From: Dipesh Navsaria <dipesh_at_navsaria.com>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:45:40 -0500

Regarding the NY Times article, below is the letter I sent to the NYT in response:

Dear New York Times,

I was puzzled by the article "Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children" (7 October 2010). While the assertion that parents are prematurely pushing their kids to chapter books may be true in some instances, the more obvious explanation for picture book sales dropping is the current recession. I strongly suspect that picture book circulation in public libraries is far up.

Picture books do offer a wonderful interplay between language and image, and strengthen the neuronal connections in the brain which enable children to extrapolate from context and learn from their environment.

Additionally, the article author should be very careful about precisely what is being said: it appears that the cited discussion on urbanbaby.com asked for books to *read to* a 5-year-old, not what a child should be reading. My children loved having books of a similar complexity read out loud to them at that age. There is a difference between being read to and reading it oneself.

Sincerely Dipesh Navsaria, MPH, MSLIS, MD Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health Director, Early Literacy Projects Madison, Wisconsin

I think the author of that article took the standard "Look at these uptight parents" article and related it to a probably-true but-also- somewhat-standard doom-and-gloom scenario from the publishing industry and equated the two together. Sloppy writing!

Peace and Prosperity, Dipesh
Received on Thu 04 Nov 2010 09:45:40 PM CDT