"Grab your hat and read with The Cat in the Hat!"

The National Education Association (NEA) has deemed March 2 Read Across America Day since 1997. This big day has strategically been planned to fall on Dr. Seuss' birthday. What a great way for elementary schools to take a day and run with it! The NEA suggests that schools celebrate this day by making and wearing hats just like the Cat in the Hat's, eating birthday cake, reading to one another, and having people come in and read to them. How wonderful! I wish I had gotten to take part in Read Across American when I was little. (I at least got to participate in Book It and got to earn my own personal sized pizza from Pizza Hut after reading so many books.)

After reading this, I called my niece (she's in 1st grade) and asked her if her teacher has anything fun planned for March 2nd. I was happy to hear that she gets to have an afternoon filled with Dr. Seuss fun. She gets a day free from the usual full uniform and gets to wear something with stripes--she's wearing red and white striped tights. After recess a guest reader is coming into the classroom to read 2 Dr. Seuss books. Ellie's hoping for Horton Hears a Who.

I'm not sure who's more excited about this big event, me or Ellie. My nephew, who's 10, isn't anywhere near as excited as I am. His class is going to the kindergarten classroom and is reading to them. He told me he's "too old" for Dr. Seuss, but he can understand why "little kids" like it so much. I think he's secretly still a fan of some Dr. Seuss books.

I really hope that more schools are taking advantage of Read Across America Day. It's such a wonderful opportunity to get an entire school to read. At least I know of one school who is just as excited about Dr. Seuss as I am.

I do, I do love Green Eggs and Ham

My ah-ha moment came when I was sitting behind a window, head-phones over my ears, observing a speech therapy session with a three year old little girl. Sitting on the therapy table was a bunch of colored whistles, flavored tongue depressors, a tub of water, dish soap, a straw and a Dr. Seuss book.

At this point my in life I was a few months away from college graduation and I was patiently awaiting acceptance letter from half a dozen universities. Before this session I was determined that I wanted to be an audiologist who specialized in pediatrics, primarily birth to 3 years of age. I had fallen in love with audiology my first semester in the communicative disorders program at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Dr. Cotrell had a lot to do with my fascination with the science behind hearing and language development.

This little girl was working on speech sounds where the puff of air comes out of the mouth rather than the nose (hence the use of whistles and bubble blowing). She was an amazing little girl who so badly wanted to make the whistle toot and create big bubbles. Her reward for attempting was having Green Eggs and Ham read to her at the end of her therapy session.

I watched so many therapy sessions with my face as close as possible to that glass window and I was amazed at how many of the children had a Dr. Seuss book as their reward. The Lorax, The Cat and the Hat, and Green Eggs and Ham, were the three most commonly used reward books. Of course I had heard all of these stories many times when I was growing up, but when I saw how these children who were struggling to speak clearly or at all reacted to these books I knew that I somehow wanted to help them too.

The little girl's name was Megan and she is the reason why I became fascinated with Dr. Seuss. These simple books help children with speech development, speech delays, and auditory conditions learn to speak. It's absolutely amazing how a silly book can bring such big smiles after a tough therapy session and also be a speech development tool without the child ever knowing.

My ah-ha moment made me realize that I needed to find more books that can be used to help children going through speech therapy. Dr. Seuss was an amazing man who has truly left a mark on more than one generation. Now I want to write books that combine rhythm and rhyme for these children and search out other author's who want to do the same thing.

So yes, I will eat green eggs and ham in a box with a fox. I will eat green eggs and ham anywhere!

What are teens reading?

I signed up for PW's children's books up-dates and I love reading them. (I guess they're doing a good job, according to Alex, of giving me the information that I really want.) What surprised me today was that teens apparently are reading a lot of dystopian society/world books.

I remember having to read A Brave New World and The Giver when I was in junior high and high school, but I didn't search them out, they were basically required reading. According to PW, teens are searching out all of these books and there are a bunch that are going to be hitting the market in the near future. Themes in these books cover threatening issues like no more gas, no more water, out breaks of horrible viruses, genetic manipulation, totalitarian leaders, reality TV gone too far, and countless others.

All of these issues are things that people are seeing and hearing about on a daily basis, so it isn't shocking that they're making their way into the minds of authors. I'm just surprised that teens are so attracted to these topics. I dont' understand why you'd want to read about things that are potentially realistic and a little bit scary. For me, I want to get away from these fears and not delve into a novel completely focused on them.

I should be thinking and saying, "well at least they're reading," but part of me is a little nervous that they're so focused on the negative aspects of the world we live in. I think this interest they have in the future show that they're a little nervous about the future. That's my opinion though, maybe they just like the dystopian theme.

I suppose everyone reads for different reasons. Some people like the scary possibilities of the future and want to read about them. While others, like myself, like to read to get away from all of the negativity.

Overstock.com

I am a bargain hunter and a true believer that if you wait a little while before purchasing something you really want, you will be able to get it on sale. This part of me has been drawn into buying things because of an e-mail promotion.

Overstock.com is a wonderful on-line shopping heaven. They have everything you could ever possibly want and a great sales bin. What I really like about overstock.com is that they send you these wonderful e-mails letting me that I can get free shipping or even better free next day arrival shipping for free. From mid November until Christmas I got an e-mail reminding me of this wonderful money saver. Because of this, quite a few people on my Christmas shopping list got gifts from overstock.com.

Another reason I've bought products because of overstock's e-mail promotions is that if what I buy isn't the right size, color, or not what I expected, I can send it back without charge. I'm not sure if that works all of the time, I've never actually had an issue with anything I've purchased. I'm sure there's something in the fine print about large items.

Similar to Amazon, Overstock keeps track of the brands and items that I've purchased. I then get e-mail promotions about items that they think I'd be interested in. So far these e-mail promotions haven't convinced me to buy anything, but they do at least get to me to go to their site and check the items out.

Yahoo!

So Yahoo! has this new social networking device. Unlike MySpace and Facebook, this doesn't have a fancy name. I've been trying to figure it out and see what it actually does, and so far it hasn't been easy. I think part of this may have to do with the fact that it's new and people haven't "found" it yet.

Here are the problems with this new avenue in social marketing:
- How do you actually find anyone on it? For what I have figured out, you can make connections (that's the equivalent of befriending)with people who are in your contact list. You can search for other people in the search tool. Of course you can only search for other people who have joined this new profile addition of Yahoo! From an on-line marketing perspective, this isn't very helpful.

-How do you make it your own? Last night when I saw this message in my inbox about updating my profile and connecting with friends there was a link that told you how to add color and originality to your profile. Today, I can't find it anywhere. This is a major flaw. People don't expect to be able to personalize their Facebook accounts, but this site claims you can and then makes it difficult to find again.

-How many times do I have to put in my password? Everytime you change anything on your profile you are taken to the homescreen and asked to put in your password. This system isn't change friendly. Last night I put my password in over ten times just trying to figure things out.

I don't think that this profile connection system is going to last. It's not user friendly and there's nothing too exciting about it. There is a blog on it, so if you just wanted to use it as a blog then I could see your contacts being interested in possibly reading it. But, I don't think creating a profile on Yahoo! for the purpose of marketing would be of any benefit...at least not yet. Who knows, things may change on here and it could catch on.

Rethinking Paper & Ink

Do you have a green conscious? Rethinking Paper & Ink: The Sustainable Publishing Revolution is written as a collaboration of Olligan Press Students from Portland State University, the Green Press Initiative, and sustainable publishing professionals. Ooligan press operates with the goal of becoming the educatinoal leader in publishing. Rethinking Paper & Ink examines and analyzes sustainable publishings practices. Sustainability is examined through an economic, social, and environmental lense.

Rethinking Paper & Ink: The Sustainable Publishing Revolution is written with sustainability in mind from front to back. Rethinking Paper & Ink is a comprehensive account of all the sustainability choices and issues that arose throughout the book publishing process.

Rethinking Paper & Ink discusses green conscious issues such as paper distribution, ink choices, local printers, book manufactures, paper manufactures and paper distributors, Chelsea Green's Green Partner Bookstores, web resource guides, certification programs, paper, sustainable design (cradle-to-cradle), and sustainability issues.

Instant Gratification

I've decided that the internet is highly to blame for our need for instant gratification. I will immediately admit that when something on-line doesn't work as smoothly as advertised or as instantly I get highly annoyed. Most of my annoyance, I think, is completely warranted and legitimate. I will explain:

We've all been told over and over that the best way to go with bill paying is to go paperless. I'm all for saving the trees and ink that gets wasted on pages and pages of bills. Going paperless is supposed to simplify everyone's lives and we're not supposed to worry about paying these bills anymore, because they are automatically pulled out of your checking/savings/or some other account. What happens when there's a glitch in the system though?

Twice this month I've had a glitch negatively effect my finances. Every single month for the past year I've had my credit card bill automatically paid and I've never had an issue--until now that is. I followed the lovely instructions that my credit institution provided me, telling me that I should go in and check all of my settings and make any updates that were necessary. I did that. I also decided to simply change my payment date (nothing huge, just a few days). I even thought I was being smart about this decision and made sure that this update wouldn't effect my current billing cycle. I signed out and went on my merry way. And then the glitch hit me 1 month later. The online system decided to change my current billing cycle! This wasn't supposed to happen. I called this institution to see what could be done. They were apologetic and agreed with me that this shouldn't have happened because I had posted the date I wanted everything to go into effect. How did they explain this situation to me? "I'm sorry, there was a minor glitch in the system. It shouldn't happen in the future Ms. Woods." Their use of shouldn't didn't leave me with much confidence in making any future updates to my account.

My second glitch experience goes well beyond annoyance. I will even give you the name of the institution to blame for this issue, Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo loves to advertise all of the online capabilities that they have. They fail to tell you that the majority of the time their systems are down and highly unreliable. I have been trying to sign a master promissory note for 5 days. I have been filling in all of my information in this nicely designed box that's supposed to make student's lives easier. I correctly insert my identifying numbers and press submit. A nice little message pops up telling me that my identifying numbers are nowhere to be found in their system and to "please" give them a call for further instructions. I called. I got to talk to a very nice woman who was very helpful and went well out of her way to try to fix the problem. Nothing was working and what made both her and I upset was the fact that her computer screen said everything was filled out correctly, but for some reason just wasn't going through. She nicely called this a "glitch" and to try again later and on a different computer and if nothing worked, to call back and someone would get to the bottom of this issue.

I called back. This call did not go so well. This issue can be blamed on poor customer service skills. This new helper told me I was filling in the boxes wrong and in a very snippy, know-it-all tone told me she "needed" to walk me through the process. I told her that I understood the process and that there was a "glitch" in the system that wasn't accepting my information. She got angry with me so I requested to speak with her supervisor. She put me on hold for 11 minutes (I really timed it)and then told me she was sorry and that she forgot I was on hold. This must have been a glitch, right? When I finally got to talk to her supervisor she told me that whoever told me that there was a "glitch" in the system was incorrect and that any problems with the Wells Fargo site were being taken care of. I do believe that that is an admittance to a glitch in the system.

I never was able to get the instant gratification that was guaranteed to me through either of these fine institutions websites. These institutions need to realize that when guaranteeing people that something is going to be easier and much more efficient, that people will become upset when "glitches" appear. Especially when dealing with money.

Amazon the Powerful

How do I feel about Amazon's power in the literary market? Uneasy.

Amazon has been at the top of the on-line literary market for quite awhile and they have enjoyed every minute of it. They've been able to set up the "rules" that each publisher has to follow in order to have their books sold on Amazon. Amazon flexed their muscles and took control of pricing.

Sure, each publisher has the option to not sell their books on Amazon, but in reality that would be a big mistake. Sales are so high at Amazon and publishers don't want to miss out on the opportunity to make a sale. This is how the book industry makes their money. No one wants to turn their back on a for sure sale.

The problem with all of this is that Amazon has gotten a big head over the years and they believe that what they say should be indisputable. They have forgotten that they are just one aspect of a publishers book sales and want to be treated as the highest priority.

The risks of Amazon's growing dominance is that they will treat more and more publishers in the same manner as they did Macmillan. Pulling down buy buttons hurts more than just the publishers sales: it hurts the author, readers, and the reputation of Amazon. Who wants to do business with someone/something when they're going to hit below the belt and ignore all possible harmful side effects.

Amazon may continue to do business in the same manner, and they will probably continue to be successful. But, it's the publishers who decide to take a stand on all of the "rules" (Macmillan and Hachette) and make their own demands that will change the way Amazon works. I doubt that Amazon will fall any time soon, but I do think they're going to have to do business in a different way in order to fill the needs of their book buying customers. They can't continue to remove buttons and think that's a good way to handle disagreements.

If their business model doesn't change, that's when Amazon's power will really get scary.