Terry Deary Who has put the cat among the pigeons with his statements about Public Libraries
Terry is a Card-carrying, old-school renegade. He’ll make a stand against anything that looks like authority just to make a bit of noise. I’m afraid that Terry, is just “being Terry.” You have to remember that Terry is an actor first and foremost and he loves a bit of drama.
Terry is more a manufacturer of commodities than what one imagines an author to be. At the height of the Horrible Histories fame, he set his researchers going at a new subject on the first of each month. Then, together they cobbled up a new book with a snappy title and added it to the production line. Librarians loved them, bought them in droves and promoted them like nothing else. Now they don’t have the funds to buy more of Terry’s books, Terry rails at them for lending out his books. He claims to have lost £180,000 a year in lost book sales because Libraries lend them out! Well, of course that’s not true. People who borrow books for free wouldn’t go out and buy them. And it’s a little ungracious of him, he would have to spend that much every year in marketing and publicity just to buy the promotion that Libraries have given him for free all these years.
But all the same Terry is expressing the little voice of doubt that nags away at all authors and librarians. Authors, publishers and librarians don’t know what to do. The Tsunami of the internet, for so long a problem that would have to be dealt with one day, is building a giant wave in front of our eyes and it is starting to crash all around us. Libraries let the computers in a long time ago. Appeasement hasn’t worked – it never does!
Two years ago, I wrote about Libraries being the Pillars of Civilisation. A lot has changed in that time.
I’ve had quite a few conversations with librarians since. I’ve met some young librarians who can’t wait to get rid of all those horrible dusty books and get down to the real work of organising all that loose data that’s floating around out there. Some have great visions of community informations centres. Others have seen the writing on the wall and are preparing their escape plans. Others are stunned, powerless in the face of the oncoming juggernaut.
Authors don’t know what to do. Anyone can be an author these days and they are jolly well taking up the chance. You can’t move for people who are writing books and flinging them up on the wall of Amazon to see what sticks. I’m afraid authors have had their day too. Or at least the old idea of being an author, someone special, chosen to be good enough to have their idea turned into a book. Our comfortable, middle-class existence has come to an end. We have to join the cue and try to shout louder than everyone else – which is what Terry Deary is doing now – and doing very successfully. See how much press he’s getting? Remember there is no such thing as bad publicity, you just need a thick skin to put up with the temporary flak.
The fact is that our gentle, rose-tinted image of libraries, has had its day. When we think of a library, we imagine a large room full of books and a nice lady stamping them in and out at the desk. Well, half of that has gone already. No one visits a library for the reference department any more. It’s all online, why would you bother battling through the sleet and snow to look something up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica? Reference departments in libraries have been reduced to a single bottom shelf for several years now. The specialist stuff, local history and the like, continues but even so – it’s slowly being digitised and as such is so much easier to search and access online.
So what is a modern Library for? That is the big question.
Everyone who is campaigning to save the libraries is campaigning for their own personal idea of what a library is. Look at the statistics – public libraries are used by old people, who still have a reading habit, but that sector will be in sharp decline. Old people can and do use kindles and the internet. Once a negative critical mass is reached, Libraries will not be able to justify buying thrillers and romance books for them anymore and the adult fiction department will close. I’m sure Boots the Chemists will check to see if there is a chance of opening up that old part of their business that was nationalised by public libraries.
Libraries are also full of people using computers – emailing home to Poland, running eBay businesses even looking up the Encyclopaedia Britannica – like in the old days.
But it’s the Children’s department that continues to flourish, even with all the distractions of the internet and tv.
It may be because the School’s Literacy Strategy has been such a disaster. Parents who care, realise that the only way to get their children to learn to read is to go and borrow lots of books from the library and read stories with them. That’s how it’s always been done and how those who learn to read, despite the literacy strategy, still do. Stories have been removed from education but, thankfully, the libraries are still full of them. They even have story time sessions and when did schools last have those? Libraries, in fact, are the most essential part of the education system, and that’s what they always were.
Public Libraries grew up out of the worker’s institutes, places where you could educate and improve yourself and get away from the grim realities of being at the bottom of the heap. If you wanted to read a thriller or a romance, you went to the circulating library and paid your weekly subs. Why did free entertainment become become a right? Terry Deary has a point there.
I think we need a new name for public libraries. A library, by definition, is a collection of books and a librarian is one who collates and looks after them. Just as merchant banks and high street banks need to separate, so do libraries need to separate from local education/information centres, which is what I think the public library has become.
We need public libraries to help young families keep up the reading – kids need lots of books and lots of practice to get the knack of reading and that is a skill we require our citizens to have and should be prepared to support them in their endeavour.
We need information centres where we can find stuff out and learn those skills that don’t need a college course or module points. We need a new breed of Public Librarian – someone who knows, or knows how to find out, someone who will help you find the information you need or put you on the right road to discovering it yourself. Someone who can put you in touch with your local history and let you feel part of somewhere. Someone to coordinate and bring together a sense of community in a rapidly fractionating world.
Books on loan, especially children’s books, may well be a part of the mix, but let’s not get hung up on an old technology that is rapidly being surpassed by ebooks, TV and the internet. Children are not born with an innate allegiance to paper books. They don’t care about the medium – it’s the stories and the pictures that matter.
I love libraries. I love their smell and their ambience, but so do I love old country houses. I’m sure people loved having only two channels to watch on TV and only four radio stations to listen too and… oh! …sending children up chimneys and polio and dyptheria, those were the good old days!
I’m sorry Authors. We have had our golden years. It’s been great and thanks for the ride. It was a wonderful time we will look back on. A time we could live quietly in our nice middle class comfort and bask in the glamorous title of Author, but it’s over, everyone’s an author now – move on. We have to find some new way to validate our existence.
If you want to see libraries running as they used to, all silence, dusty books and fearsome Librarians, then start a re-enactment society. I’m sure you’ll get a few visitors on a wet bank holiday.
For those who cannot or can’t be bothered to read, there is a YouTube spoken version of this text. It gave me a great opportunity to test my newly constructed teleprompter.
This week’s subject for www.illustrationfriday.com is “Imagination”.
That’s actually a really hard subject to get to grips with. T obvious this is something in a thought bubble. I tried to get away from that idea, but it is so obvious. So I had a go at making a positive out of what I considered a negative and made the character’s head a thought bubble – a person who is so imaginative that they have become part of their imagination!
As I played with the idea, more bubble shapes came to mind, so I built the picture up from there. It’s drawn in pen and grey Copic Markers.
Watch the video for more about the thought process and the technique I use to draw the finished illustration. Why not have a go yourself. If you make a video about your illustration on Youtube, make sure to make it a video response to mine. I promise I’ll reciprocate. It would be fun to expand Illustration Friday onto YouTube.
I’m indebted to writer and illustrator, Mark Burgess, for noticing that The Ginger Ninja is on the front page of the iTunes store today!
What a thrill and an honour! And look at the company that he’s keeping! Charlie and Lola, Harry and his dinosaurs and Elmer – that’s a pretty great list to be along side. If you would like to get a copy for your iPad, then here’s the link http://bit.ly/TheGingerNinja
Welcome to the Third Drawing Show. I’ve got some of your work that arrived in the mail, just in time. More on Cameron Cupcake. Advice on Creating Characters for Books and just when does an artist acquire their own unique style?
I’ve finally had to really, truly and honestly admit to myself that the publishing model that we know and love is broken and there ain’t no way to fix it other than to switch off the internet. The Kindle and iPad have arrived like Caxton’s press before and we can’t go back.
Is this a terrible thing? It is if you love paper bound books and wan’t that old world to continue – do you still listen to shellac 78 records?
The “BOOK” has been seen as a holy object for so long because it was the best information storage system we had. The book’s new role will be that of souvenir, gift item or collector’s edition.
The threshold to publishing has been brought so low, there is no way an author can survive by giving away 90% or more of potential earnings to publishers – more if they employ an agent too. Publishing is something anyone can do now and many are leaping in, muddying the market and reducing quality to the very lowest common denominator. But some new media published works will rise the the surface and make a healthy profit while the rest turn into digital compost. Fear not – there will be millions trying – “There is a book in all of us” – the quote goes. Soon they will be available.
So what to do? Stop thinking about books. That’s where the vanity lies. People want to see a book – their book with their name on it – as a physical object on their bookshelf and in a bookshop window. The screen is the new delivery vehicle. Words, pictures, video, whatever are the medium. Anything is possible and those that break free of the shackles of print will probably be the winners. The book and the printed word have no God given right to be the delivery vehicle of future thought.
I’m throwing off the shackles of an old system and embracing the new – today – now – this moment :)
“Let your child read along as words come alive on the screen!” The advertising shrieks . Translated from marketing speak it means, “Leave your child’s education in our hands. You go and enjoy yourself while we keep them quiet for a minute or two.”
But will your child learn to read? Of course not. I think we have forgotten just how much hard work goes into learning to read. So much of learning to read is dictated by the culture around the child. If the parents aren’t reading, why should a child bother? If the parents leave children alone with ebooks to entertain them, do you really think the children are going to bother following along with the text?
No, of course not. Books with follow along audio are entertainment. There is nothing wrong with that, but don’t expect your child to learn to read with them. Children love listening to stories but they don’t have the self-discipline to follow along and learn to read for themselves. It’s so easy to imagine children as being small versions of ourselves. They should be able to apply themselves to learning new skills just as we adults do.
But learning itself is a skill that needs to be taught. If you think that you can just give a child an e-book, with a famous actor’s voice reading the story, and then come back 20 years later and expect your child to be doing well in University, think again.
To children, there is no difference between real books and e-books. They have no loyalty to the old regime of paper and ink. But what they really respond to is the closeness of sharing, being together, the passing on of difficult skills and constant encouragement. You can snuggle up together with an ebook reader just as well as a book. If you can’t, that’s your problem. You an old fuddy-duddy and you need to move on,
Where e-book’s may well be at an advantage is with reluctant readers, for whom most of my books are aimed. “Reluctant reader” is a euphemism for boys. More precisely dyslexic boys and those with attention issues! If there is one thing that grabs their attention, it’s gadgets.
Some boys will embrace e-book’s and get reading without any problem at all, whilst turning down paper books because they are not cool and come with cultural baggage attached.
I thought long and hard about whether I should put an audio track in with the Ginger Ninja iBook. So many parents have told me that the Ginger Ninja was the book that got their child reading. I decided it would be wrong to turn a book into an entertainment and deprive a new generation the chance of having this be the first book they read all on their own.
I’ve added a quiz, a video of myself talking about where I got my inspiration and another video showing how to draw Ginger. I will continue adding extra features to the rest of the series to give added value to the iBooks.
It’s crossed my mind to film a YouTube video of a “Jackanory” style reading of the Ginger Ninja and see what happens. I’d like to know what people think about this idea.
In the meantime you can get the Ginger Ninja at the iBook store for your iPad at the following addresses.
UK Store US Store Australian Store Canadadian Store Irish Store
Let me know if it’s your child’s first book they read, and :-)
It’s obvious really, The reason you shouldn’t read free e-book’s, is because they are mostly rubbish. If you think about it , how can anybody afford to write a book and give it away for free? There has to be a reason. Either they are complete junk or they are trying to sell you something.
Many free e-book’s that you see are really only a few pages encouraging you to download the rest of the book, possibly leaving you open to viruses. Otherwise they are sponsored by corporations or countries you may not wish to be influenced by.
Many of the free e-book’s I’ve looked at are Chinese Communist Party propaganda, aimed at bringing up children in a “certain way”. These are usually translated into English by German companies and have Canadian/Chinese voice-overs that are hysterically bland and are not aware of western intonations, so you can get some very strange double entendres.
The big problem with the books at the moment is that anyone who can get hold of the rights to “content” is piling into the market, trying to get a foothold while the gold rush is on. Anyone can make an e-book and, it seems, just about everybody is! Some of the free e-books I’ve looked at can only be described as execrable!
In life you get what you pay for, and that goes for e-book’s as well as everything else. And if you don’t want to pay, don’t be surprised if all you get is rubbish, because the people you rely on to produce quality “content” still need to eat at the end of the day.
So you’re probably wondering what would be a good e-book to download? Well, I’m biased but I would recommend the Ginger Ninja on the iBooks store. (I’d put a link, but they don’t really work!)
Oh dear! Does it looks like I’m trying to sell you something :-)
