Manga books Zachariah loves are serial in nature - you have to have the series to have the whole story - One set he has is 30 something books. The shortest series he has is about 12 books. I'm not talking about books where the main characters are the same and each book is it's own story, but a true serial.

I loved the Little House On The Prairie series when I was about 8 - the whole series of books is one long story starting before the Little House On The Prairie book and extending far beyond that book too. I guess each time the family moved was kind of like an ending to that book - then she wrote about the next place they lived or the next stage of her life. One book deals with her husband's childhood.

Oh and some of the comics in our news paper are often serial in nature - the story never really ends it just keeps going.

Lisa W



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Robin Bentley

In the U.K., "Coronation Street" began in 1960 as a half-hour
primetime soap opera/serial. It's still running!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Street

I watch the Sunday morning broadcast on CBC...<g>.

Robin B.

On Apr 19, 2008, at 1:57 AM, Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

>>> Peyton Place
>>>
>>> For some reason I was thinking of SOAP with Billy Crystal?? My dad
>> and I loved watching that show! I forgot all about that until just
>> now <bwg>
>
>
> Ah, yes, I did remember those! :-) Soap was the right era (77-81).
> Peyton Place was more like the Vikings showing it could be done and
> Dallas, et al, were Columbus <g>

Rebecca Boxwell

Stanford University did a "community reading project" based around
Dickens. You could sign up to participate and they would send you paper
copies in serial fashion. That part of the project is over, but you can
still download the materials in PDF format.
http://dickens.stanford.edu/

I believe that they are getting ready to do the same thing with
Sherlock Holmes.

--Rebecca






On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:27:50 -0600, "Sandra Dodd"
<Sandra@...> said:
> Charles Dickens did primetime serials. Reading Charles Dickens
> novels is the equivalent of watching a full season of Lost or Boston
> Legal all at once, having not seen them as they came out.
>
> He wrote sections at a time and they were published in the paper, and
> he got feedback as they went, as TV producers and writers do. Part
> of the reason they're used in U.S. schools (or were for a long time)
> is that they painted a critical picture of England (Americans were
> still in the mood for that, mid-19th century, when there were still
> people living who had been involved in the American revolution), and
> in the 20th century, because they were so descriptive of 19th century
> life that schools got a two-for-one from them (more than two) in that
> kids learned history and had lots of important ideas to ponder, and
> could feel very grateful they weren't growing up like Oliver Twist or
> Nicholas Nickleby.
>
> Now they look like classically bound novels and that's "literature,"
> but when they were new, most of his books were serialized in the
> popular media. He would have been doing TV and movies had there been
> any.
>
> Sandra

Sandra Dodd

-=-Stanford University did a "community reading project" based around
Dickens. You could sign up to participate and they would send you paper
copies in serial fashion. That part of the project is over, but you can
still download the materials in PDF format.
http://dickens.stanford.edu/

I believe that they are getting ready to do the same thing with
Sherlock Holmes.-=-



I added this and Bea's note about The Three Musketeers to my book
worship page here:

http://sandradodd.com/bookworship



I'm pretty sure I read that The Hobbit was serialized, albeit
privately, when it was new. That Tolkien was sending it to his sons
who were young adults? Anyone know?



Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

m_aduhene

>
> In the U.K., "Coronation Street" began in 1960 as a half-hour
> primetime soap opera/serial. It's still running!
>

Just had to reply but is not on topic. Just had to say glad u enjoy
coronation street or "corry" as it's called. My mum and dad live 15
miles from manchester where "corry" is filmed and my mum watches
avidly and is a big corry fan. my husband met audrey roberts in
manchester just walking down the street and for him that was like
bumping into any one of the hollywood superstars.
just had to share.
blessings
michelle
ps.(he's not impressed by my comment, but he was secretly pleased he
met her)
blessings

Bob Collier

--- In [email protected], "Joanna Murphy" <ridingmom@...>
wrote:
>
> My son doesn't read books on his own and I've been pondering this.
I'm just wondering if
> anyone else's kids have had a similar pattern and what has happened
in the long run. I
> have no attachment to whether he reads books or not, except that
it's something that
> brings so much enjoyment to my life--I don't judge books as
inherently better than other
> media, for example, just another option amongst many--but an option
consistently not
> chosen, so I'm just curiously pondering that.
>
>


My son doesn't read books at all. I'm a voracious book reader and
always have at least two or three on the go.

At first, I was horrified when I realised my son's two years at school
had put him off reading books, seemingly for life, but now I don't
care one little bit. :)

Bob

Joyce Fetteroll

On Apr 19, 2008, at 11:02 AM, Ed Wendell wrote:
> Then came radio series such as the Lone Ranger? Families would
> gather around the radio and listen to stories. Though those were
> probably more like a series with each episode had a beginning and
> an ending.


There were also the short movie serials. Serials -- as in continuing
characters -- were popular in the silent film era.

The ones I remember hearing about, probably from relatives and
elsewhere, were the Saturday film serials with the cliffhanger
endings that started in the 30's up to television, aimed at kids.
They were part of an entire afternoon of film: cartoons, newsreels,
film serials and a feature film. The stories in the film serials
would continue for weeks (15 it says below was typical). I know about
Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers just from reading about the early days
of science fiction but I guess the most popular were Westerns. Those
Saturday matinees were also the source of the great Bugs Bunny
cartoons :-) (And loads of other cartoons from that era.)

So the audience for continuing stories was there, and an
understanding that continuing stories could be popular, but, for
whatever reason, the TV studios didn't trust that people would (or
could) come back for a continuing story line. Or didn't trust that
the audience would join in on a show with a continuing story line.
And it wasn't until recently that the studios trusted more complex
stories would actually hold an audience. Or, perhaps, with cable and
all the choices, they found that to hold an audience, they had to
create a need to come back or people wouldn't show up week after week.

It's funny, I saw Hill Street Blues when it first aired and thought
"Wow!" about the interwoven stories, but now it's "eh", pretty
standard. ;-) (But they were pioneers! :-) And now, when I rewatch
Buffy, though each episode is pretty self contained, the ones that
were outside of the ongoing story arc tend to feel flat. And when I
was growing up, that's the only kind of TV story telling we had! No
arcs at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_%28film%29

> Serials, more specifically known as Movie serials or Film serials,
> were short subjects originally shown in theaters in conjunction
> with a feature film. Known as "chapter plays," they were extended
> motion pictures broken into a number of segments called "chapters"
> or "episodes." Each chapter (a typical serial usually had as many
> as 15 of them) would be screened at the same theater for one week.
> The serial would end with a cliffhanger, as the hero and heroine
> would find themselves in the latest perilous situation from which
> there could be no escape. The audience would have to return the
> next week (and pay admission) to find out how the hero and heroine
> would escape and battle the villain once again. Serials were
> especially popular with children, and for many youths in the first
> half of the 20th century, a typical Saturday at the movies included
> a chapter of at least one serial, along with animated cartoons,
> newsreels, and two feature films.
>
> Most serials were Westerns, since those were the least expensive to
> film. Besides Westerns, though, there were films covering many
> genres, including crime fiction, espionage, comic book or comic
> strip characters, science fiction, and jungle adventures. Although
> most serials were filmed economically, some were made at
> significant expense. The Flash Gordon serial and its sequels, for
> instance, were major productions in their times.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliffhanger

> The idea of ending a tale at a point where the audience is left in
> suspense as to its conclusion (which is then given at another time)
> has been a staple part of storytelling for almost as long as the
> idea of stories have existed. It is a central theme and framing
> device of the collection of stories known as the One Thousand And
> One Nights, wherein the queen Scheherazade, who is facing a morning
> execution on the orders of her husband King Shahryar, devises the
> solution of telling him a story but leaving it at a cliffhanger,
> thus forcing the king to postpone her execution in order to hear
> the rest of the tale.
>
> The term 'cliffhanger' is considered to have originated with Thomas
> Hardy's serial novel "A Pair of Blue Eyes" in 1873. At the time
> newspapers published novels in a serial format with one chapter
> appearing every month. In order to ensure continued interest in the
> story many authors employed different authorial techniques; in the
> aforementioned novel Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists,
> Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes
> of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions
> of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger
> of Victorian prose.
>
> Once Hardy created it, all serial writers used the cliff-hanger
> even though Trollope felt that the use of suspense violated "all
> proper confidence between the author and his reader." Basically,
> the reader would expect "delightful horrors" only to feel betrayed
> with a much less exciting ending. Despite the rhetorical distaste
> all serial authors used the cliffhanger and Wilkie Collins is
> famous for saying about the technique: "Make 'em cry, make 'em
> laugh, make 'em wait – exactly in that order."
>
> Collins is famous for the Sensation Novel which heavily relied upon
> the cliffhanger. Some examples of his endings include:
>
> "The next witnesses called were witnesses concerned with the
> question that now followed--the obscure and terrible question: Who
> Poisoned Her? (The Law and the Lady) "Why are we to stop her, sir?
> What has she done?" "Done! She has escaped from my Asylum. Don't
> forget; a woman in white. Drive on." (The Woman in White) "You can
> marry me privately today," she answered. "Listen--and I will tell
> you how!" (Man and Wife)"
>
> This anticipation and conversation inducing authorial technique
> would often be very contrived as the only purpose was to maintain
> interest in the monthly serial. Therefore, these were regularly
> removed from the plot when the serial was published as a full novel.
>
> The cliff-hanger was converted into film and is best known from the
> very popular silent film series The Perils of Pauline (1914), shown
> in weekly instalments and featuring Pearl White as the title
> character, a perpetual damsel in distress who was menaced by
> assorted villains, with each instalment ending with her placed in a
> situation that looked sure to result in her imminent death – to
> escape at the beginning of the next instalment only to get into
> fresh danger at its end. Specifically, an episode filmed around the
> New Jersey Palisades ended with her literally left hanging over a
> cliff and seeming about to fall.

Joyce

Margaret

I really enjoy reading manga, manhwa (like manga but from Korea, not Japan),
anime and watching dramas (serial tv shows) in Korean and Japanese. My
younger brother got me started watching manga and reading anime and it is
one of my favorite things to do.

In terms of manga and manhwa, there are stories that are one volume and even
short stories, but most stories I've read are long. They typically have a
chapter published in a weekly (or monthly) magazine with comics. Later on
you can buy the bound volumes with just one story (the way you typically buy
them here), but that is not how it is originally published. Some stories
end suddenly because the serialization is cancelled and those can have rapid
endings that aren't that great, and some are really successful and seem to
stall and drag it out a little too long with what seem like filler. Those
can be some of the disadvantages of serialization, but it probably also
means that it is easier for the publisher to try out a new author on the
public. Most of the stories are a great length, but I think that it is
interesting to see how serialization can make Lots of GREAT stories of all
different lengths out there and I really enjoy them.

The Japanese and Korean TV shows that I watch are serial stories. Not all
of their shows are like this, but I think a lot of the prime time live
action (vs. animated) shows are. The Korean shows are typically 16-24
episodes and an hour long (w/o commercials). They have some historical
dramas that are more like 50 episodes, but I haven't gotten in to them yet.
I like comedies. Japanese shows seem to be shorter (40min, if I remember
correctly) and more like 10-12 episodes. Good stuff :)

On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 8:02 AM, Ed Wendell <ewendell@...> wrote:

>
> The Japanese Manga books Zachariah loves are serial in nature - you have
> to have the series to have the whole story - One set he has is 30 something
> books. The shortest series he has is about 12 books. I'm not talking about
> books where the main characters are the same and each book is it's own
> story, but a true serial.
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]