"Who needs cursive when you can type?"

Handwriting is becoming a lost art. My kids were taught the basics of cursive in 4th grade, then went right back to printing. Nowadays they write with their thumbs only -- on a tiny screen -- with words that are so abbreviated that I now understand why spelling is no longer a subject taught in school. Even as I'm writing this, my laptop signals me with a red underline if the word is spelled wrong -- sometimes if it's only a little off, it corrects it for me, instantly. It gives me a blue zigzag line under words that may not be grammatically correct for the sentence. No proofreading required. Is this progress or is this encouraging laziness? I tend to think the latter.

Who needs cursive? Our children do. Writing in cursive, like playing a musical instrument, stimulates areas of the brain that usually lie dormant. Just as musicians tend to do better in math, people who write in cursive tend to be more creative. Just think of cursive as an art. Budding artists are creative and imaginative. I rarely meet a young plugged-in person who has an original thought in their head. Harsh, but true. Sitting in front of a screen where you are entertained 24/7 leaves little room for creative thinking.

As a leftie, I worked hard to have legible handwriting. I practiced and practiced, determined not to have 'chicken scratching' like my dad, or words smeared across the page because I had to drag my hand across it. I now have beautiful handwriting (and I'm so modest, too). I take pride in my cursive. But my kids can't even read my notes, and I have to print for them. They can't read anything their grandmothers write in their birthday cards -- and my mother and MIL have neat handwriting. I feel like something precious has been lost in the 'progress' of technology.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written in cursive. Now we have a generation of children who can't read the original documents because they can't read cursive. Food for thought on this I-hope-it's-spring-now sunny day.

To Blog or Not to Blog?

I am not a blogger (plus I don't misquote Shakespeare very well) but I've been told by other authors that people like to read blogs. So I need to keep it new and fresh, right? What should I blog about? It's kind of a gray area since the things I find interesting, like politics, volunteer work, and adoption, would change the tone of my blog. So I should blog about books and writing books? Yes, that's with a question mark.

What's so interesting about books? My father was a library director so I grew up in a book-loving environment. My family was boring. A typical night at home for the Meldroms was each person in his/her own room reading a book. I was one of those kids who stayed up late reading with a flashlight under the covers.Yeah, that's about as exciting as watching the grass grow.

However, now that I have my own family, I'm seeing a huge difference in the creativity/imagination levels of my kids who like to read vs my kids who prefer to stare at a screen. Maybe being a book junkie as a kid wasn't such a bad thing. Books, to me, are never boring, and I have the jam-packed bookcases to prove it.

I suppose giving our kids Kindles and downloading lots of books would be a way to encourage reading since it would still allow them to stare at a screen. What do you think of that theory? Personally, I like the feel of a book in my hands. I love the smell of new paper. I like turning pages. I don't think I'll ever buy a Kindle unless I suddenly had to do a lot of traveling because that would give me reading material without taking up so much luggage space.

Please see the bottom of my blog for authors I read and recommend in the genre of young adult science fiction.

So that was my blog post about reading. I guess I should have apologized in advance for boring you. Next topic: writing and the lost art of cursive. Have a good weekend.