Reading and Children's Brains

Illustrated story books are better for kids' brains than video or text, study finds.

This is the headline in a CBC story.  Robert Munsch books were used to find out how children's brains respond to different media.

- audio only

- picture with audio
- animated cartoon

Researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital say that the picture book is best.  They used 27 children ages three to five, that had not been to school, an even mix of boys and girls.  They used FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to see changes in blood flow through the brain.

The results were given in a Goldilocks effect-:
- the audio only was too cold (children can't visualize what they aren't familiar with)
- the animated cartoon was too hot (too much going on)
- the picture book with audio was just right ( a balance of visual and auditory)

   When you read to children, they are able to start with the story and then bring their imagination into the story, which brings the story to life in their mind.  All parts of the brain are used in equal measures.


   I have always been a fan of Dr. Seuss for very young children.  They love the rhythm and rhyme of the language.

  And then Robert Munsch further develops their love of words with more story content.
Aren't children's authors great?
Perhaps I should take a week and just read picture books.  There are so many great ones!

"The Secret River" by Kate Grenville

   William Thornhill grew up in London, England - poor, hungry, always cold, and often angry.  "The rage warmed him and filled him up.  It was a kind of friend".
  He worked on a barge on the Thames River and, one day, he stole a load of timber.  He was condemned to death but in 1806, he was included in a shipload of convicts sent to Australia.
   Will was married to Sal and she was able to also travel to Australia. England had established a claim to Australia and was interested in beginning a settlement there. The descriptions of the early days of Australia were fascinating to me.
   As you can imagine, there were conflicts with the Darug people, who had been living in Australia for thousands of years.  Some of the settlers saw them as 'savages' and treated them brutally. 
  Will and his wife Sal tried to find ways to co-exist, but Will was persuaded to join an attack on the Aborigines to settle the problems once and for all.  The confrontation was brutal and Will was tormented by his actions.
  Although Will prospered in Australia, he was never really happy .  Quote:"This bench here, where he could overlook all his wealth and take his ease, should have been the reward. He could not understand why it did not feel like triumph."
He had gained the world, but lost his soul.
   I loved the main characters- Will and Sal.  Sal was amazing- loving, supportive but also strong willed.  Their relationship was a delight to read as they faced such hardships and danger.
  Today our library book club will be discussing this book and we will be focussing on the relationship of the colonists and the Aborigines over the years.  In 2008, the prime minister of Australia made a public apology for the brutal treatment of the Aboriginal people.  You can see his speech here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3TZOGpG6cM

"Searching for the Secret River" by Kate Grenville

  "The Secret River" is one of my favourite all-time novels.  I will be leading a discussion on this book later in the month, so I just read "Searching for the Secret River", which is the story of Kate Grenville's inspiration, research, writing, and re-writing of this story.  It isn't often that you get a chance to learn about the author's writing process.  I found it interesting.
  The inspiration for "The Secret River' came from the Walk for Reconciliation on the Sydney bridge in Australia in 2000.  There were 250,000 people walking across the bridge, and Kate was one of them.  She was recalling the story that she had heard about her great-great-great grandfather, Solomon Wiseman, who came to Australia on a ship of convicts from England, landing close to this spot. 
   In the crowd, she locked eyes with an Aboriginal woman.  She realized that this woman's ancestors likely also lived in this place.  She wondered what happened when Solomon Wiseman encountered Aboriginal people.

Kate Grenville

   Kate immediately began to search for information about the life of Solomon Wiseman. She visited countless museums and libraries. Some in Australia and some in England. She interviewed dozens of people. She wrote pages and pages-binders and binders.  
  She had expected that she would end up with a biography of Solomon Wiseman, but realized that it would be very boring for the readers.  So she put the facts into a novel. And what a wonderful novel it is!  I'll talk about it on my next blog.

"Before We Were Yours'

A beautiful cover and an interesting title.

   This novel has two alternating storylines.  

Maryland in 1939 and South Carolina, present day.
In 1939, there was a poor but loving family living on  a riverboat: parents Queenie and Briny, children Rill (12), Camellia (10), Lark (6), Fern (4), Gabion (2).  The mother was taken to the hospital when the delivery of her twins, (with an untrained midwife) went seriously wrong.  While the parents were gone, the children were picked up by an adoption agency, never to be returned to the parents.
  The other storyline is the granddaughter of one of the children (a lawyer), trying to piece together the story of her ancestors.
  This novel is extremely sad and the saddest part is that the story is based on facts.  Between 1920 and 1950, the Tennessee Children's Home Society took children from poor families and sold them to celebrities and politicians. During the process, they allowed or intentionally caused the death of an estimated 500 children.  Perhaps some of the children really were orphans and were able to be adopted by a good family but the horrendous stories, like this one, are common.  Birth records were altered so that they could never be found by their original family.

Georgia Tann was the manager of this organization and she had a lot of influence, which allowed her to steal babies from hospitals, prisons, etc.  When a new mayor was elected, he caught wind of the mistreatment of children and did an investigation.  Georgia Tann died of cancer before the findings were made public.

   Many readers loved this book, but it was too emotionally packed for me.  It is much harder to read this type of story when you know it is based on fact.
  The second storyline seemed contrived and not so interesting, but added another dimension to the novel. 

"The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America" by Bill Bryson

   With the beautiful spring weather finally here, we are spending more time in the car, on road trips.  And I like to read to John while he is driving (mostly on smaller roads- not the 401).
  We had enjoyed reading books by Bill Bryson.  In 1999, while travelling, I read aloud "A Walk in the Woods".  I remember it well.  It was about hiking the Appalachian Trail and it was quite humorous.  We enjoyed his sense of humour even though it is mostly sarcasm.  In 2015, a movie was made starring Robert Redford.
  Then, in 2000, I read "In A Sunburned Country" and I loved it!  Once again, it is a travel book, this time about Australia.  I had been to Australia, so I was especially interested.  He filled the book, not only with his travels, but so much fascinating information about Australia- geology, botany, archaeology, history, and geography.  A wealth of information about the country that I loved!
  His response to the country was not always the same as mine, but I valued learning more about places that I had visited, such as the story behind the building of the Opera House in Sydney.  Great book.  Great writing.  
  Because we had enjoyed Bill Bryson's writing, we began reading another of his books that I had picked up at a used bookstore.  It had been written in 1989.

   "The Lost Continent" is about travelling in the United States.  Bryson had been living in England and returned to his childhood hometown in Des Moines.
  This book begins "I come from Des Moines.  Somebody had to."  He does not speak well of Des Moines, but he also has very negative things to say about every place that he visits.  In fact, the book has been called "a serious indictment of the American way of life and the direction it is taking."
  The humour that I had enjoyed in other books, turned very sarcastic and nasty in this book. I did not enjoy it.  
  However, Goodreads stated: "The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature - hilariously, stomach-achingly funny, yet tinged with heartache - and the book that first staked Bill Bryson's claim as the most beloved writer of his generation. 
  There were parts where my husband chuckled but other parts made us groan. Mostly I was disappointed, because I was anticipating a great romp through the U.S.A.


  BUT... it reminded me of another travel book that I really enjoyed.  "Breakfast at the Exit Cafe" written by Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds.  Husband and wife enjoying their travels through the U.S.A. as my husband and I have done for over 20 years.
Read about it here.

One Book One Community 2018

Congratulations to One Book One Community!

This is the 17th year of operation.

 It is the longest running community reading program in Canada! 

 Isn't that wonderful?

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One Book One Community has announced its book choice for 2018. 

I t  i s  a  t h r i l l e r !

  Linwood Barclay has written 17 adult novels that are very popular around the world.  One novel is being made into a television series in France.  Other books have been adapted for T.V. or film.

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I loved One Book One Community from the start!  I have read every book choice over the years and promoted the book on every occasion.  One year, I read the whole book aloud at a nursing home.  I always look forward to the author event in September.

I have loved some choices and disliked others.  That is to be expected.  So I read this book immediately when it was announced.  I am not familiar with 'thrillers' and so I read information about mystery novels, crime novels and thrillers, trying to understand this genre. I came to the conclusion that I am unable to appreciate any of these books.  They reflect too much of the horrors of the world and I find them neither interesting nor informative- certainly not thrilling.

The original mandate of the One Book One Community committee was to choose a book that would be relatively inoffensive to our rather conservative population in this area.  Well, I realized that I must be the most conservative reader since I am disappointed in the language and characters.  I guess both should be expected in a thriller.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

   Eleanor Oliphant is the narrator in this quirky novel.  The author was exploring the idea of 'loneliness' in a young woman.  And Eleanor was definitely lonely. 
Quote:
  "I do exist, don't I? It often feels as if I'm not here, that I'm a figment of my own imagination.  There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar.  A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I'd lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock."
   This is definitely a character-driven book and I do enjoy interesting characters.  I also love to see character development.  Well, you really get inside Eleanor's skin as her backstory is revealed- bit by bit.  And it is heart-breaking. The end of the book details her therapy, ending in quite a shock.

  Eleanor, at 29, living on her own, is very regimented and alone in the world.  Her insistence on speaking clearly is really entertaining- great vocabulary!

  I learned about this book from another blog: "A Librarian's Thoughts on books".   You can read about it here.

  We both really loved "Eleanor Oliphant".
  The author, Gail Honeyman, lives in Glasgow, Scotland.  This is her first novel.  Excellent writing!

Lisa Genova

   Lisa Genova has a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University.  Yes, she is brilliant!  And she writes amazing fiction!
   Each novel has a brain disability at its core, making it extremely interesting.
  Her first book was "Still Alice", which she self-published.  In that novel, Alice Howland is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's while she is a professor at Harvard.  The story is fictional, but the Alzheimer's Society has endorsed the book.  Lisa wanted 'to give a face and a voice to this disease that affects 500,000 people under 65 in U.S.A.'
  I read that book shortly after it was published.  It was very popular. 

   Then Lisa wrote "Left Neglected", which I have just read for the second time. 

  Sarah Nickerson, a high-powered executive with three young children, has a car accident and suffers from brain damage resulting in a condition termed 'left neglect'.  Very fascinating!  Her eyes are fine but she can't see anything on her left, nor feel the left part of her body.  There are deeper issues concerning neglect in this book.  It is very thought-provoking and important for our time.  AND, beautifully written!
  When Sarah is finally able to snowboard, she says, "It feels like excitement and terror are tumbling around inside my chest like clothes in a dryer".

  Two more books have been written that I have not read yet:  "Love Anthony" (a child with autism) and "Inside the O'Briens" (about Huntington's disease).
   Her new book has just been released: "Every Note Played", about a concert pianist with ALS.  
   I am very interested in reading this book but it will be awhile, because there is a long waiting list at the library.

   Lisa lives with her family on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  You must try one, two, or more of her books.  A reader's delight!