Talking Internet & YA

My sixteen year old daughter and I were sitting and talking after dinner tonight, and (as I sometimes do) I asked her what she was doing on the internet.

Her answers:

1. She was working on her history homework before she got online (she even unplugged the laptop and put it on her bed so she wouldn't be tempted.) She did turn on her desktop to listen to some music, got bored with homework, and went on Facebook.

2. She posted her status as lurking on Facebook = looking at other people's dramas and then laughing because she has none of her own.

3. A guy on Facebook asked her to go to his church.

4. Her brother came on Facebook and commented in reference to her status, "I know you're lying."

At least the kid is honest. I decided to start taking notes on our conversation, which evolved into this:

Kat: I want to send you some songs.

Me: About what?

Kat: Have you ever hear about this person who writes free music, I think the name is MindThings, he writes a bunch of instrumental songs that are really pretty. They're like ambient sounds that are like New Age music, no lyrics. I can't listen to songs with lyrics when I'm doing homework.

Me: Send them to me. What's the most surprising thing you saw on the internet this week?

Kat: I found the (Facebook) page for one of the most popular senior guy at my school. He suddenly posted that he's single and not going to Prom. Shocker! Got dumped right before Prom. Everyone feels so bad for him. I finally found out how to make a server for [her favorite online video game.] I went on Skype with [friend of a friend] and he talked me through how to do it.

Me: Did you see anything this week about books on the internet?

Kat: No advertisements. I saw some Amazon.com ads but I ran away from them. No, saw one ad circulating around for some kind of Twilight rip-off. Not interested.

Me: Do you know who Amanda Hocking is?

Kat: Who?

Me: Do you know which big chain bookseller declared bankruptcy?

Kat: Nope.

Me: What book are you reading right now, and what book do you want to read next?

Kat: Reading DotHacker now and I want to read Aion next (both are manga).

Me: Other than manga, what books do your friends talk about?

Kat: Most people in my grade don't talk about books. We're all about video games. Right now everyone is talking about 3DS -- it's the DS in 3-D. This sounds cool. Can you get me some 3-D glasses so I can use the 3-D option on [her favorite online video game]?

Me: Sure. Since you've been reading so much manga, what's your favorite?

Kat: Blood+ is my favorite manga of all time. It's so awesome because I can reread it and see new things each time. It's pretty gory, not like the nice manga I usually read.

Me: Tell me about the story.

Kat: This girl is the last descendant of a vampire, and she has to slay vampire-like monsters developed by the military, which escaped to Japan where she goes around slaying them. Her twin sister, who is like the opposite of her, is working with the monsters, so she knows she's going to have to kill her sister. The storyline is unique, this girl is fighting for her life and trying to stop the monsters and save the world.

Me: You know that's not really a unique storyline.

Kat: (makes a face at me.)

Me: What book would you want me to take you to the book store right now to buy -- any author, any book.

Kat: Chris D'Lacey. I'd go to the bookstore to get a new dragon book by him.

Me: Do you ever hear any other kids in school talking about books?

Kat: Some guys in my history class are always talking about that book you asked me about the last time we were at BAM.

Me: The Hunger Games.

Kat: Yeah, that one. (makes another face.) It doesn't sound like a girl book so I don't want to read it. Why are you writing all those notes?

Me: So I can make this into a blog post for other writers to read. Do you want to tell them what you want to read -- what sort of book?

Kat: No more Twilight ripoffs. So over Twilight. Anything with unique storylines, big plot twists, surprises but not too many because you get jerked around too much.

Me: What do you think will be the next big thing in books for kids your age?

Kat: Nobody at my school has heard of steampunk yet but I think all the gears and stuff are cool. That could be the next big thing.

Me: Any advice you want to give to YA authors?

Kat: Write a good book first. You can have a million ads and stuff on the internet but if your book is crap we won't read it. Write something really great and then kids will talk about it.

Green Eggs & Sam

Like most parents who read to their kids, I can (still) recite from memory most of the popular Dr. Seuss books. Go Dog Go was my daughter's favorite; Green Eggs & Ham was my son's (mine is Put Me in the Zoo, which I still think is the best of Seuss.)

When I was little the only things I can remember the adults in my house reading were the Bible, the Sunday newspaper and Life magazine (I was not allowed to touch any of them, but occasionally I'd filch Life to look at the pictures.) I was also not a Dr. Seuss kid; my mother and grandmother were not bedtime story readers. We were encouraged to read, but it was more along the lines of "read so you'll do well in school" versus "read because it will enrich your life."

The first book I owned was one I bought myself for the then-exorbitant sum of ninety-five cents from a Scholastic book flier my teacher handed out. I paid for it by borrowing the money from my grandmother and then paying her back a nickel at a time by doing extra chores after school. I washed a small mountain of dishes and folded a couple dozen baskets of clothes for that book, which I still own, btw. I'm also not too old or proud to admit that every couple of years I take that book out and read it -- and still love every word.

I bought a few more chores-for books, and hoarded what I acquired like the treasures they were to me. By the time I was in middle school I owned maybe twenty, the majority from church rummage sales and birthday gifts from a book-loving aunt, all stashed away in my bottom bureau drawer under my pjs. I dreamed of the day I could have a room in my house filled with nothing but books where I could go and shut the door and read (that took another thirty years to acquire.)

I can't offer you any hard statistics on how the books I read and loved in childhood helped me as an adult. I make my living writing books, but of course that might just be a coincidence. Reading a biography about Abraham Lincoln and how he educated himself also probably had nothing to do with me teaching myself to write stories. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and A.M. Lightner's Day of the Drones likely had no influence on me during desegregation, when I ignored all the racist adults shrieking at each other and made my first African-American friends.

It's true that there are a lot of books littering my past, but really, all those Cherry Ames novels I read as a kid don't have to be why I went into the medical field. Some could argue that A Wrinkle in Time and Sea Horse in the Sky are not the reason I later wrote all these SF books, and that The Long Winter didn't necessarily inspire my Dream Mountain or Rebel Ice.

No, now that I think about it, it was probably cartoons, or pinball games, or random jolts of creative inspiration beamed into my kid brain from the cosmos at large. How could mere books change any kid's life?

Seriously now, with all the very cool gadgets and gizmos out there that children want, and working parents who are exhausted by the time they get home from the day job, books are not high on anyone's priority list. I understand. I know it's also a lot easier to sit a kid in front of a TV screen than curl up with them and spend a half-hour with Sam I am as he convinces his stubborn pal to try those green eggs.

But I believe reading exercises the mind, inspires the soul, and encourages kids not only to see someone else's dream worlds, but to actively use their own imaginations when engaging the real world around them. Given the state of our species and the planet, I think we need all the imaginative, creative future adults we can nurture. And they need green eggs & Sam.