“[C]hildren often prefer the factual over the fantastical. And a growing body of work suggests that when it comes to storybooks, they also learn better from stories that are realistic. For example, preschool-aged children are more likely to learn new facts about animals when the animals are portrayed realistically as opposed to anthropomorphically.” Two new studies suggest that where learning is concerned, realism trumps fantasy in children’s books. Which is as good a time as any to ask our own Jacob Lambert‘s question: Are picture books leading our children astray?
Rabbit Run
Howard?
“Writing on a computer can be terribly distracting, so sometimes I like to use a pencil and paper to jot down ideas. I always end up drawing a cartoon duck. Inevitably, the duck is holding a notepad, and I can read the ideas that he wrote down.” At Clickhole, six writers explain how they overcome writer’s block.
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Apathy at Fawlt
Fawlt is feeling apathetic, but not about their new issue, with fiction by Brian Evenson & John Sellekaers and Nic Kellman.
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Don’t Fear the Digital
A recent Pew Study reveals that, despite all trend pieces to the contrary, young people still like to read.
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Judge It By This
Year in Reading alum Chang-Rae Lee has a new book out this week, and its cover is making headlines. Readers who buy the limited edition of On Such A Full Sea will get the first 3D printed book cover in publishing history. According to the printers, each cover took fifteen hours to make.
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Fair Warning for Writers
Joe Hiland, The Indiana Review‘s fiction editor, has some advice for writers who submit to his (or any) magazine. He also lists “the three types of stories I most often reject because I feel like I’ve read them before.”
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Daphne Merkin on Larkin’s Letters to Mum
The collection reveals the poet’s softer side, and perhaps his creative inspiration.
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Back for More
Last week, I mentioned Look Who’s Back by Timur Vermes, which caused a stir in Germany with its tale of a time-hopping Hitler. Now, Daniel Torday reviews the book for the Times, judging it both for its historical research and its merits as a work of fiction. Sample quote: “The German public’s acceptance of the artist they think they’re watching provides a critique of pop culture. But it feels like bringing the Luftwaffe to a knife fight.”
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….ok but isn’t this “learn new facts about animals when the animals are portrayed” a sort of syllogism? Facts in the context of what the study purports appear to be of the strictly scientific (aka realist) variety. Realistically, none of the animals in the children’s book would speak thus any fable-type children’s book, strictly adhering to the logic of the argument, would devolve into a textfree, photorealistic portrayal of animals. To be fair, it seems highly implausible that such a children’s book [though the term naturalistic wildlife photo-story would seem more apt] would be able to convey any sort of moral content characteristic of primary socialization. In other words, while children’s zoological, biological and even botanical knowledge might experience an uptick, they would be deprived of the very cultural essence of what fables are about. …which in turn seems very much in line w the neolib ideal of producing technocratic factoid-mongers….