What Are YOU Doing on Family Day, Feb. 17?

What are you doing for family day? I'll be presenting two fun and informative workshops for kids about the legend of the Golem at The Jewish Literary Festival in Toronto.

The Golem is the subject of my upcoming Young Adult novel Gottika, which will be published by Dancing Cat Books this spring, and includes some dramatic illustrations by new talent Alexander Griggs-Burr.

In my workshop, we'll talk about the story and its influence on pop culture (you'd be surprised!), watch some funky videos and create comic strips based on the tale. So please come out and meet the Golem with us!

Alligator Why?

I recently came across a blogpost, which I can no longer find, about children's books that were inspired by other children's books.

I didn't write a whole book inspired by another, but I did once write a poem - a riposte to Dennis Lee's Alligator Pie.

Here it is, for your amusement:

Alligator Why?


A Riposte to Dennis Lee

By Helaine Becker

World Premiere:

ALOUD: Harbourfront International Children’s Festival

June 25, 2005







I cannot for the life of me

Think why you crave so desperately

Those rude, repulsive, yucky tarts

Made from mushed up reptile parts



Give me apple crumble, give me ham on rye,

But keep to yourself that Alligator Pie!



As if you hadn’t had enough

You still want more - some stewed up stuff

Boiled crocodilian grin

Reduced to flapping teeth and skin



Give me chicken paprikash, give me ratatouille

But keep to yourself your swampy-phooey-stewy!



Soup, you say, let’s have some soup

For crocks of croc, I will not stoop!

Potage d’Everglade is one

Dish from which I’ll always run



Give me bouillabaise or mushroom barley soup

But keep to yourself your gross-out gator goop!

Is Reading Fun?

Is reading fun? As a confirmed bookworm, I can reply with only one answer - of course it is. But that's not true for everyone - especially today's kids.  Even while literacy scores have been improving, we've managed to create a new generation of non-readers. According to an article in this week's National Post, fewer kids today report that they enjoy reading than they did a decade ago, despite an overall increase in literacy. 

My ultra-articulate response to this story is, "No duh." For at least the last decade, it's been obvious to those of us who care about literacy and reading that literacy education has been hijacked by the bureaucrats - functionaries who see the ability to read strictly as a job skill useful for future worker bees. Their view is that kids need to be taught to read - to decode written symbols - in order to produce valuable output - data entry, form-filling, ticking off of boxes on a customer satisfaction survey. The practical skill called literacy is completely divorced from what I would call true literacy - the ability to gather information from written sources of all kinds as a way to independently satisfy any curiosity.


In the reading-as-job-skill world view, reading for pleasure is beside the point, a distraction that interferes with measurable outcomes. So teacher-librarians, who spend their day encouraging kids to waste their time  - and tax payers' dollars  - giggling over books instead of building those black and white test scores, become redundant. And those expensive obsolete print collections called school libraries?  Frills. Let's put in a computer lab instead and call our job done. 

That has to be the thinking. Otherwise, how could politicians and educators spout the importance of literacy ad nauseum  while simultaneously gutting school libraries and eliminating school librarians?


With this week's news story, at last, the other shoe drops. Because of course you can't separate the love of reading from true literacy, any more than you can separate melody from music appreciation. There needs to be a reason to read, one that is meaningful to the reader, and not the bureaucrat, to drive true literacy. That reason comes when one discovers for one's self how books - and comics and magazines and DVDs -  open the world in unexpected ways, and how they can take you on a unique and highly personal journey.

Let's hope this new study gets the pendulum swinging back in the right direction. Let's put literacy education back into the hands of book lovers, people who revere the written world and respect children enough to let them come to the love of reading the only way possible - through old-fashioned discovery. And let's support - by funding AND through an appreciation of the critical role they play - the teacher-librarians in our schools.

They are the beating heart at the centre of any truly literate school community.

The Power of Children's Literature

Last night, I had the great pleasure of hearing Art Slade speak at the Lillian Smith Library in Toronto. His talk was entitled From Hobbits to HTML, and focused on the ever-changing world of digital publishing.

Art began his talk by describing some of the books that had influenced him when he was a child. At the top of his list was Tolkien's The Hobbit, and the Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander. Art said he'd read both of these in fourth grade, and they changed his life.

 Now Art and I had very little in common during our childhoods. He was raised on a ranch in Saskatchewan. I'm a New York native. He was a boy; I was a girl. But we did share one thing.

I, like Art, read The Hobbit and the Chronicles of Prydain when I was in 4th grade. And the books made a huge impression on me too.

Thousands of miles apart in space, and worlds away in terms of experience, both young Art and young Helaine were moved, inspired and changed by reading those same books. What does this small fact tell you about the power of literature, and the importance of reading for children, then and now?

Me, the summer I read The Hobbit. I was so taken with the book that I faked sick
and read the book in the motel as
the rest of my family explored the Grand Canyon.