Op-Ed

A B 😉: Emojis and the alphabet

By on October 14, 2019   /   Articles, Op-Ed  

Usually I blog about plot, character, and story, but my thought for today is on the more basic level of letters, sounds, and meanings.

My five-year-old knows phonics and lives in a word-saturated environment. This leads to such frustrations as trying to sound out “CVSPharmacy,” a word that, despite its appearance, begins with an “S” sound and has no “P,” “H,” or “hard C” sounds in it at all. This led her to the revelation that the letter “C” itself starts with an “S” sound, while the letter “S” starts with an “E” sound.

“’S’ should be spelled ‘see’ and ‘E’ should be spelled ‘ess!’”

I then explained that the letter “F” in “farm” is an unvoiced letter “V” that got its shape warped by hanging around with the letter “E,” while the letters “P” and “H” in “pharmacy” are filling in for a letter “Φ” that got left behind in Ancient Greece.

“English is dumb,” she concluded.

“Dumb with a ‘Silent B,’” I agreed. But what else would you expect from a language that developed on an island of Celts who got successively invaded by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Romans, Normans, and Vikings?

The five-year-old is drawn to letters, but she 😍😍😍 emojis. These symbols are colorful, fun, and offer no barriers to a five-year-old’s level of understanding–except perhaps for 💩, which too closely resembles chocolate soft-serve.

Emojis add emotion and emphasis to casual texts, can replace words or entire sentences, and have become a necessary part of functional literacy in the digital age. Importantly, emojis are more accessible and easier to decipher than the rule-breaking glyphs and phenomes of English.

When you think about it, it’s a wonder that anyone ever learns how to read and write in English. It seems almost inconceivable that anyone would opt to learn English as a second language, especially if their native language actually spells things the way they are pronounced.

English is infected with weird idioms and slang, exceptions that swallow every rule, words like sheep and deer that can be both singular and plural, people saying things “literally” when they really mean them “figuratively,” and armed camps that will fight to the death over the Oxford comma.

Emojis, in contrast, offer lower levels of drama:

🐑 = Singular

🐑🐑 = Plural

👍 = Using the Oxford comma

👎 = Deleting the Oxford comma

The traditionalist in me wouldn’t trade the challenge of English for all the emojis in the 🌎. The English toolbox of 26 letters can express every 💡 a human can have. No language is more versatile. Or, if another language’s word offers a nuanced shade of meaning that English doesn’t yet have, English will steal that word.

English wasn’t designed to be versatile and nuanced. English became versatile and nuanced after centuries of borrowing from other languages. Which makes it logical to assume that English will eventually begin incorporating emojis.

As English readers become more comfortable mixing text and symbols on their phones, will we start seeing 🔥 incorporated into more formal communications?

🤹 becoming an expected part of advertising?

⚖️ having a legal meaning in contracts?

❤️ becoming a common name?

How long before 🤣 and ☀️ are included in the dictionary?

Will there be a time when we start teaching emojis in school alongside the alphabet?

Will future Sesame Street episodes be brought to us by 🍉, 🐺, and by the number 7?

💬 your 💭💭in the comments 👇.

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Bookshelves

By on July 25, 2018   /   Articles, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, Op-Ed  

I wasn’t a very good reader as a kid. I struggled. But I loved books. The pages, the pictures, the covers, the smells all enticed the young me even as the words eluded me. I loved going to the library and walking down the aisles of shelves looking at the book spines and the volumes on display.

Eventually, I got the reading help I needed and those shelves became even more magical. I still visit the library and wander up and down the aisles looking at the books on the shelves. I still get the side-eye from librarians when they ask me if I need help. I also get the side-eye from kids in the children’s book section when I scour the bookshelves like an interloper in their world.

The Shelves

Books are magical things.

Bookshelves house that magic. Bookshelves arrange and display the magic, keeping it safe and accessible.

My son recently bought a house and moved out. I took over his old room as my office. My first real office! After the remodeling and painting, I moved in. Desk. Chairs. Rug. Bookshelves!

I can proudly say that I was able to move my book collection from the myriad of shelf spaces around the house to my new bookshelf setup. My wife even found an awesome little companion bookshelf at a garage sale to showcase the special books in my book collection.

Shelves of Power

All this shelf work got me thinking about how the books on our bookshelves say volumes about who we are as readers, writers, and human beings. 

What can our bookshelves tell us about ourselves? Do the contents reflect our personality? Our likes?

How about our goals and dreams?

Pause for a moment and look at the individual books on your bookshelf. Do they bring up a memory of a time or place? Did they teach you something new or how to do something better? 

I have books which have entertained me for years—books I’ve read half a dozen times and discovered something new each time. There are books on the shelf which remind me of family. Some titles I remember being on the limited bookshelf in the house where I grew up. There are the World Book encyclopedias and their companion yearbooks, circa 1971 thru 1987, my parents purchased for us six kids at a great financial sacrifice.

On my bookshelf, there are the books I read to my kids while they sat on my back on the bedroom floor and listened before falling asleep. There’s the complete hardback set of Harry Potter books, with the Goblet of Fire to Deathly Hallows books bought in the pre-dawn hours of their release days. Sports books, coaching books, writing books, classics, science texts, mentor texts, my growing Native American author section, etc. A seemingly random assortment of books in a myriad of subject matter, but books which reflect who I am and/or who I want to be.

  • Memories.
  • History.
  • Knowledge.

A whole life represented. A collection of hopes and dreams. Some of the threads woven into the fabric that has become my middle-grade-leaning writing voice. Each book on the shelf traveling in orbit through my personal universe.

How about your bookshelves?  Do they represent more of who you are or who you want to be? Or a nice mixture of both?

Library Shelves

Take a stroll down the aisle of your local library.

Can you get a picture of who your community is by the books shelved there? Is the personality of the community reflected in the titles on the shelves? Can you get a sense of place by walking the shelves of your local library?

If you have the good fortune to live near or have access to a college or university, have you ever visited its libraries?

From my experiences, I can honestly say they are marvelous places. The main library, the college-specific libraries, and the technical libraries, all work in concert to represent the institution and its mission. Liberal arts, engineering, medicine, agriculture, law, whatever the main focus of the institution is, it’s reflected on the shelves of its libraries.  

Furniture?

To lit-minded folks like us, a bookshelf is more than a mere piece of furniture. Much more.

Bookshelves house our life maps. They act as our compass for when we get lost. They’re our windows to the imagination. They contain magical doors to possibility and potential, knowledge and hope. As I sit here and look a the bookshelf I’ve put together, I’m reminded of the impact those books sitting on those shelves have on the formation of me as a human being. The sofa doesn’t do that. The rocking chair doesn’t. The end table is just an end table. A bookshelf just a piece of furniture? No way!

Please tell us about your favorite bookshelf. Share a photo or share what that particular bookshelf means to you. You can leave your bookshelf love in the comments below or on Twitter. Let’s have some fun with this and tweet your message to @mixedupfiles and hashtag it with #MUFbookshelf.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Read. Write. Repeat.

 

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Keeping Track with Personal Reading Records

By on February 14, 2018   /   Book Lists, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, Op-Ed  

I recently caught up with two former students to talk about – of course – reading! One is at a new school, and I still see the other around campus and in the library, though I’m not regularly in the classroom these days.

I heard from their mothers ( both book people, so of course we’re in touch) that Kenzie and Hannah keep reading records for themselves, and I was very curious to see how – or if – they continued on where their library class with me left off some years ago.

I kept a wall behind my desk depicting my own reading life: covers showing books i’d read and those I planned to read. In addition, a couple of my classes chose to track their reading lives on another wall of the library.I love that this particular wall grew out of these readers’ desires to follow their own lives as readers.

In our recent conversations, I started out by asking the girls why they keep track of their reading. Kenzie uses her list/page count system to prove a point to others and to show that she really is as well read as she says she is, and to see how far she has come as a reader. She also uses a list of books she’s read to keep track of where she’s been. I can relate to that. I remember where I was when I dug through Bronte’s Villanelle on summer in high school, and I opened Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in the security line at Gatwick Airport. Kenzie also pointed out that she likes bonding with new friends over books they both love.

Hannah uses a journal to remember what a book was about, and to set and keep reading goals. She also finds that she can also track her taste in books.

I asked next how the readers keep track of their reading. Kenzie carries two lists. One is of books to acquire/to read. A book goes on this list when it’s recommended or when she decides to read it.  It gets crossed out when it gets added to her (physical) bookshelf.  A book goes onto the second list when she starts reading it, along with its page count. When she’s completed it, she marks it off.

Hannah makes lists of books she wants to read while she browses the library shelves, then adds them to her journal when she starts reading, with synopses, notes, and a rating system. I asked some other students about keeping track of their reading. Many of them simply try to remember what they read, except for those who are currently using their Humanities teacher’s Reading Bingo to track their reading.

I keep an occasional journal as well, noting books that inspire me in some way. Otherwise, I keep track using Goodreads and my library wishlist. If not for these tools, I would be lost.

Inspired by this conversation, I also asked my colleagues how they track their reading. They use  phone notes apps, Amazon and library wishlists, and Goodreads (many are actually on Goodreads but only a few use it, and those are mostly readers who are members of book clubs).

I asked Kenzie and Hannah how they choose their next read.  Kenzie chooses a book from a genre she’s interested in, then explores titles in that genre. A read-alike in that genre inspires her next read. Sometimes she needs a break from a certain type of book, though, like murder mysteries or books with heavier themes.

Hannah finds her next read by using eeny meeny miney mo, from 3-4 books she chooses from the shelves by turning a few pages, according to her mood, and referring to her list.

Asked how they read,  Hannah reads all in print, and Kenzie reads in print or on her phone if she’s out and about. Hannah has expressed that she is not at all an audio book lover (it is my main way to consume books these days, to be honest).

Finally I asked the girls what they’re reading now.

Favorite Genre:

Hannah: Realistic fiction and historical fiction – she feels that she learns more from them.

Kenzie: Mystery

One unforgettable book:

Kenzie: Under the Egg

Hannah: All the Light We Cannot See

A book to recommend to a parent:

Hannah: The Rhyme Schemer

Kenzie: Everything she thinks is good

Here we are with a few of our favorite books.

It was a blast to ask these questions of students I’ve watched grow from early readers through their middle grade years. It is especially rewarding to celebrate the readers we all are today.

Do you keep personal reading records? Why and how?

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