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I just received an email from Overdrive, a huge ebook distributor, for an ebook webinar that they're holding. The text in the email says this:

"How do you engage students who spend more time reading from a screen—on their cell phones or computers—than they do from the printed page? With eBook and audiobook downloads.

OverDrive, the leading distributor of eBooks and more for libraries and schools, invites you to learn how to make reading cool with the devices students use every day."

Reading this made me squint pensively at the screen of my laptop. Are ebooks the only way we can "make reading cool"?

My husband and I were just commenting last night to one another about the fact that our kids, who are both teenagers, spend most of their day engaged with their phones. They do everything- literally everything- with their iPhones. They communicate with people, watch TV and movies, listen to music, surf the web, read, and more, all on their phones. Does that mean that doing these things in other ways, like reading from a printed book, is NOT cool?

When did we have to start pandering to kids to get them to read or to get them to start thinking that reading was cool? Is this the message we really want to send to kids? That we want them to engage with their screens even more?

Obviously, Overdrive has an agenda here.  They want to sell ebooks, so they're making it sound like that's the way to go. I don't blame them for that. But, is it what we (teachers, librarians, parents) want? I am not at all convinced that ebooks make reading cool. Reading makes reading cool.  It's just a cool thing to do. I think Overdrive is sending the wrong message, albeit one that is to their advantage, when they say that ebooks are what's going to make reading appealing. Shouldn't the stories be doing that? And do we want to lose our kids to their screens even more?

I'm not signing up for Overdrive's webinars.

I have a new article that was just published in Moms Network Connecting @ Home Summer 2008 magazine. The article is called “Encourage the Love of Reading all Summer Long.”

This concise publication is fantastic! It is full of how-to info, tips for working at home, saving money, staying organized and much more.

You can go to this page to get a list of of distribution locations.

http://www.connectingathome.com/distribution.shtml

Or you can go to https://host.tcconnect.com/~connecti/secure/sub.html to order a very affordable subscription.

In the closing sentences of last week’s column about Super Bowl and Super Tuesday, I unwittingly set off some readers’ usage alarms. Talking about terms like Tsunami Tuesday and Super-Duper Tuesday, I wrote: “But none of these amplified epithets have managed to displace good old Super Tuesday.” That’s right — I used none with the plural verb have instead of singular has. I then continued: “A Google News search currently finds nearly 20,000 articles referencing Super Tuesday in the past month, compared to less than 1,000 for Super-Duper Tuesday and less than 500 for Tsunami Tuesday.” Less than 1,000, less than 500? Not fewer? Eagle-eyed commenters were to quick to pick up on both of these usage points. I’d like to say I hid these in the column as a test for readers, but I wasn’t that clever. It does provide a good opportunity, however, to take a look at two of the more contentious debates over English usage in modern times.

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