Journal articles on the topic 'Teenagers – Books and reading – Zimbabwe'


 
 
 Indonesia is a country that has a high potential for natural disasters. Picture story book is a form of disaster management learning that can help children from an early age to prepare for a natural disaster. The aims of this study to develop story books as a disaster management learning media, to improve knowledge and skills of children and teacher about the understanding, principles, and actions of rescue when facing the natural disasters, to increase the teacher’s learning quality in disaster management. Developmental research approach is used to execute the study. A total of 48 children aged 5-6 years have to carry out pre-test and post-test. Pre-test data shows that children's knowledge about disaster management with an average of 47.92% and its improved at post-test with 76,88%. Five theme of story books involves floods, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, lands and forest fires is the product. Dissemination of five story books are proper for children and improve their understanding of disaster management.
 Keywords: Early Childhood Education, Management Disaster, Storybooks
 Reference:
 
 
 
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With the development of computers, mobile phones and other digital devices with the internet, reading on screen has become an everyday activity as well as reading on paper. It is understandable that the task of reading has become more complicated with reading on screen. Therefore, the society is concerned about Reading on Paper and on Screen, especially of children and teenagers. The aim of the study is to gain an understanding of the nature of reading habits of teenagers in Colombo District, Sri Lanka. Main objectives of the study are to investigate the nature and extent of reading habits of teenagers, to find out the medium that the teenagers prefer when reading and to find out the attitudes of teenagers towards reading paper and screen. Both groups use e-media as well as read books. Though the majority prefer Paper as the medium of reading, they use the Screen medium too. Since the teenagers are much used to screen, we can use it to improve reading.

The study aimed to discover the impact of e-media on reading habits of teenagers aged 13-19 in Colombo district, Sri Lanka. A questionnaire was distributed among two schools to find out the demographic information, the nature and extent of reading habits, the media other than books that they are interested in and the attitudes towards Reading and E-media. Main conclusions of the study are that both groups using e-media as well as books and having positive attitudes towards reading, books and e-media. Using E –media does not affect their studies or social life. Since the majority of teenagers are heavy media users, the researcher suggests using e-media to enhance reading habits among them and to improve the quality of reading.

The relevance of the research is related to the need to develop pedagogical strategies for the formation of reading generations. The analysis of domestic studies of reading of teenagers for the last 50 years is carried out. We identify and describe the basic characteristics of teenagers reading behavior. Research results show that reading occupies a fairly stable place among the priority forms of leisure activities, despite the growing diversity and availability of other forms of leisure time. But due to the psychological and physiological characteristics of adolescence, their dynam-ism, it is not its main form. It is shown that the reading intensity of teenagers changes under the in-fluence of the social situation. The development of computer technologies, the increase in educa-tional loads, and the general lack of time reduce reading activity, but do not exclude teenagers from reading activities in general. The repertoire of teenager reading is gradually narrowing, limited to 2–3 genres. It is established that the top three most influential agents of influence on teenager reading include friends, parents, and teachers. Conclusions are drawn about the need for pe-dagogical support of teenagers reading activity. The main pedagogical tasks are defined: formation of teenagers’ awareness of the value of reading as a way of intellectual leisure, maintaining the balance of entertainment and cognitive motives for reading, expanding the genre and thematic repertoire of books read.

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to attempt to answer some plausible questions like what do teenagers prefer to read at leisure, how do they read and why do they read? With the rapid changes in information technology, there is tremendous change in means of communication. Today, much more information is available from electronic and digital media as compared to traditional books. A paradigm shift in information delivery from just information to infotainment has also affected the preferences of the information seekers. Teenagers are a demographic group under transition and they are not untouched by these rapid changes in technology and their impact on their reading preferences. Design/methodology/approach – For this purpose, a survey among 223 school-going (public/convent and government-/aided) teenagers aged between 12 and 18 years was done using a semi-structured questionnaire. Findings – The findings revealed a decline in sports and outdoor recreational activities during leisure, and only 20.6 per cent teenagers preferred reading during leisure. However, self-perception as an avid reader was expressed by majority (53.8 per cent). Fictions were liked by > 75 per cent teenagers; however, non-fictions were also liked by majority (61.8 per cent). The reading preferences of the children were found to be affected by their age, their gender and the type of schools they attended. A significant inverse relationship of television watching and movie-going was observed with reading time. Research limitations/implications – The biggest limitation was inability to directly interact with the students and inability to gather data from more schools. Practical implications – By knowing the current reading trends, leisure time habits and exposure to different means of information technology, the choice of medium for knowledge dispersal could be done. The study would help in providing a basis for a strategic change in the ratio of conventional books and other information media in the library. Social implications – By identifying the media exposure time and popularity, proper steps may be taken in order to enrich the particular media and to ensure that quality of information available on the media can be directed for social benefit in large. Originality/value – The impact of demographic and environmental variables on reading habits of teenagers has not been evaluated in this part of the world, especially in view of the paradigm shift in information technology and the growing influence of electronic media and social networking. An understanding of this mutual relationship would help in modifying the reading behaviour of the teenagers.

This article attempts to identify the interests and values of modern teenagers who live in a large peripheral city and attend events that are regularly held in municipal libraries. The main possible types of work of a modern library and secondary school are not only the recommendation of educational and extracurricular literature, events, Olympiads and competitions, but also the education of library culture among schoolchildren. The library is forced to infiltrate the school to keep up with school education. To do this, it is necessary to organize joint work with representatives of specific schools (their principals, head teachers, interested teachers and parents), as well as with higher-level organizations of municipal and regional levels. It was supposed to find out what is the basis of the attitude of adolescent schoolchildren to reading as a process and as a value. The article is based on the eponymous research conducted by the Izhevsk city libraries in 2019. The study showed a fairly high degree of interest of modern schoolchildren in the services that can be provided in municipal libraries. The main topics of information needed by respondents were identified. We also managed to determine the preferred genres of books. Respondents named their favorite authors and expressed their attitude to reading and reading people. Thanks to the results obtained, librarians are able to improve the culture of library services for library visitors of different socio-demographic groups and plan their professional activities more carefully.

This work is part of the project “Determining factors in the reading habits of secondary school students. A study from the variables of the educational context” (PR2017040), funded by the Own Research Plan of the University of Cádiz. The main objective is to know the reading consumption of Spanish teenagers. Specifically, the consumption of analog reading of students of 1st year of Compulsory Secondary Education in Spain is studied. A sample of students from the province of Cádiz (n=664) and from other Spanish provinces (n=192) responded to a questionnaire about their reading habits. It allowed, in the first instance, to determine if informants enjoy reading and, later, to gather information about what and in what format they read, the criteria on which they are based to choose their readings, how much time they dedicate to read and where they get their readings. The results indicate that this sector of the population prefers reading adventure books, chooses books by subject, reads more during holidays and uses their own books. However, it is confirmed that the development of the reading habit is still a subject to pass.

The article is devoted to the problem of transferring literary culture from previous generations to “Generation Z”. A brief description of this generation is presented from the perspective of the theory of generations by American researchers Neil Hove and William Strauss. The topic of children’s reading for generations of the 20th century is briefly covered. By the example of the reading repertoire of children and teenagers, works of literary classics and actual children’s literature, the article shows the process of gradual weakening of the transfer of values of literary culture from generation to ge­neration. The materials of complex and sociological research, conducted by the Russian State Children’s Library at the beginning of the 21st century, highlight the problems of reading the best literature that traditionally has been included in the reading of generations. The results of research given in the article testify to the process of losing the nearly century-old literary tradition. For instance, this problem can be seen in the example of parents choosing books for children of primary and secondary school age. In many ways, the repertoire of reading literary classics by children and adolescents is formed by school: this is the school curriculum and lists of extracurri­cular reading. The interest of schoolchildren in classical literature and in books of previous generations continues to fall. The process of changing the repertoire of leisure reading in adolescents is shown. The repertoire of their reading is significantly fragmen­ted. This is largely due to trends in the development of book publishing and the spread of literature. The article indicates the pros and cons of adolescents’ reading, caused by new information technologies; shows the influence of these technologies on reading literacy and reading culture. The process of literature selection by adolescents, boys and girls, is illustrated basing on the results of another new study. It is shown that the choice of schoolchildren is largely random and contains works of modern literature with a predominance of fantasy genre books. The research results demonstrate that today the main factors that have a significant impact on the choice of literature for teenagers and young people are video production and peers’ advice. Solving the problem of supporting reading and forming a reading circle of “Generation Z” schoolchildren, in the context of literary tradition attenuation, is a difficult task to be accomplished by competent adult mentors together with adolescents and young people themselves.

villages in Surabaya that has a very dense population. In this digital era, children and young people are less aware of the need to read. In the tongue, teenagers are not so concerned with learning. Bhayangkara University in Surabaya held a Community Service program which took place in the Lidah Wetan Hamlet, Lakarsantri District, Surabaya City. With the theme "Preserving Literacy Culture". The program is inseparable from the vision and mission of local village officials. With the mini library created by Community Service Team, Bhayangkara University is expected to increase the enthusiasm and interest in reading in the surrounding community. This mini library provides a variety of books ranging from children's story books, learning books to read, learning books to write, learning books to draw, school materials, to religious nuances books and other books (food recipes, fiction stories, etc.). Some programs are directed at encouraging children's potential in reading culture and fostering youthful enthusiasm in organizing. Nowadays many young people are trying to challenge Karangtaruna. Several agendas are designed to solve these problems.

The article is devoted to reading modification, which is most widespread today, educational reading. For the first time educational reading of Siberian and Far Eastern residents became a subject of an independent research. Its importance to develop a personality, society, state is reasoned. The author considers the corpus making educational reading, to which refers textbooks, manuals, reference books, encyclopedias, fiction according to school curricula and other editions that addressing is related to educational activity. The audience of educational reading is revealed and characterized, its age and gender structure is defined. Children, teenagers, youth entered it by age criterion, mainly women by a gender one. Pupils made the most group of users of municipal and state libraries on number. Among them senior school children more often addressed to libraries for preparation to classes. Requests for educational literature averaged from 60 to 90% of all requirements in municipal libraries of the region. Author's definitions of the term «educational reading» are offered to a scientific community for discussion.

This paper examines the history and current state of literature for teenagers. In modern criticism young-adult genre stands out in literature for adolescents. An introductory excursion into the history of the concept of “young adults” and literature for this category of readers is given. Criticism of such works is considered by video bloggers who place their clips on Youtube platform. It is analyzed whether these responses affect the book market conditions. According to the most conservative estimates, more than half of the literature published by major publishers is Young-adult books. They are read not only by teenagers, but also by adults who want to immerse themselves in their youth. The theme of Young-adult literature is serious and multifaceted. It attracted both professional authors, whose works become real literary events, and young, non-professional authors. The study of these works is important from the point of view of studying the sociology of teenage life, to understand what young people live, what problems are reflected in such works, albeit in a crooked mirror.

The low literacy culture is a problem that should be our responsibility. Thus, the solution is not only based on formal education, but also paying attention to environmental factors. Because the environment is one of the factors that influence society's habits or interests. So literacy-based social movements should be considered. This study aims to examine the social capital in community of Tuban Literacy and its function to collective action taken to build a youth reading culture in Tuban district. This research takes case study to community of Tuban Literacy. Community Tuban Literacy is a youth community that is engaged to cultivate youth literacy culture in Tuban district. The methodology used in this study is qualitative design with data collection method through observations and in-depth interviews that aim to obtain specific data related to social capital and collective action process undertaken by community Tuban Literacy. Based on the analysis, the social capital of community of Tuban Literacy has a significant effect on collective action. The collective action in the form of activities is Lapak Baca, Tadarus Books, Nggacor sak mbledose, Tour to School, Writing Competition, Cangkruk'an Literacy, Ngamen Literacy, Reading Tree, and Pesantren Literacy. These activities are able to attract teenagers to participate in every community of Tuban Literacy activity. The average ability of young people to read in the community of Tuban Literacy is at the level of literacy. Thus, the output produced is a lot of teenagers whose intensity of reading increases and leads to critical thinking. Keywords: Community, Social Capital, Collective Action, Literacy Culture

With millions of adolescents participating in sports each year and with the popularity of sporting events ranging from the Super Bowl and the NBA playoffs to the Olympics, athletics is an important part of many teenagers’ lives. However, young adult sports literature is not just about the big game or the vicarious feeling of elation that comes with winning or the catharsis that comes with reading about defeat. Instead, as young adult author and scholar Chris Crowe (2004) notes, many young adult sports books are about more than sports. Instead, they “deal with realistic social issues that real people, not just athletes, often confront” (p. 36).

The article deals with the main problems of youth in Russia in the current time. Attention is drawn to the excessive fascination of teenagers with social networks and the Internet, their loss of the adequate spiritual values in life, total childrens’ dependence on gadgets, cyberbullying, the lack of commitment to self-development and self-knowledge. As the solutions, the authors suggest the development of sociable abilities to the young people, the education of the desire for the personal growth and awareness of the responsibility for their actions. The necessity of reading books by the younger generation, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, playing sports and tourism activities, and engaging in a certain hobby is noted.

Introduction: Depression is one of the most common mental disorders and a serious disease that plagues many people today who end up in this through their various problems. The prevention and treatment of adolescent depression is a major issue for the society and for this reason it is important to further study this issue.Aim: This study aims to explore research studies about teenagers’ depression and its effects as well as ways to prevent and address it. Moreover, it aims to seek all cultural and historical aspects of the individual and his/her family to further understand the issue. Material and Method: This is a systematic review of research studies in the electronic databases EBSCO, MedLine, Pubmed journals and books and articles referring to the issue of teenage depression.Results: This systematic review showed that depression is a daily occurrence that affects many people and that adolescents with depression tend to multiply rather than diminish. Among the most important methods of treatment are psychotherapy and reading books.Conclusions: Young people with depression problems find difficulties in their performance in school and society and often have changes in their eating habits as they stretch their weight very often. The consequence of all the above is often suicidal behavior and suicidal tendencies or even thoughts of suicide. So the necessary prevention is needed to avoid unpleasant situations.

Mental health has become a big problem in Indonesia. Adolescents are a category that is prone to stress, and is often handled inappropriately by themselves, relatives, or parents. Stress is still considered a trivial matter for most Indonesians. In fact, stress is one of the triggers for various kinds of physical and psychological ailments. The lack of interesting reading for teenagers about stress makes this phenomenon still difficult to get the first treatment before it continues to an undesirable stage. The purpose of this design is to create an illustrated book that discusses stress information with the content as simple as possible and attractive so that it is easily understood by adolescents. This design uses themethod design thinking in order to get the right problem-solving solution in designing the work. There are two media in the design, namely primary media, illustrated books, information about stress and secondary media, namely x-banners and merchandise. By designing this illustration book, it is hoped that it can become a new media choice as informative reading about stress.

Health care and hygiene are things that are widely discussed in the community. For teenagers this is considered not important because they do not know the impact that will be caused if this is not done properly, especially during menstruation. While during menstruation issued not only blood cells but also epithelial cells of the uterine wall. In the world, the incidence of reproductive infections is around 2.3 million per year, mostly teenagers. According to the percentage of schools with the third highest number of students found in SMP N 19 Jambi City, with a target number of VIII grade students of 138 students. This study aims to determine the description of knowledge and attitudes of young women towards personal hygiene during menstruation at SMP N 19 Jambi City in 2018. The population in this study was VIII grade students totaling 138 female students. The number of samples is 58 students taken randomly using simple random sampling technique. This study uses univariate analysis to describe the frequency distribution table of the studied variables. The results of data analysis showed that respondents who had poor knowledge were 38 respondents (65.5%), and respondents with negative attitudes were 32 respondents (55.2%). It is hoped that in future schools will pay more attention to the knowledge of students about adolescent reproductive health by providing reading books and occasionally working with the nearest health center to conduct counseling.

<p>The Ramayana epic has many moral values that can be used as guidance in our daily life especially for the development of a person towards a better direction. Besides this, there are many other lessons that can be learned from within each Ramayana epic stories, for example, the values and norms, customs, mannerism lessons and the various characteristics of people and so on. But today’s digital or Net Generation teenagers do not find reading Ramayana as fun or interesting because of its text form. The technology is more advanced and Ramayana epics look very ancient in the eyes of this Digital Natives. This study used the idea of gamification, a game play mechanics to create meaningful learning experiences and make the learning more interesting and fun. Gamification also looks at games and learning from a different angle on how to make learning more meaningful, engaging, interactive, fun and interesting. In view of this, this research aims to seek if the use of online interactive activities could encourage and motivate teenagers to read Ramayana epics. Forty Primary Tamil students participated in this study voluntarily. The data were collected through a questionnaire. Based on the pre-questionnaire data regarding respondents’ prior knowledge on Ramayana, it was found that respondents had minimal knowledge about it. 37% said they would like to read the epic through comic books and 63% claimed that they would prefer computer. This study has some implications for computer assisted language learning. </p>

This paper focuses on an exceptionally interesting kind of books dedicated to young readers, quite popular recently in Poland, namely picture biography books for children and teenagers. Polish publishing houses, especially Muchomor from Warsaw, for the last few years have been coming up with a number of intriguing titles, both in the matter of words, and also in their graphic contents, especially the series “Gdansk Trilogy”. Brave ideas, young talents, novel artistic solutions, and original illustrations make the lives of famous people, not so very well-known figures and some unknown names – from both far and near, homeland and neighbourhood history – attractive reading matter. The author also looks back at the history of Polish illustrations included in biographies published in the second half of the 20th century. By combining the traditions of Polish applied graphic art with its up-to-date condition the author wants to trace the impact of the old and the novelty of contemporary books. She wants to stress the expressive power of an image turning illustrations into independent works of art. The number of illustrations and the graphic concept of an up-to-date language of visual forms make them genuine picture stories (especially in the designs by Ignerska). By means of comparative analyses of form and style, as well as a theory of image, she is going to focus on features of the visual side of the aforementioned books. The author would also like to stress the change in the way of perceiving the common history of places with such a complicated history as Gdańsk itself (in which Elisabeth and Johannes Hevelius, Fahrenheit, Schopenhauer, despite their German roots, are treated as part of the common heritage).

The development of Islamic print media that targets youth as readers has challenged pesantren for selecting appropriate reading materials for students according to its values and tradition. This paper aims to examine the dynamics life of pesantren as fortress for the defense of the Islamic community in dealing with influences coming from outside of pesantren. Analyzing the responses of young leaders of pesantren to print media (books, novels, and magazines) containing Islamic values and symbols, and targeting Muslim teenagers as their readers and consumers, with focusing on how these media might influence the establishment of the cultural identity of santri. My paper will answer two main questions: how do the young pesantren leaders respond on the emergence of many novels and magazines that come into the pesantren? What are the rules and regulations they introduce to preserve the cultural identity of santri? In dealing with the challenge of print media, most of the pesantren where these young pesantren leaders live have an exception regarding book materials as an attempt to form and protect the cultural identity of santri.

Growth has always been a long, long journey, for everyone. But for one special group, the emigrants, they experience “the journey to the west” and we can have a deeper understanding of their growth by reading relevant books that have a vivid description of their life. Been There, Done That is an autobiographical initiation novel that is written by a young girl Katharine Wang who emigrated to the U.S.A with her parents when she was very young. This novel presents us the rich and colorful high school life of three young emigrants and their friends. These young emigrants were confronted with two diverse cultures, which made their growth tinted with unique characteristics that were quite different from those settled in native soil. The paper aims at analyzing the growth of these young emigrants through three different perspectives, that is, cognitive journey of colorful activities, emotional journey of kinship, friendship and relationship and spirtual journey of ethnic identity. A probe into their distinct cross-cultural growth will not only be conducive to the growth of countless emigrants, but also beneficial to all the teenagers’ growth on the whole.

Globalization has had an impact on the education system in the UAE, where increased use of bilingual curriculum (Arabic-English) is held in high regard. Nevertheless, literacy among Emirati children and teenagers remains low. This study uses a 15-item, open-ended questionnaire completed by Emirati parents and an 8-item, open-ended questionnaire completed by Emirati primary school children from 8 to 11 years of age, and compares the translation of The Little prince into Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and into the Emirati dialect. The results suggest that not only the Emirati dialect, but any Arabic dialect (in its respective Arab country) could be used in primary schools to motivate children to read in Arabic and bridge the gap between their spoken language (dialect) and formal written Arabic. Not only must an Arab child learn how to read, but also, they have to understand a very formal language system that they are not used to speaking at home, i.e., Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Having books in their own dialects may make children more interested in reading, as they can understand them more easily.

Globalization has had an impact on the education system in the UAE, where the increased use of bilingual curriculum (Arabic-English) is held in high regard. Nevertheless, literacy in Arabic among Emirati children and teenagers remains low. This study uses a 15-item, open-ended questionnaire completed by Emirati parents and an eight-item, open-ended questionnaire completed by Emirati primary school children from 8 to 11 years of age to compare the translations of The Little Prince into Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and into the Emirati dialect. The results suggest that not only the Emirati dialect, but any Arabic dialect (in its respective Arab country) could be used in primary schools to motivate children to read in Arabic and bridge the gap between their spoken language (dialect) and formal written Arabic. Not only must an Arab child learn how to read, but also, they have to understand a very formal language system that they are not used to speaking at home, i.e., Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Having books in their own dialects may make children more interested in reading, as they can understand them more easily.

The lack of interest in reading nowadays is one of the factors in the decline of the nation's regeneration that loves literacy. The Education Village Library Group of Kuajang Village, Binuang District is one of the literacy movements established in Kuajang Village. This library is part of a project of teenagers and hamlet residents to build a literacy village to feel the equal distribution of education without having to abandon the value of local wisdom. In addition, it also aims to increase public interest in reading through the development of an appropriate technology as a solution, namely the digital library. The method of implementation is in accordance with the planning stages that have been prepared, namely the stages of activities that begin with the coordination and analysis of needs (Phase I), digital library application design (Phase II), application integration in the framework model (Phase III), and the use of systems in the field (Stage IV). The results show that the application development uses the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) model that can facilitate the user in the process of searching for books and the initial display of the digital library system in the form of a catalog. To optimize the use and utilization of this application, training is carried out to users and managers of the Education Village Library Group. In addition, periodic monitoring and assistance will be carried out to ensure the use of this system can be operated and the benefits are felt by the community

The condition and development of the Jewish libraries on the territory of Belarus before the World War I is researched. The author emphasizes that the Jews were one of the biggest ethnic groups in the region; therefore, they influenced cultural and educational processes on the Belarusian territories, including the development of librarianship. Special attention is paid to the quantity of the Jewish population on the Belarusian territories before the World War I (1897– 1914). It is also stressed that the Jews used the oral and written language at a sufficient level: this is an important condition for the development of nation-based libraries. The author analyses the state of the Jewish libraries in Vilno, Vitebsk, Grodno, Minsk and Mogilev provinces. The positive points are as follows: a good number of readers, free access to books outside the libraries as a stimulating measure to increase some interest among visitors, and periodicals reading rooms in some Jewish libraries in Belarus. Some obstacles on the way to the active development of the already existing and newly appearing Jewish libraries are revealed. They are as follows: weak state financial support, untimely book fund renewal, narrow target groups (mostly children and teenagers), non-qualified staff, low level of record management and local authorities’ bans for the registration of new libraries.

AbstraksiBangunan-bangunan ikonik di kota Semarang menjadi saksi perjuangan masyarakat dalammelawan penjajah. Salah satunya yaitu monumen Tugu Muda sebagai simbol pertempuranlima hari Semarang. Peristiwa tersebut dikenang dalam teatrikal yang ramai ditonton olehkalangan remaja hingga orang tua. Di sisi lain, penceritaan peristiwa bersejarah tersebutjustru belum bisa dinikmati oleh anak-anak, sebagai generasi emas Indonesia. Anak-anakhanya mengetahuinya dari buku bacaan. Padahal, karakter anak dalam menyerap informasisangat membutuhkan cara tepat diantaranya dalam empat gaya, yaitu: auditori, visual,reading, dan kinestetik. Berdasarkan permasalahan tersebut, maka dibutuhkan media edukasiyang bisa menggabungkan keempat gaya tersebut untuk memberi pengetahuan kepada anaktentang cerita historikal Tugu Muda secara efektif, komunikatif, dan menyenangkan denganmengadaptasi teori Difusi-Inovasi berupa konsep miniatur yang ditata mengacu pada lingkungansekitar Tugu Muda. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif sesuai dengan permasalahanyang diangkat. Pemanfaatan konsep miniatur menjadi cara baru yang melibatkan kemampuanmendengar, melihat, membaca, serta gerak aktif anak-anak. Hasil dari penelitian ini yaitu mockup miniatur Tugu Muda yang berisi visualisasi suasana monumen beserta beberapa karakterpejuang dan penjajah, yang dikembangkan melalui design thinking. Kata Kunci: design thinking, difusi-inovasi, edukasi, miniatur, Tugu Muda AbstractThe iconical building in Semarang become prove about peoples struggle againts invaders.One of them is Tugu Muda as a symbol of the Semarang five days battle. That incident isremembered through theatrical which is watched by teenagers to parents. On the other side,the storytelling about that historical incident has not been enjoyed by children yet, which areIndonesia golden generation. Children know that story only from books. Whereas, children’scharacter in obtaining information needs the right way, including in four styles, namely:auditory, visual, reading, and kinesthetic. Based on that problem, an educational media isneeded to combine four styles to share knowledge for children about Tugu Muda historicalstory effectively, communicatively, and pleasantly by adapting Difusion-innovation theoryin form of miniature concept which is arranged according to the environtment around TuguMuda. This research uses qualitative methods according to the main problem. The usage ofminiature concept becomes a new way which involves children’s ability of listening, seeing,reading, and practicing. The result of this research is mock up about Tugu Muda miniaturewhich contains visualization of the monument situation along with some characters of warriorand invader, which is developed through design thinking.Keywords: design thinking, diffusion-innovation, education, miniature, Tugu Muda

Purpose – The paper aims to explore the purposes of school libraries as they are viewed by teenagers attending a high school in northern England. Design/methodology/approach – The work is based on qualitative data contributed by 245 youngsters. Their material was coded inductively and frequency counts were generated in order to determine the balance of the data in relation to individual themes. Findings – Typically, the school library was understood as an area that made available books either for pleasure reading or academic purposes. No participant referred either to the work of librarians or to the value of libraries in enabling the user to find information in support of personal interests. Research limitations/implications – The research took place in only one school and it may well have been the case that many students who were apathetic towards school libraries simply declined the opportunity to participate in the work. Practical implications – Although the attitudes of the young people who contributed data were to an overwhelming degree constructive, key gaps were evident in their awareness of the potential of a school library. These are best rectified by managers developing their facility in such a way that it serves to demonstrate effectively to students the roles that the school library can play in a diversity of situations. Originality/value – Much of the published literature dealing with the purposes of school libraries and the prerequisites necessary to ensure their effectiveness pays little regard to the ideas of young people themselves. This paper goes some way towards remedying the deficiency.

<p>Abstract. This study is based on the existence of community learning park (in Indonesian, it‟s called Taman Belajar Masyarakat/ TBM), which lacks the attention and participation of the community in the management and development. It supports the authors to study how empirical conditions of community park management and how to develop community learning parks by integrating local cultures and local wisdom. The method used is Participatory Rural Appraisal method and data collection techniques was done by interview, observation, and documentation study. The subject of the study was TBM "Daar ElFikr" Jambu . Based on preliminary studies, the empirical condition of TBM in the management is still traditional, the teenagers are still unfamiliar with the culture of reading and writing, inadequate information technology, the absence of documentation of the work, the lack of knowledge of cultural values of the village and the local wisdom of the young generation, against traditional games, as well as quite a number of less productive teenage figures. While the form of community participation in the management of TBM is still private social. Following a community-based approach through activities that integrate the local culture and wisdom of the community, it turns out that this can make a difference in TBM. For the program activities currently carried out include: 1) Implementation of writing classes are carried out periodically to be recorded and published in a book. 2) The creation of an online book catalog that provides information about books owned by TBM and the website contains information on<br />TBM activities. 3) Documented traditional educative game CD containing life skill learning, such as mbubuan, dakon, ular tangga, gedrik, ular naga, paman dolit, wodowo, cublek-cublek suweng, sabrem, dan gobrak sodor. 4) Establishment of self-employment group.</p><p> </p><p>Abstrak. Kajian ini dilatarbelakangi adanya taman-taman belajar masyarakat (TBM) yang kurang mendapatkan perhatian maupun partisipasi masyarakat dalam pengelolaan maupun pengembangannya. Hal tersebut mendukung penulis untuk melakukan kajian bagaimana kondisi empiris pengelolaan taman bacaan masyarakat serta bagaimana pengembangan taman belajar masyarakat dengan mengintegrasikan budaya dan kearifan lokal masyarakat. Metode yang dipergunakan yaitu metode Participatory Rural Appraisal dan tehnik pengumpulan data berupa wawancara, observasi, dan studi dokumentasi. Subjek<br />penelit ian adalah TBM “Gelaran Buku Daar El Fikr” Jambu. Berdasarkan kajian awal, kondisi empiris TBM dalam pengelolaan masih bersifat tradisional, minimnya budaya membaca dan menulis remaja desa, belum memadainya teknologi informasi, belum adanya dokumentasi hasil karya, kurangnya pengetahuan nilai-nilai budaya desa dan kearifan lokal generasi muda, tidak mengenalnya anak-anak terhadap permainan tradisional, serta cukup banyak angka kurang produktif remaja. Sedangkan bentuk partisipasi masyarakat dalam pengelolaan TBM masih bersifat sosial pribadi. Setelah dilakukan pendekatan berbasis masyarakat melalui kegiatan yang mengintegrasikan budaya dan kearifan lokal masyarakat, ternyata hal ini dapat memberikan perubahan di TBM. Untuk program kegiatan yang dilakukan saat ini diantaranya:1) Dilaksanakannya kelas menulis yang dilaksanakan secara periodik hingga dibukukan dan diterbitkan dalam sebuah buku. 2) Terciptanya katalog buku online yang memberikan informasi terkait buku-buku dimiliki TBM dan website memuat informasi kegiatan yang dilakukan TBM. 3) Terdokumentasikannya CD permainan edukatif tradisional yang mengandung pembelajaran ketrampilan hidup, yaitu : mbubuan, dakon, ular tangga, gedrik, ular naga, paman dolit, wodowo, cublek-cublek suweng, sabrem, dan gobak sodor. 4) Terbentuknya kelompok wirausaha mandiri </p>

People with high levels of literacy usually have low crime rates and high intelligence. It is expected that the school community itself will happen in the school environment like teachers and students. The purpose of this research is to collect information on the learning styles and preferences of young junior high school students who are curious and critical. It is very useful to cultivate interest in reading English literature books in order to increase the cultural and social value of students who intend to apply for school literacy campaigns. The reading literacy development model used is the Plomp model: preliminary research, prototyping and evaluation. Science books such as textbooks recommended by the Cambridge Courses may have a major and popular impact because they can increase their value in various courses that use English. Educators are expected to use related books in their learning and lead the school's reading and writing movement. The result of validation of teaching materials indicates that reading literacy material with the use of English-language publications is important and can be tested.

Now that classroom doors at schools everywhere have closed until fall, we’re delighted to recommend a diverse cross-section of books for children of all ages to enjoy during the long, lazy days of summer. Young readers are sure to find something here to relish and pore over while school is out. The featured picture books offer a parade of colourful characters, from ballerinas to penguins, and themes that will make you laugh out loud, while others deal with difficult life events like those covered in Really and Truly, where a boy tries to communicate with his grandfather as his memories are being robbed by Alzheimer’s. One of the most enjoyable picture books of the year is Dave Whamond’s Oddrey for its charming illustrations and timeless message of misfit children who overcome challenging events or circumstances. For those who are looking for a picture book about sibling relationships, Kyo Maclear’s Virginia Wolf is an excellent choice; it is a beautifully rendered and poignant story about sisterly differences and depression. It is a beautifully rendered tribute to real-life sisters, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, who were members of an early twentieth-century group of influential writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group. There are also many excellent novels for teenagers, including several absorbing stories that promise to hook otherwise reluctant readers. The final installment in The Boy Sherlock Holmes series is highly recommended for its nail-biting story of the boy Holmes’ final case. We also recommend Karen Armstrong’s The Rising for young adults interested in urban fantasy, romance, and supernatural themes. The variety of reads in this issue is truly impressive, and we hope this issue will inspire you to encourage children of all ages to read every day this summer. Best wishes, Robert DesmaraisManaging Editor

This article takes a phenomenological approach that combines interpretivist and critical forms of research paradigms to explain mmino wa bana (children’s songs) as a determinant of reading recorded knowledge among teenagers in Ga Molepo, South Africa. Data was collected from focus groups in a purposive sample of rural teenagers engaged in learning through song and repetition. The multiple case study method was employed to draw data from multiple sources including the rural teenagers’ childhood experiences and literature in library and information science, the behavioral sciences (i.e., anthropology, sociology, and psychology), musicology, and folklore. Photovoice was used to visualise rural teenagers in their natural habitat. This research argues that recorded knowledge in the form of books and other printed material is what drives reading within the school system and the purview of mass reading. The findings reveal that best practice in reading programmes should consider ways of knowing from traditional and modern communities. The driving of reading programmes in South Africa and the continent at large requires a critical interpretivist approach that acknowledges the nature of being of traditional communities and their local epistemologies. The article concludes that mmino wa bana should be catalogued and made accessible in new formats that integrate technology. Policymakers in arts, culture, and heritage (i.e. library and information services) should consider the importance music plays in the early development of rural teenagers.

This study explores how New Zealand primary school students’ experiences of school libraries affected their attitudes towards reading for pleasure once they entered secondary school. Two hundred and seventy-six students in their first year at high school completed a survey asking about their primary school libraries. The students were asked to self-identify as keen readers, occasional readers or non-readers. The results were analysed in a spreadsheet, considering variables such as attitude to reading, former school and family background. The students were mainly positive about their libraries, but were bothered by cramped and noisy environments and books they perceived as babyish. Students from schools with a librarian were more positive about reading for fun than those from schools where the library was not prioritised. Students from a family background where reading was encouraged were more likely to maintain a positive attitude to reading by the time they reached high school.

This work is part of the project “Determining factors in the reading habits of secondary school students. A study from the variables of the educational context” (PR2017040), funded by the Own Research Plan of the University of Cádiz. The main objective is to know the reading consumption of Spanish teenagers. Specifically, the consumption of analog reading of students of 1st year of Compulsory Secondary Education in Spain is studied. A sample of students from the province of Cádiz (n=664) and from other Spanish provinces (n=192) responded to a questionnaire about their reading habits. It allowed, in the first instance, to determine if informants enjoy reading and, later, to gather information about what and in what format they read, the criteria on which they are based to choose their readings, how much time they dedicate to read and where they get their readings. The results indicate that this sector of the population prefers reading adventure books, chooses books by subject, reads more during holidays and uses their own books. However, it is confirmed that the development of the reading habit is still a subject to pass.

This paper eschews normative constructions of formalized ‘online learning’ to argue that learning with ‘the internet’ is mostly vernacular, ordinary, messy and constant. It uses the example of #booktok short videos to argue that individuals frequently learn from and with peers in online spaces, where ‘peerness’ is defined broadly. The paper draws on traditions within education, media and communications research such as theories of media pedagogies that refuse to see learning as pedagogically isolated within formal learning arrangements. I build on these foundations to conceptualize how TikTok viewers learn about books and reading via ‘peer pedagogies’. ‘Peer Pedagogies’ recognizes that in digital contexts individuals often learn from other individuals, regardless of if the ‘teacher’ in the relationship is directly known to the learner, and regardless of if ‘teaching’ is intended or purposeful. For instance, peer pedagogies and learning are frequently central characteristics of the relationships that form between ‘micro-celebrities’ and their fans. The paper discusses findings from an ongoing nationally funded Australian study which is mapping the digital ecology of teen reading in Australia. The project argues that one avenue for teens to find out about books is on digital platforms via peer pedagogies. That is, teenagers may purposefully or casually learn about books and reading from everyday users and micro-celebrities on digital platforms. The TikTok #booktok hashtag is therefore being investigated to identify examples of how young people learn about books and reading via TikTok videos and associated communities.

Successful promotion of a reading culture in rural schools requires the participation of the rural community who need more education on the importance of a library and how it is a central asset that can empower them to be productive citizens of their country. In rural Zimbabwe, there are few libraries existing in schools, creating a situation which has impacted negatively on the literacy and reading levels of the poor marginalized rural children. This paper therefore explores the collaboration and partnership of a rural community, parents, schools, local traditional leaders and international trust organizations in promoting a reading culture in schools by encouraging the community to develop an interest in books as resources that can transform their livelihoods. The author on his first visit met with important stakeholders such as School Heads, School Development Committee who are the parents’ representatives, the District Education Inspector, local Chief and several Headmen, Village Councillor, local businesspeople and health workers. Five Schools which the author identified through Mavhurazi School Head’s assistance were targeted in order to elicit response on a culture of reading. The paper will offer recommendations on the best way forward regarding use of the books by rural learners of Mudzi district, and then concludes by examining best methods to adopt to promote reading and bring about better performance in schools by learners. The promotion of rural adult literacy is another issue to be examined by this paper as well as the need to support the Primary and Secondary School Ministry’s concerted efforts to bring on board the concept of adult literacy to the poor rural folks of Mudzi district in rural Zimbabwe.

We live in an era where knowledge becomes very diverse, expands and change quickly. Reading is the most effective way in order to follow the knowledge, which is accelerated by the democracy and developments of the communication technologies. Therefore, modern societies give special attention to the activities regard to the reading culture.
 Nowadays, we are facing a young generation which does not need and care about reading as well as does not know how/why to read a literature writing. This generation prefers a consumption based artificial game world which is served via computer technologies and this kind of artificial places that internet cafes and game centers serve rather than reading and going to libraries. 
 This study aims to present “Book Characters Are Among Us” activity which makes reading interesting for teenagers by connecting reading with drama and improves their reading, writing and speaking skills. In addition, it evaluates the results of the activity which was held with a group of students.
 It was observed that, students started being interested in reading books, doing critical reading to understand and know the characters in the books, obtaining the creative thinking and writing experience and improving their speaking abilities that’s to “Books Are Among Us” activity. The activities were intentionally organized in Z Library in order to make students be aware of the facilities and possibilities which were given to their usage. The factors such as comfortable sitting zones, easiness of reaching a book, computer technology, being wide and spacious, usage of the place for book interviews, presentations and drama activities other than book taking and returning are the reasons for students to come to Z Library.

In most countries, the introduction of computer technology in schools has seen the role of school libraries transformed. Adoption of new technologies are now seen to be enhancing school libraries’ ability to perform their mission, vision and role, that is, providing learners access to a wide range of reading material to enable them to acquire knowledge as well as ability to read books online. This paper will address the impact computer technology is having on rural school learners at Katsande Primary School. It will explain how embracing of computer technology has influenced learners concerning achieving quality education.

It is generally accepted that historically Africa experienced colonialism. Thus, in the neocolonial age articulated by the likes of Sugirtharajah, Segovia and Nkrumah, most African countries are faced with the challenge of power struggle in which imperialism and dictatorship inhibits the development of the Two-Thirds world countries. This challenge, it is argued, reveals an imperialistic tendency of the European Union, China and African government(s) to alter democracy and freedom. As such, the Zimbabwe context, amongst others, will be used as a main point of reference. This article examines the elements of imperialism in African states in the light of Persian hegemonic power in the books of Deuteronomy and Ezra-Nehemiah. It investigates whether or not the Jews were free under the Persian hegemonic influence in the post-exilic period. The comparison of the influence of Persian hegemony in the books of Deuteronomy and Ezra-Nehemiah with the evidence of imperialism in African government(s), leads to the argument that certain African states do not appear to be completely democratic and free.Intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary implications: Based on aspects of Old Testament and political science studies, this article explores traces of imperialism in African governments in the light of Persian hegemonic power in the Hebrew Bible. In the end, the article argues that certain African states, for instance Zimbabwe, should not be considered as completely democratic and free nations.

AbstractSignificant changes started in the children’s books market from 1989. The market gradually began to be saturated with far less expensive reprints of Western productions. Their artistic form is based on the style of cartoons, thus replacing the diversity of illustrations which is necessary to activate the development of child’s perception. Consequently, a special role is played by measures aimed to popularize the artistic achievements of artist-illustrators and designers of books for children in Poland. After the political system transformation, earlier activities were continued (plein-air workshops for illustrators in the Roztocze region). New undertakings were also initiated (meetings with graphic layout artists, conferences, exhibitions, workshops for children and teenagers in libraries). The article discusses the activities of Gallery [Galeria] 31 at Branch no. 30 of Hieronim Lopaciński City Public Library in Lublin, Poznań Trade Fair Meetings in Poznań, and plein-air workshops for artist-illustrators. These events are an example of local and nation-wide activities. They develop a conscious attitude towards the impact of the book form as a visual communication. The forms of Polish books (including textbooks and reading list books) for the youngest readers cannot be regarded as satisfactory.

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Verifying the authorship of a parodic text. Literary and Linguistic Computing (Oxford, UK) 20.4 (2005), 437–450.05–496Clarke, Paula, Charles Hulme & Margaret Snowling (U of York, UK; CH1@york.ac.uk), Individual differences in RAN and reading: a response timing analysis. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.2 (2005), 73–86.05–497Colledge, Marion (Metropolitan U, London, UK; m.colledge@londonmet.ac.uk), Baby Bear or Mrs Bear? Young English Bengali-speaking children's responses to narrative picture books at school. Literacy (Oxford, UK) 39.1 (2005), 24–30.05–498De Pew, Kevin Eric (Old Dominion U, Norfolk, USA; Kdepew@odu.edu) & Susan Kay Miller, Studying L2 writers' digital writing: an argument for post-critical methods. Computers and Composition (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 22.3 (2005), 259–278.05–499Dekydtspotter, Laurent (Indiana U, USA; ldekydts@indiana.edu) & Samantha D. Outcalt, A syntactic bias in scope ambiguity resolution in the processing of English French cardinality interrogatives: evidence for informational encapsulation. Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA) 55.1 (2005), 1–36.05–500Fernández Toledo, Piedad (Universidad de Murcia, Spain; piedad@um.es), Genre analysis and reading of English as a foreign language: genre schemata beyond text typologies. Journal of Pragmatics37.7 (2005), 1059–1079.05–501French, Gary (Chukyo U, Japan; french@lets.chukyo-u.ac.jp), The cline of errors in the writing of Japanese university students. World Englishes (Oxford, UK) 24.3 (2005), 371–382.05–502Green, Chris (Hong Kong Polytechnic U, Hong Kong, China), Profiles of strategic expertise in second language reading. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics (Hong Kong, China) 9.2 (2004), 1–16.05–503Groom, Nicholas (U of Birmingham, UK; nick@nicholasgroom.fsnet.co.uk), Pattern and meaning across genres and disciplines: an exploratory study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 4.3 (2005), 257–277.05–504Harris, Pauline & Barbara McKenzie (U of Wollongong, Australia; pharris@uow.edu.au), Networking aroundThe Waterholeand other tales: the importance of relationships among texts for reading and related instruction. Literacy (Oxford, UK) 39.1 (2005), 31–37.05–505Harrison, Allyson G. & Eva Nichols (Queen's U, Canada; harrisna@post.queensu.ca), A validation of the Dyslexia Adult Screening Test (DAST) in a post-secondary population. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.4 (2005), 423–434.05–506Hirvela, Alan (Ohio State U, USA; hirvela.1@osu.edu), Computer-based reading and writing across the curriculum: two case studies of L2 writers. Computers and Composition (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 22.3 (2005), 337–356.05–507Holdom, Shoshannah (Oxford U, UK; shoshannah.holdom@oucs.ox.ac.uk), E-journal proliferation in emerging economies: the case of Latin America. Literary and Linguistic Computing (Oxford, UK) 20.3 (2005), 351–365.05–508Hopper, Rosemary (U of Exeter, UK; r.hopper@ex.ac.uk), What are teenagers reading? Adolescent fiction reading habits and reading choices. Literacy (Oxford, UK) 39.3 (2005), 113–120.05–509Jarman, Ruth & Billy McClune (Queen's U, Northern Ireland; r.jarman@qub.ac.uk), Space Science News: Special Edition, a resource for extending reading and promoting engagement with newspapers in the science classroom. Literacy (Oxford, UK) 39.3 (2005), 121–128.05–510Jia-ling Charlene Yau (Ming Chuan U, Taiwan; jyau@mcu.edu.tw), Two Mandarin readers in Taiwan: characteristics of children with higher and lower reading proficiency levels. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.2 (2005), 108–124.05–511Justice, Laura M, Lori Skibbel, Andrea Canning & Chris Lankford (U of Virginia, USA; ljustice@virginia.edu), Pre-schoolers, print and storybooks: an observational study using eye movement analysis. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.3 (2005), 229–243.05–512Kelly, Alison (Roehampton U, UK; a.m.kelly@roehampton.ac.uk), ‘Poetry? Of course we do it. It's in the National Curriculum.’ Primary children's perceptions of poetry. Literacy (Oxford, UK) 39.3 (2005), 129–134.05–513Kern, Richard (U of California, Berkeley, USA; rkern@berkeley.edu) & Jean Marie Schultz, Beyond orality: investigating literacy and the literary in second and foreign language instruction. The Modern Language Journal (Malden, MA, USA) 89.3 (2005), 381–392.05–514Kispal, Anne (National Foundation for Educational Research, UK; a.kispal@nfer.ac.uk), Examining England's National Curriculum assessments: an analysis of the KS2 reading test questions, 1993–2004. Literacy (Oxford, UK) 39.3 (2005), 149–157.05–515Kriss, Isla & Bruce J. W. Evans (Institute of Optometry, London, UK), The relationship between dyslexia and Meares-Irlen Syndrome. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.3 (2005), 350–364.05–516Lavidor, Michal & Peter J. Bailey (U of Hull, UK; M.Lavidor@hull.ac.uk), Dissociations between serial position and number of letters effects in lateralised visual word recognition. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.3 (2005), 258–273.05–517Lee, Sy-ying (Taipei, Taiwan, China; syying.lee@msa.hinet.net), Facilitating and inhibiting factors in English as a foreign language writing performance: a model testing with structural equation modelling. Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA) 55.2 (2005), 335–374.05–518Leppänen, Ulla, Kaisa Aunola & Jari-Erik Nurmi (U of Jyväskylä, Finland; uleppane@psyka.jyu.fi), Beginning readers' reading performance and reading habits. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.4 (2005), 383–399.05–519Lingard, Tony (Newquay, Cornwall, UK; tonylingard@awled.co.uk), Literacy Acceleration and the Key Stage 3 English strategy–comparing two approaches for secondary-age pupils with literacy difficulties. British Journal of Special Education32.2, 67–77.05–520Liu, Meihua (Tsinghua U, China; ellenlmh@yahoo.com) & George Braine, Cohesive features in argumentative writing produced by Chinese undergraduates. System (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 33.4 (2005), 623–636.05–521Masterson, Jackie, Veronica Laxon, Emma Carnegie, Sheila Wright & Janice Horslen (U of Essex; mastj@essex.ac.uk), Nonword recall and phonemic discrimination in four- to six-year-old children. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.2 (2005), 183–201.05–522Merttens, Ruth & Catherine Robertson (Hamilton Reading Project, Oxford, UK; ruthmerttens@onetel.net.uk), Rhyme and Ritual: a new approach to teaching children to read and write. Literacy (Oxford, UK) 39.1 (2005), 18–23.05–523Min Wang (U of Maryland, USA; minwang@umd.edu) & Keiko Koda, Commonalities and differences in word identification skills among learners of English as a Second Language. Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA) 55.1 (2005), 71–98.05–524O'Brien, Beth A., J. Stephen Mansfield & Gordon E. Legge (Tufts U, Medford, USA; beth.obrien@tufts.edu), The effect of print size on reading speed in dyslexia. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.3 (2005), 332–349.05–525Pisanski Peterlin, Agnes (U of Ljubljana, Slovenia; agnes.pisanski@guest.arnes.si), Text-organising metatext in research articles: an English–Slovene contrastive analysis. English for Specific Purposes (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 24.3 (2005), 307–319.05–526Rilling, Sarah (Kent State U, Kent, USA; srilling@kent.edu), The development of an ESL OWL, or learning how to tutor writing online. Computers and Composition (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 22.3 (2005), 357–374.05–527Schacter, John & Jo Booil (Milken Family Foundation, Santa Monica, USA; schacter@sbcglobal.net), Learning when school is not in session: a reading summer day-camp intervention to improve the achievement of exiting First-Grade students who are economically disadvantaged. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.2 (2005), 158–169.05–528Shapira, Anat (Gordon College of Education, Israel) & Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz, Opening windows on Arab and Jewish children's strategies as writers. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Clevedon, UK) 18.1 (2005), 72–90.05–529Shillcock, Richard C. & Scott A. McDonald (U of Edinburgh, UK; rcs@inf.ed.ac.uk), Hemispheric division of labour in reading. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.3 (2005), 244–257.05–530Singleton, Chris & Susannah Trotter (U of Hull, UK; c.singleton@hull.ac.uk), Visual stress in adults with and without dyslexia. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.3 (2005), 365–378.05–531Spelman Miller, Kristyan (Reading U, UK; k.s.miller@reading.ac.uk), Second language writing research and pedagogy: a role for computer logging?Computers and Composition (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 22.3 (2005), 297–317.05–532Su, Susan Shiou-mai (Chang Gung College of Technology, Taiwan, China) & Huei-mei Chu, Motivations in the code-switching of nursing notes in EFL Taiwan. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics (Hong Kong, China) 9.2 (2004), 55–71.05–533Taillefer, Gail (Toulouse U, France; gail.taillefer@univ-tlse1.fr), Reading for academic purposes: the literacy practices of British, French and Spanish Law and Economics students as background for study abroad. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.4 (2005), 435–451.05–534Tardy, Christine M. (DePaul U, Chicago, USA; ctardy@depaul.edu), Expressions of disciplinarity and individuality in a multimodal genre. Computers and Composition (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 22.3 (2005), 319–336.05–535Thatcher, Barry (New Mexico State U, USA; bathatch@nmsu.edu), Situating L2 writing in global communication technologies. Computers and Composition (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 22.3 (2005), 279–295.05–536Topping, Keith & Nancy Ferguson (U of Dundee, UK; k.j.topping@dundee.ac.uk), Effective literacy teaching behaviours. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.2 (2005), 125–143.05–537Torgerson, Carole (U of York, UK; cjt3@york.ac.uk), Jill Porthouse & Greg Brooks, A systematic review of controlled trials evaluating interventions in adult literacy and numeracy. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.2 (2005), 87–107.05–538Willett, Rebekah (U of London, UK; r.willett@ioe.ac.uk), ‘Baddies’ in the classroom: media education and narrative writing. Literacy (Oxford, UK) 39.3 (2005), 142–148.05–539Wood, Clara, Karen Littleton & Pav Chera (Coventry U, UK; c.wood@coventry.ac.uk), Beginning readers' use of talking books: styles of working. Literacy (Oxford, UK) 39.3 (2005), 135–141.05–540Wood, Clare (The Open U, UK; c.p.wood@open.ac.uk), Beginning readers' use of ‘talking books’ software can affect their reading strategies. Journal of Research in Reading (Oxford, UK) 28.2 (2005), 170–182.05–541Yasuda, Sachiko (Waseda U, Japan), Different activities in the same task: an activity theory approach to ESL students' writing process. JALT Journal (Tokyo, Japan) 27.2 (2005), 139–168.05–542Zelniker, Tamar (Tel-Aviv U, Israel) & Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz, School–Family Partnership for Coexistence (SFPC) in the city of Acre: promoting Arab and Jewish parents' role as facilitators of children's literacy development and as agents of coexistence. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Clevedon, UK) 18.1 (2005), 114–138.

Peterson, Lois. Disconnect. Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers, 2012. Print. Fourteen-year-old Daria has just relocated from Calgary, Alberta to Delta, British Columbia and she’s not happy about the move! Determined to stay connected with her old friends, Daria’s cellphone becomes an almost permanent extension of her arm, frustrating her parents, teachers and classmates. Quirky Cleo, another new kid in town, tries to connect with Daria, but to no avail. Cleo suggests that Daria may be addicted to technology, but who's listening? Desperate to earn some extra cash so that she can return to Calgary for March Break, Daria reluctantly takes an after-school job as a babysitter. Although she’s supposed to be watching out for Emmy and Caden, her two young charges, Daria has other things on her mind, with fateful consequences. This is a timely and engaging story, simply told. Disconnect is one of the Orca Currents series of books for reluctant middle-school readers. Its short chapters, controlled vocabulary, limited number of characters and contemporary themes will have broad appeal, especially for those reluctant readers who seldom choose a novel. Although the story is somewhat didactic, middle-school students will easily recognize at least one of their friends in the self-absorbed, technology-obsessed character of Daria. The situation she finds herself in is entirely plausible, and Peterson's first-person narration, texting shorthand and true-to-teenagers dialogue create a sense of “being there.” Although initially a writer of adult fiction, Lois Peterson now writes for children and teens. She has written 7 books for Orca Book Publishers, including one other designed specifically for struggling readers. Disconnect would be an excellent addition to any public or middle school library collection. In our increasingly “connected” world, this novel raises some disquieting questions about technology’s impact on the quality of our connection to ourselves and others. A great discussion starter with strong curriculum ties to digital citizenship. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Terri Hayes Terri Hayes is a teacher and student, currently completing a Master of Education in Teacher-Librarianship at the University of Alberta. Terri has been a voracious reader ever since her introduction to Dick & Jane at the age of six. Luckily, the quality of books for children has improved tremendously since those days, and now, one of her primary goals is to instill that same love of reading in her students. When she’s not scouring the local library for her next great read, Terri can usually be found reading to her grandchildren or hopping a plane to some destination she’s read about in a book.

Tsukirino, Yumi. Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll. 3 vols. San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2012. Print. Reading young children graphic novels is lots of fun and potentially encourages a more adaptable sense of narrative and enhanced visual interpretive skills. Many European and pan-Asian visual narratives test and thrill readers with the unanticipated ways they resolve the challenges of creating cohesive visual narratives and young readers can begin to appreciate narratives that don’t function in familiar, aesthetically normalized ways. The manga Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll has an appealing, unstructured page design that is enjoyable for young readers to negotiate but its real audience is pre-teens and teenagers who yearn for a big dose of super-kawaii Japanese culture. Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll has been given an “A” or “all ages” rating by the publisher and Cinnamoroll, the eponymous fluffy puppy, is part of the empire of Sanrio licensed characters which include Hello Kitty and her cohort of friends. Like Cinnamoroll characters designed for young Japanese readers are generally drawn with simple, “black dot” eyes so it might seem that Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll should be accessible for children in Grades 2 to 5. The appeal of characters designed for young audiences is not, however, always limited to young audiences and that is where consideration of the readership for which Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll is intended gets complicated. Book 1 starts appealingly with an introduction of the characters and magically-themed, short vignettes in which Cinnamoroll and his other puppy friends have adorable and mildly amusing adventures. There is little narrative continuity or intensity and readers must be drawn in by the magnetism of sheer cuteness but effervescent books like Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll have a legitimate place in a child’s repertoire of reading experiences. The tone and content in Books 1 and 2 are innocuous in the extreme but in Book 3, the tone and content changes. One of the stories has the pups eagerly auditioning to become pop idols. Another centres on the rigorous diet and exercise that some of puppies have to commit to in order to be ready for “bikini season”. It seems as though the writer has shifted tone to write for her own demographic rather than younger children. Book 3 is for an audience that thrills to the cuteness of the puppies but is media literate, relatively sophisticated and perhaps even a little world-weary. Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll is fun to read. It is brimming with interesting Japanese cultural context and is at times quite funny in a light and irreverent way. VIZ Media should be commended for bringing a wide range of manga to North American audiences with a slight proviso that, while can be very difficult to establish age-appropriate ratings, Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll is not quite as uncomplicatedly “all ages” as its “A” rating would indicate. Recommended with Reservations: 2 out of 4 starsReviewer: Matilda RocheMatilda spends her days lavishing attention on the University of Alberta’s metadata but children’s illustrated books, literature for young adults and graphic novels also make her heart sing. Her reviews benefit from the critical influence of a four year old daughter and a one year old son – both geniuses. Matilda’s super power is the ability to read comic books aloud.

The digital era challenges the school library which loses connection with generation Z who speaks a different digital language to all other generations. The underfinanced school libraries with little or no budget for new acquisitions are no longer information centers, the least “information authorities” for youngsters. We need the secret elixir to convert the museum-like school libraries into creative learning spaces. In times of budget cut our creativity enables us to welcome various forms of the digital language Generation Z is a native speaker of. By implementing simple social media like activities into our library programs we might fill the old collections with a new vibe.
 The objectives of the presentation
 The audience will get an insight into the possibilities and the threats Hungarian school libraries are facing with. Instead of mourning over the gloomy reality the presentation aims to focus on creative possibilities which can help school librarians to give the students a 21st century-like experience within difficult circumstances. Creative school librarians might be inspired by a collection of activities where usual social media behavior is implemented into information literacy training classes.
 Participants will learn
 Library instruction together with improving information literacy and reading promotion are parts of the core curriculum in Hungary. School librarians are entitled to create programs that help students to become acquainted with the library spaces, get to know the collection and to find relevant information in order to create new content. However, the outdated collections of school libraries overshadow these promising possibilities. It is a challenge to motivate students - who never lived without the internet and being deprived of their smartphone is a major threat in their life - to use the library collection of 50 to 10 years old books joyfully.
 Whether we agree or not, with the definition of the selfie: as the beginning of the end of intelligent civilization, we have to admit that selfies play an important role in our lives. By encouraging students to take selfies in the library space, immediately adds a positive emotional impact on their library visit in. Selfies help to become acquainted with the library spaces especially if a group tries to reconstruct where the selfies had been taken.
 The social media presence is manifested in the endless circle of likes, dislikes, and comments. If we urge students to browse the selves and select random books to like or dislike we give them the opportunity to have a say in the collection. The student’s choice might mirror the current state of mind of the society. If the selected items are on display, other visitors are also motivated to reflect on them, fostering a certain discussion over the library collection.
 Reading promotion is a hard mission when the books teenagers like to read are not available at our school libraries. We can overcome this difficulty by encouraging students to present their favorite book’s trailer. The complexity of transforming a reading experience into a video or a visual presentation strengthens cognitive skills effectively. Book trailers are creative and are in line with the media consumption tendency of Generation Z whose focus moves from written resources to video content.
 These simple examples show that budget cuts must not discourage librarians! On the contrary, we have to find creative ways to provide students with a 21st century-like library experience at a 20th-century school library setting. We cannot change the environment but we can update the school library programs by welcoming the digital language of Generation Z students into our routine. If we learn and apply their language, we might win them over in the end.
 About the author
 Teacher Librarian and Art Teacher at a Spanish-Hungarian bilingual high school (2004-). Board member of the Hungarian SLA (2016-). Experienced in creating a school library program, planning curriculum and embracing creativity in the school library. Speaker at international conferences, IFLA WLIC 2017, Detroit 2017. Participant in several international projects from Zaragoza to New York and San Diego.

The family, school, and the general field of public culture affect the formation of pupils’ attitudes towards the value of the Lithuanian language. Studies into linguistic attitudes of different age pupils allow observing the trends of pupils’ values regarding the Lithuanian language and the factors affecting them. The aim of the article is (1) to analyse the prestige of the Lithuanian language in groups of schoolchildren and teenagers based on the 2018–2019 survey of pupils’ language and attitudes towards the Lithuanian language in Lithuanian schools and (2) discuss the trends in the policy of Lithuanian language teaching as one of important factors shaping the language prestige. In order to analyse the attitudes of Lithuanian schoolchildren and teenagers towards the Lithuanian language, a comparative study was carried out in the 2018–2019 academic year. In order to guarantee the reliability of the data, the study involved the major part of Lithuania; schools from six municipalities – those of Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai, Panevėžys, and Druskininkai – took part in the survey. The article presents the analysis of questionnaire data obtained from 360 respondents: 105 third-formers, 128 fifth-formers, and 127 eighth-formers. Respondents of these particular ages were not selected randomly: they were primary school pupils, pupils in the first year of the basic school, and pupils completing the progymnasium. Responses obtained from the representatives of different age groups allowed observing shifts in their attitudes towards the Lithuanian language. Thus, the study material consisted of questionnaires completed by pupils in 2018–2019 and of the legal acts forming the Lithuanian language education policy. The survey was based on qualitative analysis, while the trends, correlations, and interfaces of the survey results were assessed using the quantitative method. The work is synchronic, analytical-descriptive. The study into the pupils’ attitudes towards the Lithuanian language and its prestige shows that as a deep motivating belief, the perception of language as a value is formed at younger school age. The third-formers already demonstrate a strong attitude towards the Lithuanian language concerning its usage and social value, and the impact of family, school, and teachers on the prestige of the Lithuanian language. The family has the strongest impact on the attitudes of primary school pupils’ towards the Lithuanian language, the general cultural field influences the attitudes among basic school pupils, and school influences pupils of all ages. The study revealed that the older the pupils were, the more dominant the English language they use online was. As for the after-school activities, reading books fills the major part of the Lithuanian language experience – regardless of their age, the majority of the respondents read books in Lithuanian. Thus, literature has a great impact on the development of pupils’ language and their linguistic sense. The survey results suggest that positive attitudes towards the value of the Lithuanian language of most of the pupils, especially the younger ones, are formed by parents: in the opinion of over a half of the third-formers and fifth-formers, families pay attention to the Lithuanian language used for communication. The survey results show that the pupils’ most sustainable linguistic attitude is the relationship of identity with the language: the majority of the pupils (three-fourths of the survey participants) are proud of the Lithuanian language and consider it a part of their identity regardless of their age. The comparison of the data of different-age respondents shows that the social prestige of the Lithuanian language decreases with the respondents’ age – the higher the form is, the fewer pupils think that it is necessary to know the Lithuanian language in order to enter a good gymnasium, university, or to find a good job. The analysis of educational documents regulating the process of education, the assessment of academic achievements, and the requirements for teachers’ qualification and competences shows that the provisions of the Law on Education to guarantee the quality of Lithuanian language education are not implemented through the legal acts that regulate Lithuanian language education, assessment of academic achievements, and the requirements for teachers. To sum up, it is evident that the state’s attitude to the sustainability of the Lithuanian language, the guarantee of its continuity, and the enhancement of its prestige is insufficient. It is worth noting that the pupils’ attitudes towards the Lithuanian language are influenced not only by education policy but also by the attitude of the society. Their linguistic attitudes reflect those of their families and the general public. Thus, the prestige of the language also reveals society’s attitude to itself: the status of a linguistic community closely correlates with the prestige of its language.

Green, John. Turtles All the Way Down. Dutton Books, 2017. Turtles All the Way Down ticks many boxes; it has friendship, mystery, and romance. Above all, it is the coming-of-age story of a girl struggling with mental illness.Sixteen-year-old Ava Holmes lives within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts. When billionaire Russell Pickett goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Ava and her “Best and Most Fearless Friend,” Daisy, investigate in the hope of pocketing the reward money. Along the way, Ava renews her childhood friendship with Russell’s son, Davis, and their relationship turns romantic as the two teens explore love and their burgeoning sexuality. Yet these elements of typical YA are filtered through the lens of Ava’s mental illness and her daily struggle with profound anxiety, obsessive thinking, and intrusive thoughts. Ava uses the metaphor of an ever-tightening spiral to conceptualize her obsessive thought patterns. The mystery and the romance plotlines are continuously sidelined by Ava’s ongoing struggle with her own mind. Ava’s illness threatens her relationship with Davis, her friendship with Daisy, and, eventually, her life.John Green is a YouTube personality and an award-winning author, best known for The Fault in Our Stars (2012). This novel fits the pattern of Green’s previous works, which feature poignantly relatable teenagers seeking to understand their place in the world. But in Turtles All the Way Down, Green uses the structure of the YA novel to depict the mental illness that has affected his life since childhood. Readers familiar with Green’s virtual presence will hear echoes of his voice in Ava’s. The novel carries the weight of authenticity, as neither Ava nor the reader can find relief from the obsessive thought spirals. By bringing the reader into Ava’s head, Green bridges the gap between language and Ava’s (and his own) abstract experiences. Ava’s chronic mental illness is not magic-ed away, and the novel’s ending is plausible and moving in its truthfulness. A few elements in the novel feel forced. The climax, for instance, seems to happen simply because the structure of the novel requires one. However, Ava’s daily struggle living with her obsessive thoughts is painfully authentic. Though Green writes through the eyes of a teenage girl, his stream-of-consciousness prose may be easily understood by a wide variety of readers. This novel is a stark, honest, and accessible portrayal of living with mental illness. It is a difficult, astonishing read that is highly recommended for those seeking to understand mental illnesses on a personal level.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Caitlin RatcliffeCaitlin Ratcliffe is an MLIS candidate at the University of Alberta. She completed her Bachelor of Arts with a double major in English and History at the University of Lethbridge. When not studying, she enjoys playing soccer and reading sci-fi, fantasy, and young adult fiction.

This article is a comparison of two remarkably different takes on a single subject, namely the shifting meaning of the word ‘publishing’ brought about by the changes in literacy habits related to Web 2.0. One the one hand, we have Andrew Keen’s much lambasted 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur, which is essentially an attempt to defend traditional gatekeeper models of cultural production by denigrating online, user-generated content. The second is Spin journalist Andy Greenwald’s Nothing Feels Good, focusing on the Emo subculture of the early 2000s and its reliance on Web 2.0 as an integral medium for communication and the accumulation of subcultural capital. What I want to suggest in this article is that these two books, with their contrasting readings of Web 2.0, both tell us something specific about what the word “publishing” means and how it is currently undergoing a significant change brought about by a radical adaptation of literacy practices. What I think both books also do is give us an insight into how those changes are being interpreted, to be rejected on the one hand and applauded on the other. Both books have their faults. Keen’s work can fairly easily be passed off as a sort of cantankerous reminiscence for the legitimacy of an earlier era of publishing, and Greenwald’s Emos have, like all teen subcultures, changed somewhat. Yet what both books portray is an attempt to digest how Web 2.0 has altered perceptions of what constitutes legitimate speaking positions and how that is reflected in the literacy practices that shape the relationships among authors, readers, and the channels through which they interact. Their primary difference is a disparity in the value they place on Web 2.0’s amplification of the Internet’s use as a social and communicative medium. Greenwald embraces it as the facilitator of an open-access dialogue, whereas Keen sees it as a direct threat to other, more traditional, gatekeeper genres. Accordingly, Keen begins his book with a lament that Web 2.0’s “democratization” of media is “undermining truth, souring civic discourse and belittling expertise, experience, and talent … it is threatening the very future of our cultural institutions” (15). He continues, Today’s editors, technicians, and cultural gatekeepers—the experts across an array of fields—are necessary to help us to sift through what’s important and what’s not, what is credible from what is unreliable, what is worth spending our time on as opposed to the white noise that can be safely ignored. (45) As examples of the “white noise,” he lists some of the core features of Web 2.0—blogs, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook. The notable similarity between all of these is that their content is user generated and, accordingly, comes from the position of the personal, rather than from a gatekeeper. In terms of their readership, this presents a fundamental shift in an understanding of authenticated speaking positions, one which Keen suggests underwrites reliability by removing the presence of certifiable expertise. He looks at Web 2.0 and sees a mass of low grade, personal content overwhelming traditional benchmarks of quality and accountability. His definition of “publishing” is essentially one in which a few, carefully groomed producers express work seen as relevant to the wider community. The relationship between reader and writer is primarily one sided, mediated by a gatekeeper and rests on the assumption by all involved that the producer has the legitimacy to speak to a large, and largely silent, readership. Greenwald, by contrast, looks at the same genres and comes to a remarkably different and far more positive conclusion. He focuses heavily on the lively message boards of the social networking site Makeoutclub, the shift to a long tail marketing style by key Emo record labels such as Vagrant and Drive-Thru Records and, in particular, the widespread use of LiveJournal (www.livejournal.com) by suburban, Emo fixated teenagers. Of this he writes: The language is inflated, coded as ‘adult’ and ‘poetic’, which often translates into affected, stilted and forced. But if one can accept that, there’s a sweet vulnerability to it. The world of LiveJournal is an enclosed circuit where everyone has agreed to check their cynicism at the sign on screen; it’s a pulsing, swoony realm of inflated emotions, expectations and dialogue. (287) He specifically notes that one cannot read mediums like LiveJournal in the same style as their more traditional counterparts. There is a necessity to adopt a reading style conducive to a dialogue devoid of conventional quality controls. It is also, he notes, a heavily interconnected, inherently social medium: LiveJournals represent the truest and easiest realization of the essential teenage (and artistic) tenet of the importance of a ‘room of one’s own’, and yet the framework of the website is enough to make each individual room interconnected into a mosaic of richly felt lives. (288) Where Keen sees Web 2.0 as a shift way from established cultural forums, Greenwald sees it as an interconnected conversation. His definition of publishing is more fluid, founded on a belief not in the authenticity of a single, validated voice but on the legitimacy of interaction and communication entirely devoid of any gatekeepers. Central to understanding the difference between Greenwald and Keen is the issue or whether or not we accept the legitimacy of personal voices and how we evaluate the kind of reading practices involved in interpreting them. In this respect, Greenwald’s reference to “a room of one’s own” is telling. When Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own in 1929, Web 2.0 wasn’t even a consideration, but her work dealt with a similar subject matter, detailing the key role the novel genre played in legitimising women’s voices precisely because it was “young enough to be soft in [their] hands” (74). What would eventually emerge from Woolf’s work was the field of feminist literary criticism, which hit its stride in the mid-eighties. In terms of its understanding of the power relations inherent to cultural production, particularly as they relate to gatekeeping, it’s a rich academic tradition notably lacking in the writing on Web 2.0. For example, Celia Lury’s essay “Reading the Self,” written more than ten years before the popularisation of the internet, looks specifically at the way in which authoritative speaking positions gain their legitimacy not just through the words on the page but through the entire relationships among author, genre, channels of distribution, and readership. She argues that, “to write is to enter into a relationship with a community of readers, and various forms of writing are seen to involve and imply, at any particular time, various forms of relationship” (102). She continues, so far as text is clearly written/read within a particular genre, it can be seen to rest upon a more or less specific set of social relations. It also means that ‘textual relations’—that is, formal techniques, reading strategies and so on—are not held separate from ‘non-textual relations’—such as methods of cultural production and modes of distribution—and that the latter can be seen to help construct ‘literary value.’ (102) The implication is that an appropriation of legitimised speaking positions isn’t done purely by overthrowing or contesting an established system of ‘quality’ but by developing a unique relationship between author, genre, and readership. Textual and non-textual practices blur together to create literary environments and cultural space. The term “publishing” is at the heart of these relationships, describing the literacies required to interpret particular voices and forms of communication. Yet, as Lury writes, literacy habits can vary. Participation in dialogue-driven, user-generated mediums is utterly different from conventional, gatekeeper-driven ones, yet the two can easily co-exist. For instance, reading last year’s Man Booker prize-winner doesn’t stop one from reading, or even writing, blogs. One can enact numerous literacy practices, move between discourses and inhabit varied relationships between genre, reader, and writer. However, with the rise of Web 2.0 a whole range of literacies that used to be defined as “private sphere” or “everyday literacies,” everything from personal conversations and correspondence to book clubs and fanzines, have become far, far more public. In the past these dialogue-based channels of communication have never been in a position where they could be defined as “publishing.” Web 2.0 changes that, moving previously private sphere communication into online public space in a very obvious way. Keen dismisses this shift as a wall of white noise, but Greenwald does something equally interesting. To a large extent, his positive treatment of Web 2.0’s “affected, stilted and forced” user-generated content is validated by his focus on a “Youth” subculture, namely Emo. Indeed, he heavily links the impact of youthful subcultural practices with the internet, writing that Teenage life has always been about self-creation, and its inflated emotions and high stakes have always existed in a grossly accelerated bubble of hypertime. The internet is the most teenage of media because it too exists in this hypertime of limitless limited moments and constant reinvention. If emo is the soundtrack to hypertime, then the web is its greatest vehicle, the secret tunnel out of the locked bedroom and dead-eyed judgmental scenes of youth. (277) In this light, we accept the voices of his Emo subjects because, underneath their low-quality writing, they produce a “sweet vulnerability” and a “dialogue,” which provides them with a “secret tunnel” out of the loneliness of their bedrooms or unsupportive geographical communities. It’s a theme that hints at the degree to which discussions of Web 2.0 are often heavily connected to arguments about generationalism, framed by the field of youth studies and accordingly end up being mined for what Tara Brabazon calls “spectacular youth subcultures” (23). We see some core examples of this in some of the quasi-academic writing on the subject of “Youth.” For example, in his 2005 book XYZ: The New Rules of Generational Warfare, Michael Grose declares Generation Y as “post-literate”: Like their baby boomer parents and generation X before them, generation Ys get their information from a range of sources that include the written and spoken word. Magazines and books are in, but visual communication is more important for this cohort than their parents. They live in a globalised, visual world where images rather than words are universal communication media. The Internet has heightened the use of symbols as a direct communicator. (95) Given the Internet is overwhelmingly a textual medium, it’s hard to tell exactly what Grose’s point is other than to express his confusion over new literacy practices. In a similar vein and in a similar style, Rebecca Huntley writes in her book The World According to Y, In the Y world, a mobile phone is not merely a phone. It is, as described by demographer Bernard Salt, “a personal accessory, a personal communications device and a personal entertainment centre.” It’s a device for work and play, flirtation and sex, friendship and family. For Yers, their phone symbolizes freedom and flexibility. More than that, your mobile phone symbolizes you. (16) Like Keen, Grose and Huntley are trying to understand a shift in publishing and media that has produced new literacy practices. Unlike Keen, Grose and Huntley pin the change on young people and, like Greenwald, they turn a series of new literacy practices into something akin to what Dick Hebdige called “conspicuous consumption” (103). It’s a term he linked to his definition of bricolage as the production of “implicitly coherent, though explicitly bewildering, systems of connection between things which perfectly equip their users to ‘think’ their own world” (103). Thus, young people are differentiated from the rest of the population by their supposedly unique consumption of “symbols” and mobile phones, into which they read their own cryptic meanings and develop their own generational language. Greenwald shows this methodology in action, with the Emo use of things like LiveJournal, Makeoutclub and other bastions of Web 2.0 joining their record collections, ubiquitous sweeping fringes and penchant for accessorised outfits as part of the conspicuous consumption inherent to understandings of youth subculture. The same theme is reflected in Michel de Certeau’s term “tactics” or, more common amongst those studying Web 2.0, Henry Jenkins’s notion of “poaching”. The idea is that people, specifically young people, appropriate particular forms of cultural literacy to redefine themselves and add a sense of value to their voices. De Certeau’s definition of tactics, as a method of resistance “which cannot count on a ‘proper’ (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totality” (489), is a prime example of how Web 2.0 is being understood. Young people, Emo or not, engage in a consumption of the Internet, poaching the tools of production to redefine the value of their voices in a style completely acceptable to the neo-Marxist, Birmingham school understanding of youth and subculture as a combination producing a sense of resistance. It’s a narrative highly compatible within the fields of cultural and media studies, which, despite major shifts brought about by people like Ken Gelder, Sarah Thornton, Keith Kahn-Harris and the aforementioned Tara Brabazon, still look heavily for patterns of politicised consumption. The problem, as I think Keen inadvertently suggests, is that the Internet isn’t just about young people and their habits as consumers. It’s about what the word “publishing” actually means and how we think about the interaction among writers, readers, and the avenues through which they interact. The idea that we can pass off the redefinition of literacy practices brought about by Web 2.0 as a subcultural youth phenomena is an easy way of bypassing wider cultural shifts onto a token demographic. It presents Web 2.0 as an issue of “Youth” resisting the hegemony of traditional gatekeepers, which is effectively what Greenwald does. Yet such an approach has a very short shelf life. It’s a little like claiming the telephone or the television set were “youth genres.” The uptake of new technologies will inadvertently impact differently on those who grew up with them as compared to those who grew up without them. Yet ultimately changes in literacy habits are much larger than a generationalist framework can really express, particularly given the first generation of “digital natives” are now in their thirties. There’s a lot of things wrong with Andrew Keen’s book but one thing he does do well is ground the debate about Web 2.0 back to issues of legitimate speaking positions and publishing. That said, he also significantly simplifies those issues when he claims the problem is purely about the decline of traditional gatekeeper models. Responding to Keen’s criticism of him, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig writes, I think it is a great thing when amateurs create, even if the thing they create is not as great as what the professional creates. I want my kids to write. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop reading Hemingway and read only what they write. What Keen misses is the value to a culture that comes from developing the capacity to create—independent of the quality created. That doesn’t mean we should not criticize works created badly (such as, for example, Keen’s book…). But it does mean you’re missing the point if you simply compare the average blog to the NY times (Lessig). What Lessig expresses here is the different, but not mutually exclusive, literacy practices involved in the word “publishing.” Publishing a blog is very different to publishing a newspaper and the way readers react to both will change as they move in and out the differing discursive spaces each occupies. In a recent collaborative paper by Sue Thomas, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger, they describe this capacity to move across different reading and writing styles as “transliteracy.” They define the term as “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks” (Thomas et al.). It’s a term that perfectly describes the capacity to move fluidly across discursive environments. Here we return to Greenwald’s use of a framework of youth and subculture. While I have criticised the Birminghamesque fixation on a homogeneous “Youth” demographic enacting resistance through conspicuous consumption, there is good reason to use existing subculture studies methodology as a means of understanding how transliteracies play out in everyday life. David Chaney remarks, the idea of subculture is redundant because the type of investment that the notion of subculture labelled is becoming more general, and therefore the varieties of modes of symbolization and involvement are more common in everyday life. (37) I think the increasing commonality of subcultural practices in everyday life actually makes the idea more relevant, not less. It does, however, make it much harder to pin things on “spectacular youth subcultures.” Yet the focus on “everyday life” is important here, shifting our understanding of “subculture” to the types of literacies played out within localised, personal networks and experiences. As de Certeau has argued, the practice of everyday life is an issue of “a way of thinking invested in a way of acting, an art of combination which cannot be dissociated from an art of using” (Certeau 486). This is as true for our literacy practices as anything else. Whether we choose to label those practices subcultural or not, our ability to interpret, take part in and react to different communicative forums is clearly fundamental to our understanding of the world around us, regardless of our age. Sarah Thornton suggests a useful alternate definition of subculture when she talks about subcultural capital: Subcultural capital is the linchpin of an alternative hierarchy in which the aces of age, gender, sexuality and race are all employed in order to keep the determinations of class, income and occupation at bay (105). This is an understanding that avoids easy narratives of young people and their consumption of Web 2.0 by recognising the complexity with which people’s literacy habits, in the cultural sense, connect to their active participation in the production of meaning. Subcultural capital implies that the framework through which individuals read, interpret, and shift between discursive environments, personalising and building links across the strata of cultural production, is acted out at the local and personal level, rather than purely through the relationship between a producing gatekeeper and a passive, consuming readership. If we recognise the ability for readers to connect multiple mediums, to shift between reading and writing practices, and to seamlessly interpret and digest markedly different assumptions about legitimate speaking voices across genres, our understanding of what it means to “publish” ceases to be an issue of generationalism or conventional mediums being washed away by the digital era. The issue we see in both Keen and Greenwald is an attempt to digest the way Web 2.0 has forced the concept of “publishing” to take on a multiplicity of meanings, played out by individual readers, and imbued with their own unique and interwoven textual and cultural literacy habits. It’s not only Emos who publish livejournals, and it’s incredibly naive to assume gatekeepers have ever really held a monopoly on all aspects of cultural production. What the rise of Web 2.0 has done is simply to bring everyday, private sphere dialogue driven literacies into the public sphere in a very obvious way. The kind of discourses once passed off as resistant youth subcultures are now being shown as common place. Keen is right to suggest that this will continue to impact, sometimes negatively, on traditional gatekeepers. Yet the change is inevitable. As our reading and writing practices alter around new genres, our understandings of what constitutes legitimate fields of publishing will also change. References Brabazon, Tara. From Revolution to Revelation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. de Certeau, Michel. “Practice of Every Day Life.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Ed. John Story. London: Prentice Hall, 1998. 483–94. Chaney, David. “Fragmented Culture and Subcultures.” After Subculture. Ed. Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris. Houndsmill: Palgrave McMillian, 2004. 36–48. Greenwald, Andy. Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo. New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 2003. Grose, Michael. XYZ: The New Rules of Generational Warfare. Sydney: Random House, 2005. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen and Co Ltd, 1979. Huntley, Rebecca. The World According to Y. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2006. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007. Lessig, Lawrence. “Keen’s ‘The Cult of the Amateur’: BRILLIANT!” Lessig May 31, 2007. Aug. 19 2008 ‹http://www.lessig.org/blog/2007/05/keens_the_cult_of_the_amateur.html>. Lury, Celia. “Reading the Self: Autobiography, Gender and the Institution of the Literary.” Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies. Ed. Sarah. Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey. Hammersmith: HarperCollinsAcademic, 1991. 97–108. Thomas, Sue, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger. “Transliteracy: Crossing Divides.” First Monday 12.12. (2007). Apr. 1 2008 ‹http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2060/1908>. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Oxford: Polity Press, 1995. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Frogmore: Triad/Panther Press, 1977.

Showtime’s reality TV series Family Business opens with a black screen and audio: the whirring of a 16mm projector, the home movies of a generation ago. The sound connotes nostalgia, memory, family, and film. In my childhood, the sound of the projector meant family time, a glance back at our toddler years, the years of Sunday dinners in the suburbs, when my mother and all my aunts still smoked. Later, as my sister and cousins whose childhoods are fixed in that celluloid began to date and marry, family movies were a means of introducing the soon-to-be-married other into the family; this was how we told our history. This kind of telling is one side of Family Business. The other, as Adam Glasser reports in his voiceover in the opening credits is “just one more thing. My business is entertaining adults.” Glasser, producer, director and occasional actor, is known in the adult entertainment industry as Seymore Butts, alluding to his particular personal and professional interest in anal sex. He self-describes, in the opening credits of Family Business, as “a pretty average guy,” a single father who runs his business with help from his mother and cousin. Viewers glance over Glasser’s shoulder into his everyday life as he cooks breakfast for his son, dates women in his ongoing search for a lasting relationship, and goes about the business of producing pornography. Family Business uniquely combines two genres that trouble perceptions of reality mediated through television, pornography and reality TV. Reality television troubles the real by effectively blurring the lines between the actual and the contrived. With the genre of reality TV now firmly in place, viewers take pleasure in reading between those lines, trying to determine what aspects of the characters, contexts and events of a television program are “authentic”. Searching for the real demands the viewer suspend disbelief, conveniently forgetting the power of the camera’s presence. Scripted or not, the camera is always played to, suppressing the “real” in favor of performance. Like reality TV, pornography blurs the line between reality and fantasy. As Elizabeth Bell points out, the difference between soft-core pornography and hard-core pornography is the difference between simulated and real sex. Hard-core porn depends on “an ironic tension between ‘real’ sexual acts within ‘faked’ sexual contexts” (181), troubling the viewer’s sense of whether such performances could “really” take place. The lingering disbelief sets porn apart from one’s personal sex life, just as questioning the authentic in reality TV keeps it from being “real.” Reality TV plays on a tension similar to Bell’s description of hard-core pornography. Manufactured contexts succinctly expose the personalities of the actors/ordinary people who are featured on reality TV programs. As a result, the audience can gain familiarity with these individuals in a neat thirty or sixty minute time slot. Inherent in any TV series is the notion that the audience forms opinions about and alliances for or against certain characters, stepping into their lives, mediated as they are, each week. Kenneth Gergen notes that “so powerful are the media in their well-wrought portrayals that their realities become more compelling than those furnished by common experience” (57). By conflating pornography with the everyday lives of its actors and directors, Family Business works to naturalize pornography by displaying it as real. When viewers are constantly sorting between the scripted and the spontaneous, where do they locate the real on Family Business? In a mediated world, the search for the real is always already fruitless: viewers and producers of reality TV recognize that the chasm between lived experience and the depiction of lived experience on television and film can’t be crossed. Reality TV and pornography both work to bring the mediated image closer to the experience of the viewer, placing “people just like you” in everyday situations that brush up against the outrageous. Laura Kipnis argues that pornography does not reflect reality but is “mythological and hyperbolic, peopled by fictional characters. It doesn’t and never will exist.” While pornography does not try to claim itself as real, Kipnis says, it does “insist on a sanctioned space for fantasy.” Acknowledging that space, and declaring that “normal” people engage the fantasy of porn, is important cultural work for Glasser. An episode of Family Business features Glasser giving a class on ways to please your partner using methods he learned in the industry. He speaks in interviews about letters he has received, proclaiming that the Seymore Butts films have enhanced couples’ sex lives. Family Business is not only important cultural work for Glasser; it is also important professional work. Naturalizing pornography, and giving viewers a glimpse of Seymore Butts films, certainly helps his product sales. Seeing Family Business as part of the mainstreaming of pornography, Glasser says “it’s the natural course of things” for pornography to be increasingly accepted. “Sex is just so much a part of mainstream people’s lives. So it’s natural that they would be curious about sex and people who have sex for a living” (Brioux). Adam Glasser “is” Seymore Butts, or is he? Viewers are exposed to a character-within-a-character: Glasser as father, son, and entrepreneur is difficult to separate from Glasser as Butts—adult entertainment producer and actor, porn celebrity. Glasser does not appear to distinguish between these identities, but is presented as one person seamlessly performing the everyday roles of his chosen life. He is a role model for the normalizing and mainstreaming of pornography. Family Business aspires to naturalize the integration of pornography into everyday life, naturalizing the adult entertainment industry, its producers and ultimately, its consumers. Viewers see Glasser as a fun-loving, single dad who plays baseball with his son. We look on as his Cousin Stevie, nearing 60 years old, goes to the doctor for a prostate exam (which the audience voyeuristically enjoys, is repelled by, and is compelled by to tend to health concerns). That Glasser and Cousin Stevie are also producers and distributors of adult entertainment enables the viewer to naturalize her/his own consumption of pornography. Fans posting on Showtime’s Family Business message board question whether the show authentically depicts the “real” lives of its characters, with discussions about what scenes are staged and scripted. Media consumption is seldom a passive practice, and one of the pleasures of reality TV is the audience’s resistance to what is presented as “real.” While the everyday lives of the characters are hotly debated on the message board, there is little discussion of pornography, beyond assertions of support for and the rare protest against adult entertainment on cable television. The Seymore Butts movies are rarely mentioned. What Family Business gives viewers access to is a soft-porn version of the staging of Seymore Butts films, as much as censors allow for MA cable programming. According to Bell, “all theoretical treatments of hard-core pornography…begin with the declaration that the performers are engaged in real sexual activity” (183). Glasser categorizes his porn as hard-core, but should fans believe it is authentically real, not just real sex acts but also a reflection of real life? He claims that it is: “My adult movies that I’ve made for the last 12 years have been what you would call reality based,” Glasser says. “They’re basically a documentation of my life, my relationships, good and bad.” (Haffenreffer). Glasser’s documentary of his life and relationships, however, is mediated through the lens of his camera and work in the editing room, presented in such a way to be compelling to its audience. Whether there is something intrinsically real in the Seymore Butts films, the contexts of the films are certainly contrived. Viewers of Family Business see Glasser describe fantasy scenarios to the actors preparing for a scene. While the situations are more mundane than fantastic, the implausibility of a group of people spontaneously having sex while waiting for friends to come back from lunch, for example, places Glasser’s pornography in a liminal space between fantasy and the real. What renders these films different from other pornography and makes them somewhat more believable is precisely the mundane scenarios in which they occur. The conflation of pornography and the everyday is reinforced spatially on Family Business: viewers see Glasser shoot a porn film in his living room, where sexual acts are performed on the same sofa where, in another scene, Glasser’s mother Lila plays with his son, Brady. After a comment about this was posted on the show’s message board, Flower, one of Glasser’s “Tushy Girls” posted a response: “But in defence [sic] of Semyore, He has his furniture steam cleaned after every shoot. Have you ever heard of kids laying or sitting on their parents [sic] bed? Don’t parents have sex too? I’m sure plenty of kids have sat where people have had sex before. So I don’t find it strange.” What Flower asks of message board readers is the normalization of pornography, a blending of porn and private sex acts into the same category. Family Business works to eradicate the perceptions of pornography that Kipnis describes as “all the nervous stereotypes of pimply teenagers, furtive perverts in raincoats, and anti-social compulsively masturbating misfits.” Pornography is not situated in the world of the outcast, Kipnis argues. Rather, it is “central to our culture,” simultaneously revealing our mostly deeply felt desires and fears. The series functions to relieve its viewers of the sense of guilty indiscretion. It typically airs on Friday nights at 11:00 p.m., the opening of Mature Adult-rated programming on cable television. Family Business is not only pornography, it also presents itself as a family sitcom. The show provides a neat segue from prime-time programming to after-hours, commingling the two genres for viewers to seamlessly make that shift themselves. Week after week, viewers of Family Business find the conflation of pornography and everyday life more acceptable. In sharp contrast to the sordid, sad life stories of Linda Lovelace, the Mitchell brothers and organized crime that are stitched into the history of pornography, Adam Glasser is presented as a respectable public figure, a free speech activist with a solid moral foundation. The morality or immorality of adult entertainment is not questioned here: inherent in Family Business is the idea that “they” have rendered sexual expression immoral where “we” (the characters in the series and the viewers at home) are accepting of, and even committed to, the pleasures of sex. As presented on Family Business, Glasser’s lifestyle is rather morally sound. There is no drug use, not even cigarette smoking, and although a pack of Merits appears occasionally in the pocket of Cousin Stevie’s stylish shirt, he does not smoke on camera. Safe sex is a priority, and the actors are presented as celebrating and enjoying their sexuality. The viewer is encouraged to do the same. The everyday behavior of the cast of Family Business is far from extraordinary, as Glasser takes pains to point out. Comparing Family Business to The Osbournes, he says “they are outrageous people in a normal world, and we’re normal people in an outrageous world” (Hooper). We’ve come to tolerate the Osbournes, perhaps even pitying them at times as if they have no control over their own outrageousness. Can viewers accept the outrageous in Family Business? Certainly the mundane lives of Adam and Lila—a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn and his dear, doting mom—indicate that normal people can accept the outrageous world of pornography, so why should we not accept it as well? Tolerating Family Business is, essentially, tolerating pornography. Bringing the backstage of the adult entertainment industry into the frontstage of cable television programming marks a desire to shift the uses of pornography. Rather than being an underground outlet for sexual deviance, Family Business works to make porn a reflection of our everyday personal and sexual lives. Kipnis notes there is “virtually no discussion of pornography as an expressive medium in the positive sense—the only expressing it’s presumed to do is of misogyny or social decay.” Viewers can openly chat about Family Business and the glimpse it offers into the world of pornography, without the shame or embarrassment that would run alongside a discussion of porn itself. When sexual pleasure enters the public discourse through mainstream entertainment, there is power for those who fight against conservative voices wishing to suppress not just pornography but also sexual pleasure. References Bell, Elizabeth. “Weddings and Pornography: The Cultural Performance of Sex.” Text and Performance Quarterly 19 (1999): 173-195. Brioux, Bill. “A Family Affair: New Show Takes a Peek Behind Adam Glasser’s Porn Business.” The Toronto Sun. 3 October 2003, final ed.: E11. Gergen, Kenneth J. The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Haffenreffer, David. “Reality Imitates Art: When the ‘Family Business’ is in the Sex Industry.” CNN.com. 13 January 2004. Hooper, Barrett. “‘Normal people in an outrageous world’: Adam Glasser, star of the reality TV show Family Business, is just a regular guy who also happens to be a porn producer.” National Post. 5 December 2003: B4. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/special/eloquence.html MLA Style Levitt, Linda. "Searching for the Real: “Family Business,” Pornography, and Reality Television." M/C Journal 7.4 (2004). 10 October 2004 <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/04_searching.php> APA Style Levitt, L. (2004 Oct 11). Searching for the Real: “Family Business,” Pornography, and Reality Television, M/C Journal 7(4). Retrieved Oct 10 2004 from <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/04_searching.php>

It seems clear that people who are deaf ... struggle continually against the meanings that others impose on their experience, and the way that this separates them from others. They struggle for acknowledgement of the way they see their lives and wish to live them, and aspire to connection?with other people, to share and belong. (David Moorhead. Knowing Who I Am. 1995. 85.) Nga Tapuwae and Before I am deaf but, before that part of my life started, I was hearing and worked for many years as a librarian in New Zealand. My first job was in a public library located within a secondary school Nga Tapuwae Secondary College in South Auckland. Its placement was a 1970’s social experiment to see if a public library could work within the grounds of a community college (and the answer was no, it could not). The experience was a great introduction for me to the Maori and Polynesian cultures that I had not previously encountered. Until then, I was wary of both groups, and so it was a revelation to realise that although there were many social problems in the area including low literacy, many of the children and teenagers were bright, talented individuals. They simply did not connect to the Anglo-Saxon reading materials we offered. Years later, my interest in the social dynamics of literacy led to my enrolment in a post-graduate literacy degree in Melbourne. This action may have saved my life because at the end of this course, a minor ailment resulted in a visit to the university doctor who diagnosed me with the life-threatening medical condition, Neurofibromatosis Type 2 (NF 2). NF2 is a late onset genetic condition in which one’s body grows tumours, always on both hearing nerves, sometimes elsewhere as well. The tumours usually cause deafness and can cause death. I was told I needed to have my tumours removed and would probably become fully deaf as a result. This is how my life as I knew it changed direction and I started the long journey towards becoming deaf. Diagnosis and Change Predictably, once diagnosed, friends and colleagues rallied to comfort me. I was told things probably weren’t as bad as they sounded. Helen Keller was mentioned several times as an example of someone who had succeeded despite being deaf and blind. ‘Really,’ my friends asked, ‘how bad can it be? ‘Inside myself however, it couldn’t have been worse. A day later the enormity of it all hit me and I became inconsolable. A friend drove me back to the doctor and she did two things that were to change my life. She referred me to the University’s counselling services where, happily, I was counselled by Elizabeth Hastings who later went on to become Australia’s first Disability Services Commissioner. Secondly, the doctor organised for me to visit the HEAR Service at the Victorian Deaf Society (VDS). Again by happy accident, my friend and I stumbled into the ‘wrong building’ where I ended up meeting John Lovett, who was Deaf and the CEO there, via an interpreter. When I met John Lovett I was distraught but, unlike other people, he made no attempt to stop me crying. He simply listened carefully until I realised he understood what I was saying and stopped crying myself. He said my fears that I could end up alone and lonely were valid and he suggested the best thing I could do for myself was to join the ‘Deaf community’; a community. I had never heard of. He explained it was made up of people like him who used Australian sign language (Auslan) to communicate. He was so engaging and supportive that this plan sounded fine to me. By the time we finished talking and he walked me over to the HEAR Service, I was so in his thrall that I had enrolled for a Deaf awareness workshop, an Auslan class, and had plans to join the Deaf community. Had I stayed on and learned Auslan, my life may well have followed a different path, but this was not to be at that time. Becoming Hearing Impaired (HI) Across at the HEAR service, an alternate view of my potential future was put to me. Instead of moving away from everything familiar and joining the Deaf community, I could learn to lip-read and hopefully use it to stay in the workforce and amongst my hearing friends. I had a cousin and aunt who were late deafened; my cousin in particular was doing well communicating with lip-reading. I discussed this with friends and the idea of staying with the people I already knew sounded far less confronting than joining the Deaf community and so I chose this path. My surgeon was also optimistic. He was confident he could save some of my hearing. Suddenly learning Auslan seemed superfluous. I phoned John Lovett to explain, and his response was that I should do what suited me, but he asked me to remember one thing: that it was me who decided to leave the Deaf Community, not that the Deaf community had not wanted me. He told me that, if I changed my mind, I could always go back because the door to the Deaf community would always be open and he would be still be there. It would be a decade before I decided that I wanted to go back through that door, and around that time this great man passed away, but I never forgot my promise to remember our conversation. It, and a few other exchanges I had with him in the following years, stayed at the back of my mind, especially as my residual hearing sank over the years, and the prospect of total deafness hung over me. When I had the surgery, my surgeon’s optimism proved unfounded. He could not save any hearing on my left side and my facial and balance nerves were damaged as well. The hospital then decided not to operate again, and would only attempt to remove the second tumour if it grew and threatened my health again. Consequently, for close to a decade, my life was on hold in many ways. I feared deafness—for me it signalled that my life as I knew it would end and I would be isolated. Every hearing test was a tense time for me as I watched my remaining hearing decline in a slow, relentless downward path on the graph. It was like watching the tide go out knowing it was never going to come in as fully again. My thinking started to change too. Within a week of my diagnosis I experienced discrimination for the first time. A library school that had offered me a place in its post graduate librarianship course the following year made it clear that they no longer wanted me. In the end it did not matter as I was accepted at another institution but it was my first experience of being treated less favourably in the community and it was a shock. After the surgery my life settled down again. I found work in public libraries again, rekindled an old relationship and in 1994 had a baby boy. However, living with a hearing loss is hard work. Everything seemed tiring, especially lip-reading. My ears rejected my hearing aid and became itchy and inflamed. I became aware that my continual hearing problems were sometimes seen as a nuisance in work situations. Socialising lost a lot of its appeal so my social world also contracted. Around this time something else started happening. Outside work, people started expressing admiration for me—words like ‘role model’ and ‘inspiring’ started entering the conversation. Any other time I might have enjoyed it but for me, struggling to adapt to my new situation, it felt odd. The whole thing reminded me of being encouraged to be like Helen Keller; as if there is a right way to behave when one is deaf in which you are an inspiration, and a wrong way in which one is seen as being in need of a role model. I discussed this with Elizabeth Hastings who had helped me prepare mentally for the surgery and afterwards. I explained I felt vulnerable and needy in my new situation and she gave me some useful advice. She thought feeling needy was a good thing as realising one needs people keeps one humble. She observed that, after years of intellectualising, educated people sometimes started believing they could use intellectualisation as a way to avoid painful emotions such as sadness. This behaviour then cut them off from support and from understanding that none of us can do it alone. She believed that, in always having to ask for help, people with disabilities are kept aware of the simple truth that all people depend on others to survive. She said I could regard becoming deaf as a disability, or I could choose to regard it as a privilege. Over the years the truth of her words became increasingly more evident to me as I waded through all the jargon and intellectualisation that surrounds discussion of both deafness and the disability arena, compared to the often raw emotion expressed by those on the receiving end of it. At a personal level I have found that talking about emotions helps especially in the face of the ubiquitous ‘positive thinking’ brigade who would have us all believe that successful people do not feel negative emotions regardless of what is happening. The Lie Elizabeth had initially sympathised with my sadness about my impending deafness. One day however she asked why, having expressed positive sentiments both about deaf people and people with disabilities, I was saying I would probably be better off dead than deaf? Up until that conversation I was unaware of the contradictions between what I felt and what I was saying. I came to realise I was living a lie because I did not believe what I was telling myself; namely, that deaf people and people with disabilities are as good as other people. Far from believing this, what I really thought was that being deaf, or having a disability, did lessen one’s worth. It was an uncomfortable admission, particularly sharing it with someone sitting in a wheelchair, and especially as up until then I had always seen myself as a liberal thinker. Now, faced with the reality of becoming deaf, I had been hoist by my own petard, as I could not come to terms with the idea of myself as a deaf person. The Christian idea of looking after the ‘less fortunate’ was one I had been exposed to, but I had not realised the flip side of it, which is that the ‘less fortunate’ are also perceived as a ‘burden’ for those looking after them. It reminded me of my initial experiences years earlier at Nga Tapuwae when I came face to face with cultures I thought I had understood but did not. In both cases it was only when I got to know people that I began to question my own attitudes and assumptions and broadened my thinking. Unfortunately for deaf people, and people with disabilities, I have not been the only person lying to myself. These days it is not common for people to express their fears about deaf people or people with disabilities. People just press on without fully communicating or understanding the other person’s attitude or perspectives. When things then do not work out, these failures reinforce the misconceptions and these attitudes persist. I believe it is one of the main reasons why true community inclusion for deaf and people with disabilities is moving so slowly. Paying for access is another manifestation of this. Everyone is supportive of access in principle but there is continuous complaint about paying for things such as interpreting. The never-ending discussions between deaf people and the wealthy movie industry about providing more than token access to captioned cinema demonstrate that the inclusion lie is alive and well. Until it can be effectively addressed through genuine dialogue, deaf people, hard of hearing people and people with disabilities will always be largely relegated to life outside the mainstream. Collectively we will also continue to have to endure this double message that we are of equal value to the community while simultaneously being considered a financial burden if we try to access it in ways that are meaningful to us. Becoming Deaf In 2002 however all this thinking still lay ahead of me. I still had some hearing and was back living in New Zealand to be close to my family. My relationship had ended and I was a solo mother. My workplace had approved leave of absence, and so I still had my job to go back to in Melbourne if I wanted it. However, I suspected that I would soon need the second tumour removed because I was getting shooting pains down my face. When my fears were confirmed I could not decide whether to move back to Melbourne or let the job go, and risk having trouble finding one if I went back later. I initially chose to stay longer as my father was sick but eventually I decided Melbourne was where I wanted to be especially if I was deaf. I returned, found temporary employment, and right up to the second surgery I was able to work as I could make good use of the small amount of hearing I still had. I thought that I would still be able to cope when I was made fully deaf as a result of the surgery. It was, after all, only one notch down on the audiogram and I was already ‘profoundly deaf’ and still working. When I woke up after the surgery completely deaf, it felt anti-climactic. The world seemed exactly the same, just silent. At home where I was surrounded by my close family and friends everything initially seemed possible. However, when my family left, it was just my seven-year-old son and myself again, and on venturing back into the community, it quickly became clear to me that at some level my status had changed. Without any cues, I struggled to follow speech and few people wanted to write things down. Although my son was only seven, people communicated with him in preference to me. I felt as if we had changed roles: I was now the child and he was the adult. Worse was soon to follow when I tried to re-enter the workforce. When I had the surgery, the hospital had installed a gadget called an auditory brainstem implant, (ABI) which they said would help me hear. An ABI is similar to a cochlear implant but it is attached to the brainstem instead of the cochlear nerve. My cochlear nerve was removed. I hoped my ABI would enable me to hear enough to find work but, aside from clinical conditions in which there was no background noise and the staff knew how to assist, it did not work. My most humiliating moment with it came when it broke down mid job interview and I spent half the time left trying to get it going again in full view of the embarrassed interview panel, and the other half trying to maintain my composure whilst trying to lip-read the questions. The most crushing blow came from the library where I had happily worked for seven years at middle management level. This library was collaborating with another institution to set up a new library and they needed new staff. I hopefully applied for a job at the same level I had worked at prior to becoming deaf but was unsuccessful. When I asked for feedback, I was told that I was not seen as having the skills to work at that level. My lowest point came when I was refused a job unpacking boxes of books. I was told I did not have experience in this area even though, as any librarian will attest, unpacking boxes is part of any librarian’s work. When I could not find unskilled work, it occurred to me that possibly I would never work again. While this was unfolding, my young son and I went from being comfortable financially to impoverished. My ex-partner also decided he would now make childcare arrangements directly with my son as he was annoyed at being expected to write things down for me. My relationship with him, some family members, and my friends were all under strain at that time. I was lost. It also became clear that my son was not coping. Although he knew the rudiments of Auslan, it was not enough for us to communicate sufficiently. His behaviour at school deteriorated and one night he became so frustrated trying to talk to me that he started to pull out his own hair. I calmed him and asked him to write down for me what he was feeling and he wrote down ‘It is like you died. It is like I don’t have a Mum now’. It was now clear to me that although I still had my friends, nobody including myself knew what to do. I realised I had to find someone who could understand my situation and I knew now it had to be a Deaf person. Fortunately, by this stage I was back learning Auslan again at La Trobe University. The week after the conversation with my son, I told my Auslan teacher what had happened. To my relief she understood my situation immediately. She told me to bring my son to class, at no cost, and she would teach him herself. I did and my life started to turn around. My son took to Auslan with such speed and application that he was able to not only converse with her in one month but immediately started using Auslan with me at home to get the things he wanted. We were able to re-establish the mother/son relationship that we both needed. I was also able to help my son talk through and deal with all the changes that me becoming deaf had foisted upon him. He still uses Auslan to talk to me and supplements it using speech, copious finger spelling, notes and diagrams. More than anything else, this relationship has kept me anchored to my long-term goal of becoming a clear signer. Encouraged by my son’s success, I put all my energy into learning Auslan and enrolled in a full time TAFE Auslan course. I also joined a chat group called ‘Here to Hear’ (H2H). The perspectives in the group ranged from strongly oral to strongly Deaf but for me, trying to find a place to fit in any of it, it was invaluable. Almost daily I chatted with the group, asking questions and invariably someone responded. The group acted as a safety net and sounding board for me as I worked out the practicalities of living life deaf. The day of my fateful interview and the ABI humiliation, I came home so shaken that I used the Irish remedy of a couple of swigs of whisky, and then went online and posted an account of it all. I can still remember the collective indignation of the group and, as I read the responses, beginning to see the funny side of it . . . something I could not have done alone. I also made use of easy access to Deaf teachers at TAFE and used that to listen to them and ask advice on situations. I found out for example, that if I instructed my son to stand behind me when people in shops insisted on addressing him, they had no alternative but to talk to me; it was a good clear message to all concerned that my son was the child in this relationship. About this time, I discovered the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) that Elizabeth Hastings had worked so hard on, filed my first DDA complaint, and received my first apology at the mediation session that followed. My personal life also improved, relationship by relationship as everyone adjusted. Slowly the ice melted in most of my relationships; some relationships faded and were replaced with new ones with signing people, and eventually hearing people again. My life moved forward. Through a member of ‘Here to Hear’, I was invited to apply for my first post deaf job—covering holiday leave at a Deaf sports organisation. I practically finger-spelt my way through the interview but not only did they offer me the job, they were delighted to have me. I was able to buy a few things with the money I earned, and suddenly it felt as if everything was possible again. This acceptance of me by Deaf people had a profound impact on me. I mixed with people more, and it was not too long before I was able to use my basic signing skills to use Auslan interpreters and re-enter the workplace. I have discovered over time that living in silence also has advantages—no more noisy parties or rubbish trucks clanging at dawn and in its place a vastly heightened visual awareness that I enjoy. Before I was deaf I thought it would be lonely in the silence but in fact many of life’s best moments—watching rain hit and then run down a window, swimming in the sea, cooking and being with good friends—do not rely upon sound at all; they feel the same way they always did. Sometimes I have felt somewhat of an outsider in the Deaf community. I have sometimes been taken aback by people’s abruptness but I have learned over time that being succinct is valued in Auslan, and some people like to come straight to the point. At crisis points, such as when I asked for help at the Victorian Deaf Society and my Auslan class, it has been a huge relief to talk to Deaf people and know immediately that they understand just from reading their eyes. Having access to an additional world of deaf people has made my life more enjoyable. I feel privileged to be associated with the Deaf community. I can recall a couple of Christmases ago making dinner for some signing friends and suddenly realising that, without noticing, everything had become alright in my world again. Everyone was signing really fast – something I still struggle with; but every now and then someone would stop and summarise so I felt included. It was really relaxed and simply felt like old times, just old times without the sound thrown in. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, two ethnographers, have this to say about why people communicate the ways they do: The individual ... creates for himself the patterns of his linguistic behaviour so as to resemble those of the group or groups with which from time to time he wishes to be identified, or so as to be unlike those from whom he wishes to be distinguished ... . We see speech acts as acts of projection; the speaker is projecting his inner universe, implicitly with the invitation to others to share it ... he is seeking to reinforce his models of the world, and hopes for solidarity from those with whom he wishes to identify. (181) This quote neatly sums up why I choose to communicate the ways I do. I use Auslan and speech in different situations because I am connected to people in both groups and I want them in my life. I do not feel hugely different from anyone these days. If it is accepted that I have as much to contribute to the community as anyone else, becoming deaf has also meant for me that I expect to see other people treated well and accepted. For me that means contributing my time and thoughts, and advocating. It also means expecting a good level of access to interpreters, to some thought provoking captioned movies in English, and affordable assistive technologies so I can participate. I see this right to participate and engage in genuine dialogue with the rest of the community as central to the aspirations and identity of us all, regardless of who we are or where others think we belong. References Le Page, R.B., and Andree Tabouret-Keller. Acts of Identity: Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. London: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Moorhead, D. “Knowing Who I Am.” In S. Gregory, ed., Deaf Futures Revisited. Block 3, Unit 10, D251 Issues in Deafness. Open University, 1995.