Last week, a personal essay of mine appeared on Tablet Magazine online. As it hit the front page, I braced myself. A couple of my previous contributions to Tablet received a lot of comments…including a bunch of nasty ones. I figured this latest essay–about being Jewish during the holiday season–might ruffle the feathers of readers.
A couple days after the story was published, much to my surprise Continue reading
So, Tablet published a piece of mine this week. It’s been a crazy experience.
In the first place, writing the piece was a bit out of my comfort zone. While I usually write fiction, this is a personal essay. In brief, the story is about confronting my inner teenager as I’m approaching 40 and relates an episode where I thought a younger man was checking me out in a cafe.
Trolls don’t only live under bridges.
The subject matter was outside the editorial policies of the chareidi magazines that comprise my usual stomping grounds, so I had to find an alternative publisher. Afraid I might embarrass my husband, I almost decided not to publish it at all, but he assured me that he didn’t mind. And when I shared an early draft with writing friends, the strongly positive reaction encouraged me further.
Tablet accepted my query, then the completed essay. They had it up in a matter of days. Whoa. It didn’t leave me much time to prepare myself. And, boy, did I have to prepare myself.
You see, there’s a lot of differences between a Jewish, but broad-spectrum, online magazine like Tablet and print magazines in the chareidi world. The biggest difference is the comments section.
In a print magazine, there is no comments section. Continue reading
About a year ago, my sister sent me a link to a blog post by Eric Kimmel about whether we’ll be seeing e-picture books.
Mr. Kimmel was responding to an article in the NY Times which describes the development of color monitors on ereaders. The article’s author strongly believes that the spread of these devices will attract child readers.
Mr. Kimmel brings up many salient points, both pro and con ereaders for children. On the pro side: producing an ebook is much cheaper than producing a full-color picture book with glossy paper; children might be attracted to the format. On the negative side: whose device are they reading on? Is a small child able to handle an ereader independently? Is the gimmick of the format going to wear off? Is it going to become another excuse for publishers not to acquire and produce picture books (which is already a big problem)?
I recalled that post today when I read another article, this time on the Motherlode blog of the NY Times. http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/why-books-are-better-than-e-books-for-children/
The author, KJ Dell’antonia, recently read a Time Magazine article about children’s literacy and ereaders. The Time article suggests that children interact differently with ebooks than with print literature–and so do the adults facilitating the reading experience. These habits negatively impact their ability to learn to read.
In the Jewish community, there’s an additional issue: a lot of relaxed family time takes place on Shabbat and Yom Tov. That’s when Ima and Abba have time to curl up with Junior and Juniorette and read. For many of us, that means no electronic devices. Sure, we’ll read an ebook, but not on Shabbos.
Maybe e-picture books do have a future–actually, I’m betting they do. But they’ll need to address at least some of these failings in order make them take over the picture book market entirely.
Rebecca Klempner 