I HAVE A 12 YR OLD daughter who reads 300 pages a day because she loves the written word. I plan to pay her a tenner whenever she ploughs through a recommended text that we can use as a springboard for a recorded discussion. We have a big collection of Young Adult titles. I also want to introduce Mia to some selections that show her more about the life I had in the States.
I think a lot of what formed my pre-teen years came from my father who spent his first eight years living through the Great Depression. During his high school days, my dad read daily reports from both the European and Pacific fronts as local boys returned home in caskets. I have several books that articulate life in the States for the greatest generation I've personally known. I want to explore books by Bill Bryson, Homer Hickam, Dick Winters, Mark Twain, and Stephen Ambrose. They might be too difficult for a pre-teen in Ireland but they have storylines that became films so they're more accessible than through words on a page.
We've watched October Sky together and I want Mia to enjoy listening to the narration by Beau Bridges as he weaves the story from Coalwood to Cape Canaveral.
But first, I'm starting a shared calendar with Mia for the month of August to see if what I'm proposing is viable. And I need to see if my proposed payment plan of three euro cents per written paperback page or four cents a minute for the audiobook spoken work is fair.
What do you think? Should we share what we're doing as blog posts and podcasts?
I've been thinking about this since the day Mia first learned to read.
[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus of the Limerick Institute of Technology.]
