Chewing on Books

Chewing on Books

In a culture overflowing with ear-worn copies of Harry Potter and jam-stained editions of Robert Munsch’s works, it’s easy to take books for granted. They’re everywhere—our homes, schools, bookstores, libraries, vast cubes of them at Costco.

With all these books, it’s easy to forget that we learn not just to read, but how to respect and use books. 

There’s a science to how we learn not just to read, but also to use books; an anthropology of books.

All you have to do is to go somewhere with a less developed book culture for this to jump right of the page, so to speak.

When I go on book tours to remote and rural communities in Canada, some of the most striking moments are talking with children for whom books are a novelty.

Several years ago I did a reading in Thompson, Manitoba’s public library as part of a Canada Book Week tour. The kids jostled in, sat cross-legged, smiling and laughing during the reading. Then came the book signings and sale. The librarian shepherded one elementary student up to me, ten dollars clenched in her small hand. She wanted to buy a copy of my book. It was the first book she’d ever bought. I was the first author she’d ever met.

The experience of buying a book and meeting an author are both important parts of book acculturation. Learning that you can access books and that, in seeing yourself reflected in that author, that you have the power and opportunity to write, to self-express, to share your experience-- whatever it might be—of the world.

The most dramatic example of this anthropology of books is in a community like Bunalwenhi, Uganda. A neighbour of mine recently returned from a sixth-month stint starting the small, rural community’s first library.

What she discovered is that filling the bookshelves was the easier part of fostering a book culture. People needed to learn to use books.

Bunalwenhi is primarily an oral culture. Even with mandatory primary school education, most children make it to the sixth grade—including learning the rudiments of reading and writing—without ever holding, let alone owning, a book.

For Bunalwenhi’s children arriving at the library was like going to a foreign land, populated with strange creatures—books. Kids in primary school approached the books as tactile objects. They pulled books from one-another’s hands, ripped them, hit one another with them, folded pages, scribbled in them. All the things that kids do with books, but here generally at a much younger age when they’re first introduced to books and learning how to properly use them, which became a focus for the librarians.

When we give babies books they can chew, or plasticized ones they play with in the bathtub, a watching anthropologist would jot down a note about book acculturation. Later some adult will joyfully read in a warm, bubbly tub; or feel a sense of peace reading the paper while chewing on breakfast toast.

Every time we hold a book, we can be glad that someone taught us not just how to read, but that a book can be ours to read.

Learn more about the Bunalwenhi Community Library:http://bunalwenhi.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/canadian-authored-childrens-books-in-bucl/

Book Review: Jurassic Poop by Jacob Berkowitz

Title: Jurassic Poop
Author: Jacob Berkowitz
Publisher: Kids Can Press
ISBN: 9781553378600


Book Source: library

That's right.  It's an entire book about fossil feces - more formally known as coprolites.  And what a book it is.   As the jacket blurb says, "Funny and informative, Jurassic Poop is flush with amazing facts, stories, and activities."

The puns, they write themselves - and I'm pretty sure Berkowitz uses most of them.  His tone throughout is light and funny - I'd call it tongue-in-cheek but under the circumstances that's a pretty disgusting thought - and perfectly suited to his middle-grade target audience.

There's a lot more to this book than scat jokes, however; it's full of wide-ranging and totally fascinating information.  Berkowitz covers everything you never knew about fossil doo - its formation, its discovery, and the identification of its sources.  He then goes on to discuss some of the wealth of information that can be gained by studying it.  The book also contains profiles of scat scientists and several activities - including a recipe for scent-free coprolite crafts.

Still not quite convinced?  Jurassic Poop won the 2007 American Institute of Physics Children's Book Award.  And when I hear giggling in the 9-12 nonfiction section at the bookstore, it's usually a sign this book's getting browsed.

For more information on Jacob Berkowitz and his books, you can visit his website, or watch for his posts right here on Sci/Why!

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Posted by Lindsey Carmichael.  For more of her children's book reviews, check out her blog, Ten Stories Up.

Inspiration in the Oatmeal Jar

After, "How old are you?" and "How much money do you make?" students I meet during school visits often ask "Where do you get your inspiration?"

That's pretty easy for a science writer. Everywhere. Ideas are all around us. The trick is spinning these ideas into a viable project and always being open to to seeing the story in whatever you are up to. There are a lot of times I miss out on a good idea and there are many times I've seen a published book or article and said, while slapping forehead, "Ah, I wish I'd thought of that." Like the time I found the coolest coprolite in New Zealand. (I mean, honestly, don't you think fossilized poo is exciting? Well, I do and that's probably why I'm a science writer.) Much as I was fascinated, for some reason I didn't think of spinning it into an article or even a book. But Jacob Berkowitz did and he wrote the the coolest book about the stuff: Jurassic Poop: What Dinosaurs (and others) Left Behind. I'm not envious at all. Nope. Not me.

Writing about poop would be right up my alley. I tend to veer towards the living-things-people-love-to-hate school of writing. Bats, snakes, spiders, shipwrecks, and slugs have all been subjects, but I don't stop at living things. Mud, slime, even death fascinate me. General rule? The gooier, slimier, muckier and grosser the better.

Most of the time, writing about these topics is just plain fun. But sometimes it pays off too. When people ask me "What is your best selling book?" they are often surprised at the answer: Mealworms: Raise them, watch them, see them change.



Yup, when it first came out in 1998, this book flew off the shelves. (Well, as much as my books ever fly anywhere.) The trick to the success of this book was, to use a sciency term, finding its niche. And I found a fairly large one: teachers across North America use mealworms to teach students about metamorphosis. These creatures, the larva of the darkling beetle, metamorphose fairly quickly and don't fly as beetles. So they're perfect for the classroom, where the last thing teachers want are escaped science projects, especially ones as potentially pesty as mealworms.

So, all of this is to say hello and to make my official entry onto this blog. Thanks for stopping by! If you care to know more about me, you can find more than enough here.

Kid's Names: Harder than Rocket Science

By Jacob Berkowitz

Recently, my daughter said she’d like to have twins and name one of them Jadelyn. Jadelyn? I asked. How do you spell that?

As a children’s author, this is a question I often ask these days. It’s the reason that book signings have become an emotional peril, replete with the possibility of embarrassment, tears and smudged and crossed-out signings. Yes, I write about things scientific. But as every scientist and writer knows, it’s the human part of the equation that’s often the biggest challenge.

Here’s the problem: Kid's names are the frontier of neologism. The age of reproductive freedom and the rise of spiritual diversity, coupled with the creative frontier of e-mail and text-messaging, has created a Frankenstein's monster of kid's names.

As an author, it’s fair that parents and kids have the expectation that I have a better than average facility with spelling. But correctly penning today’s freeform first names isn’t about spelling, it’s akin to mind reading.

Imagine this: you’re seated at a table in a library activity room, and in front of you are a dozen or so kids and their parents lined-up all eager to have you sign their books. It’s an author’s dream moment! You smile at the first kids and ask, What’s your name?

Before you hear the answer a baby begins to cry and two other kids in line burst into laughter because one farted, so truth be told all you hear of the name is: Mwabben. Fine, you’ve been here before. Lean forward and ask again.

Ok, now we have contact and you think the name sounds like “Robin”. This is the moment of danger. You’ve got a dozen kids waiting in line, you’d like a drink (of water). But don’t think for a moment you know how to spell “Robin”.

The days of respect for, let alone adherence to standardized, name spellings are long gone. It’s a spelling free for all out there, one that makes the challenge of spelling given names on par with the final round of the Scripps Spelling Bee.

So, ask “Robin” to spell his name. He looks at you sincerely and begins “R-o-b-y-n”.

Whew, no problem, you think and start writing, just the substitution of “y” for “i”. Then Robyn’s mom leans forward and with a tight smile adds “With an n-e at the end”. Oh, of course, it’s “R-o-b-y-n-n-e”.

In my experience, at times even the kid thinks the additional “n-e” is overkill, but I gladly scribe the seven-letter riff on “Robin” and enthusiastically talk fossils for a moment before I’m on to the next round of the spelling bee.

(Jacob Berkowitz is most recently the author of Out of This World: The Amazing Search for an Alien Earth, Kids Can Press www.jacobberkowitz.com)