Luke Robertson (aka Professor Bookman’s) resides in Los Angeles with his wife Sarah. He is a tremendous resource for all things pertaining to children’s literature.  We are so fortunate to have him as a regular contributor!  I highly encourage you to visit him at www.professorbookman’s.com as well as on Facebook. ~ TommyMom

…It Supports You Too, You Know.

This week, I’ve started a new enterprise as a school librarian in Los Angeles. The school itself is truly beautiful, housed in a 1931 Spanish Colonial Revival building designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The library is located through grand arching hallways lined with wooden paneling, frescos adorning every wall and ceiling… it feels a little like working at Hogwarts, I should think- simply magical.

Finding myself in awe at this library’s grandeur rekindled an old and dear feeling inside of me… I recall the first time I walked into the simple and sparse library of my childhood. Even though it was one small, dim room cramped with shelves, I was in awe. It seemed like every book on every shelf was just waiting for me to take it home.

When I was a teenager in high school, I would often have to wait for a ride home when school let out. I would walk over to the Palm Springs Public Library, a beautiful building with a large indoor fountain at its center… I would walk the aisles, exploring each section, running my hands over each awaiting treasure. Again, I felt an awe for this sacred place…

As a young man in my early twenties, I worked at UCLA’s Royce Hall, which sits directly across a grassy expanse from the grand Powell Library. Many times I arrived early to work in order to spend hours not just looking through the library’s books, but admiring the rooms themselves- the architecture, the atmosphere, the sheer awe the building itself inspired.

Libraries have played such an important part in my life and in the appreciation I’ve developed for books and the precious treasures they hold. A library is so much more than a place to rent books. It’s a temple, of a sort. Walking into a library has always felt very much like walking into a church to me. There is a quiet reverence; you feel as though you are in the presence of something great and inexplicable. It’s almost as if you can feel an adventure ready to begin. It’s an overwhelming and excited feeling, full of optimism and anticipation.

I suppose my point is this- developing an appreciation for the written word, a true love of literature, comes from more than just the act of reading. It comes from the attitude we have towards books, the role they play in our daily lives, and the presence books keep among us. Did you know studies have shown that the number of books in a home directly relates to a child’s academic success and the years of higher education that child will go on to pursue? It’s a fact- the more books a home contains, the farther a child in that home will go with his/her schooling. Surprisingly, this relationship has nothing to do with how many of those books the child reads, or how many of those books the parents read, or what the parents do for a living or even their economic status. The study found that only the number of books in the home is consistently significant.

Why? Why should the mere presence of books have such a dramatic influence in a child’s academic success? It is because the presence of those books embodies an idea that there is something important, something significant, something to be treasured inside of those books. After all, why else would someone have taken the time and effort to collect all of them?

Reading and books are a culture unto themselves. We inspire a love of books in our children when we display our own love for books, whether we collect them or read them regularly or take family trips to the library. These simple acts convey this message so much more than merely saying, “Look, kid, reading is important, so try to do it often, okay?”

If you want to inspire your children to be readers then start making those family trips to the library a regular occurrence. Go once a week, or every two weeks. Go to your local library’s story times, or author events, or just to see what’s new. Investing the time in your library yields a return that lasts a lifetime. So what are you waiting for? Go find those treasures waiting for you and your loved ones! Enjoy!

Adoration is an understated word when describing my feelings for this guest.  Our family has had the distinct pleasure of knowing Luke Robertson for much of his illustrious life.  Evidence of that statement is shown here in one of my favorite photos.  Luke is, um, “watching” Son #3…definitely an action shot.

Currently, Luke resides in Los Angeles, California, where he is Professor Bookman.  He runs extraordinarily successful book clubs, consults for an independent children’s bookstore, and shares life with his equally amazing wife Sarah, their cats and a dog.

I am honored to begin featuring him here monthly on TommyMom!

You can find Luke at www.professorbookmans.com, where he offers a plethora of information and ideas regarding literature, children and blending the two successfully. He also has a Facebook page by the same name.  Please take yourselves off  of  “Mute” and make Luke feel welcome here in our community by commenting with specific questions or topics you would like him to discuss.  Luke welcomes your input and feels that troubleshooting is one of his best qualities!

Today, Amazon.com announced that their e-book sales are greater than their paperback and hardcover book sales combined. Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, remarked, “We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly…”. E-book (a.k.a. “electronic” or “digital book”) technology is making enormous leaps forward, the results of which are dramatically changing the entire book industry. From publishing, to sales, to the very way we experience reading, this technology is revolutionizing the world of literature. The success of the e-book and the many e-book reading devices (such as the Kindle, the iPad, the NOOK, etc.) should come as no surprise to consumers; e-book technology offers them unrivaled convenience and ease shopping for books. Readers can now keep thousands of books in the palm of their hand; they can buy e-book versions of the latest books at considerably lower prices than print versions; they can even receive newly purchased books within 60 seconds and they can make these purchases from all over the world. While e-books are netting companies like Amazon.com billions of dollars through millions of sales, the costs of this phenomenon can be seen right in our own communities…

As news of the latest and greatest e-book innovations are making headlines, related news regarding our local bookstores, schools, and libraries are lucky to make the front page. In the past few years, Los Angeles has seen the closing of multiple independent bookstores, an epidemic that has recently spread to the larger chain bookstores as well. This fact, coupled with the major cutbacks to the public libraries and school libraries around the city, has many people questioning whether or not this is just a sign of the times. Undoubtedly, the proliferation of e-books and their online sales has hurt the business of independent bookstores. But maybe it is hurting the way we regard our printed books as well. Perhaps bricks-and-mortar bookstores and libraries are becoming obsolete.

Working in an independent bookstore myself, I am often asked, “With all these e-books and iPads and places like Amazon, how can a bookstore compete? Do you think publishers will actually print books for much longer?” I reply, “Yes. Yes I do. They have to… after all, the fate of the world depends on it.” This is usually met with a little laugh or a chuckle, as people do not seem to realize that I am only half-joking. The truth is the vast majority of the population has no idea how powerful and important books really are. Of the few that do, only a handful realizes how powerful and beneficial print books really are, and how detrimental e-books could be to those benefits.

Although there are endless differences between e-books, print books, and the benefits of each, the most important realization people need to make is that e-books are virtual books; they are not actual books. As obvious a distinction as this is the implications may not be quite so obvious. Books are treasures, after all. When you own an actual book, you own a literal treasure. You can keep it wherever you like; you can read it any time you want; you can give it to your children to have or to hold; you can loan it to your friends; you can sell it to strangers; a book can even become an heirloom as time goes by, a family treasure. Books are material possessions and we take a great amount of pride in owning them. We even get emotionally attached to these books in a way that exceeds their material value. My wife Sarah is a perfect example.

One of Sarah’s favorite possessions is a 1970 paperback copy of Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson, which used to belong to her mother. The book’s pages are yellowed, tape holds the spine together, and its original cost, 95¢, still adorns the torn cover. To this day my wife rereads this book. Yes, she loves the story, but it is the memory of her mother reading the very same book aloud to her that she loves the most.

Connecting with literature on this intimate level is how we learn to treasure books; we have to hold them, we have to see them, and we have to share them. This is why we go to libraries, to connect with the books. This is why we buy books for our children, to teach them to love literature and care for books like the treasures they are. You cannot make this kind of connection with a digital book.

When you purchase an e-book, you virtually own it; you do not actually own it. Buying an e-book is much more like renting or leasing a book in that there are limitations to your ownership. As of now, many of the benefits listed above are not possible (or at least have significant limitations) with e-books. There is just no pride of ownership with e-books, no emotional connection, and no real magic.

There is no doubt that e-books and devices like the iPad are the wave of the future. It is exciting just thinking about the potential this new technology has to offer. But there is no replacement for the family Bible that is passed down through generations, or the signed copy of The Lightning Thief you put in the hands of a child, or your mother’s favorite book. Reading a book is an actual experience, not a virtual one.  Make sure you realize the difference.