Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

Every parent knows that it tough to hold a child’s interest in any book today with all the various kinds of digital media available but an even tougher sell to the kids are grade school text books.

Robert Gould, Big Guy Books publisher believed that these text books needed to reinvent themselves to capture the children’s interest.

Instead of the traditional format, the text fonts were designed to ape e-mail and instant messaging and the visuals were a mixture of computer generated images and digital photographs. These were chosen because the kids already use them daily in their own lives and are more accepting of something they recognise. It also had the effect of making those stodgy text books look and feel more like a comic.

So when Gould went looking for support for his project who better to contact than Stan Lee and the Marvel comics creator is now lending his name to this new reading project from the Californian publisher.

Lee is well aware that times have changed. “When I was young, you were lucky to get to a movie once in a while. The rest of the time you were reading books or playing outside. Children today are looking for the next greatest thing, and it could be books if they’re made even more interesting and stimulating than their other distractions.”

To this end Big Guy books have come up with the “Time Soldiers” series which is targeted to appeal to that group of reluctant readers. The books chart the adventures of a group of young children who travel through time but as well as entertaining their reading audience, each book in the series contains 100 new words thus having an impact on tier vocabulary as well. Teacher study guides are available to reinforce the lessons learnt

“Authors, illustrators and publishers are going to have to evolve with today’s children if they are going to keep them interested in books.” Lee says. “When I read the books I understood what Gould was trying to do. I used college-level vocabulary in Marvel comics even though I was targeting a younger audience. They (young readers) would want to know what the words meant. They might learn from the context, maybe from osmosis and it’s not the worse thing if they had to look up a word in the dictionary. Young brains are like sponges. The more you give them, the more they absorb.”

In another nod to comics each book ends with a cliff-hanger ending to encourage the reader to pick up the next episode.