In Their Own Words - Premier

On March, 30, Kepler's hosted the premier of In Their Own Words, a documentary about the African Library Project. Angela K. gives her impressions of the event~

As a store, we should feel very proud to have been (and continue to be) involved with this amazing, life changing program.

I’m not certain that everyone is aware of what we are doing with ALP, so I will remind you that we are currently collecting books to send another shipment to Africa. The collection bin is in the front window. Last time, we sent over 1,000 books to a school library in Botswana. I hope that we can exceed that number with our next shipment. If you visit their website, there is a bunch of information about what they are doing and how you can help!

It is one thing to put books in a box and send them away to another country. It is another, to see and hear how this simple act can affect change in a stranger’s life. One of the most interesting comments I heard at this event was that in 20 years, these children are going to be the leaders in their nation and their communities. I think it is pretty amazing to think that by placing a book in one child’s hand, it can perhaps lead to a positive change in his or her life that will in turn change the lives of all those around that child.

Chris Bradshaw, the founder, did an impressive job of showcasing just how important the work that ALP is doing by arranging for a wide variety of fascinating speakers to come and share their work with us. My favorite was Matthews. He's in this picture:



Matthews grew up in Africa, one of 8 children. Every day he walked a total of 10 miles to get to and from school. At his school, the teacher only had one book for the whole class. She had to copy it onto the chalkboard to share it with the kids which didn’t allow for a very comprehensive education. He said that it frustrated him because the learning process was so slow and oftentimes, he couldn’t even read the teacher’s writing which lead to a lot of confusion on his part. He managed to persevere though and attended a teacher’s training college, where at the age of 19, he finally owned his FIRST book. He said that it was so precious to him that he slept with it at night. He returned to the village he grew up in to be a teacher, where once again, he met the challenge of having to educate kids with severely limited resources. Now, he is working towards a nursing degree while sitting on the Board of Directors of ALP. Since he experienced things first hand, he knows very well how important it is that books get into the hands of these kids and his story is one that will hopefully be inspiring to those kids who are receiving help through ALP.

In addition to Matthews, there was Gareth Lacey who was one of the earliest library developers of the program. While in the Peace Corps, he worked to collect books for the primary school he worked at and shared that the work helped give him purpose –it made him feel like he was REALLY making a difference. He even called the principal of the school (King’s Day Primary) and put him on speakerphone so the audience could listen to him talk about how much the students appreciated what was being done for them.

The film screening came next and it was quite moving. Both filmmakers were on hand to talk about their experiences in Botswana and Lesotho. They shot over 18 hours of video, all of which they hope to edit together to make a longer, more comprehensive documentary. (Of course, what is holding them back is funding.)

Afterwards, Chis had all the book drive organizers come up and speak about what they had done. Speakers ranged from Girl Scout troops, to businesses (like us!), to service organizations. Most impressive was the 13 year old girl who single handedly collected 3,000 books to send to Africa. I wish I had been that motivated when I was 13.

I bet that I could go on and on about all that I saw and heard on Sunday. I took many pages of notes. If anyone is interested, I’d be happy to speak more about what I learned!

-Angela

Blake Taylor - ADHD & Me

ADHD & me: what i learned from lighting fires at the dinner table

Review by David Cowan

It wasn't the usual crowd that filled the seats in Kepler's Bookstore on February 25, 2008. The evening's audience consisted mainly of families from all over the Bay Area for whom this was their first Author's Talk. Such standing-room-only would have been expected for a Secretary of State, an NFL quarterback, or a Nobel Laureate-not for a local teenage boy.

But Blake Taylor's recently published memoirs of growing up with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has already touched the lives of thousands of families, with the promise of reaching several million more in the US alone who strive to cope with the realities and myths of this widely misunderstood condition. So this audience came keenly interested in meeting a family role model (now a freshman at Berkeley), with written questions and no deficit of attention to his advice.

An out-of-the-box thinker, Taylor has authored a book, ADHD & Me: What I Learned From Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table, that defies typical categorizations. Really, it's three books in one:

*a heartening coming-of-age story whose hero's unique perspective shines through an authentic stream of consciousness similar to Mark Haddon's A Curious Incident in the Night-Time;

*a field journal of the first-hand scientific observations that normally elude pediatric psychiatrists who must normally speculate about the intentions and feelings locked up inside relatively un-communicative kids (e.g. "what was he thinking when he lashed out at his sibling?"); and

*a self-help book for kids and their parents who strive to understand and cope with ADHD.

But unlike the recent swarm of What-You-Need-To-Know-About-ADHD publications, this is not a science or medical book, and Blake makes no pretense otherwise. [I feel that I know him, so please excuse my unconventional use of his first name.] Readers are clearly advised to direct medical questions to their doctors, as Blake reinforced during the Q&A session at Kepler's. A clear-thinking, humble scientist at heart, Blake understands that it's okay to lack answers.

This honest self-awareness is critical to Blake's success at overcoming his disability. Among his many tips, Blake encourages open communication about ADHD among families, friends and teachers. His personal anecdotes demonstrate how such disclosures have prevented misunderstandings around his behavior, his medicines, and his tics. As he grew comfortable telling people that he has ADHD, they warmed up to him faster, and helped him solve his problems. It even tempered the bullies who prey on odd kids.

Obviously, the book itself exposes highly personal information, and in this way Blake sets an example for his reader. But by the very existence of ADHD & Me, Blake sets an even more profound example. Here's a kid whom several teachers were ready to write off as incapable of meeting normal academic expectations-with illegible penmanship and an inability to complete simple everyday tasks without the aid of psychotropic meds. And yet he authored a highly celebrated book while still in high school. This fact conveys hope, even before the reader has cracked open the cover.

to read the rest of David Cowan's review, go to his blog, http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/

Poetry Event - Beverly Brahic and Lauren Rusk

March 18, 2008

Beverley Bie Brahic - Against Gravity 

Lauren Rusk - Pictures in the Firestorm

In case you missed this special evening of poetry on March 18, Kepler's own Mack McIlvoy put his impressions of the event, appropriately, into a poem.

Pictures of the Firestorm Against Gravity

Lowlights

0

The Camera was blind, 

had no room to remember

it would only complain

"card full"

And the event host proved

clumsy in asking his questions.

 

Highlights

 

1

The Poets

Lauren arrived first,

ready at once to

soak in the store

the set up

the ordering department.

 

At once she was at home

and prone to delight without provocation

("Oh, there's water in the podium!

Perfect!") Next Beverley arrived

 with an entourage.

 

2

The Crowd

The field of chairs

filled quickly, completely,

several more were dispatched,

then yet again more

all projections were shattered

 our sales were spectacular

but that's not all that mattered.

 

Dotting the audience, Kepler's

were in evidence; Craig, Todd

and Terry all joined in to listen.

 

3

The Poems

After an intro which was

slightly tangential

Lauren launched straight into

her reading. 

The people were listening

some with eyes closed

others followed along

in the copies they bought

 

Beverley followed

and her poems held

captive every thought

within earshot.

Observant attendants

discovered a secret:

poems are living things  

which change after printing.

Mike Lupica at Kepler's

Take Me Out to the Bookstore!

Acclaimed sportswriter Mike Lupica came to Kepler's recently to talk about his new book, The Big Field. And his visit turned out to be a big hit. Here are Angela K.'s notes on the event:

In honor of Mike Lupica's visit we turned the bookstore into a relaxing place for the crowd to watch highlights from the 2007 World Series, eat popcorn, and drink root beer.
We also had our T-ball team, the Kepler's Klobberers show up for this event. The coach and assistant coach came and handed out the uniforms and caps, which the kids were really happy and excited to get. Prior to the event, Mike agreed to come out and take a group picture with the team. He greeted each kid individually and even stayed for the funny face picture at the end.

Mike is a very high-energy person--he had to be doing something every second that he was in the store. This worked very well in his presentation because he never let it drag, it was constant laughs and anecdotes that were entertaining, but meaningful.
When Mike started his presentation, he told the kids that he had to tell them a sad story. Then, he proceeded to say, "When I was a kid, there was NO INTERNET!" I kid you not, the children in the audience gasped in astonishment and fear. He kept on listing the things that he didn't have when he was growing up. When he said, "When I was a kid, there was NO INSTANT MESSAGING!", a little girl perched on her father's lap paused from drinking her root beer to shout out "DAMN!". And, of course, everyone burst out laughing.

I thought that it was interesting that he spoke to the fact that he has been deemed the "King of Reluctant Readers"--which is quite true. (One girl in the signing line said to him, "Thank you for making reading fun for me.") He felt that reluctant readers was an overused and misused term because he thinks that it isn't so much that the kids don't want to read its that they haven't found what it is they like to read. He went on to say that he thinks that the appeal of his books is that they are about real kids in real situations coming together to accomplish something that they didn't think was possible. Surely, the fact that his books sell so well is proof that he has found something that really works. ~ Angela K.

Manil Suri at Kepler's

In case you missed Manil Suri at Kepler's on March 3, the author was in town to talk about his book, The Age of Shiva: a Novel.

----
Terry's Notes:

Manil was an excellent speaker, successfully balancing - like his novels - the serious and the comedic. He spoke at length about the influence of his mathematical training/thinking on his fiction writing. Math theory is a process of estimation and re-iteration, a constant refining of equations, while working towards an approximate solution, where the range of error increasingly tightens (did I get this somewhat right?). Writing is, for Manil, similar; he does a ton of rewriting, and knows he is closing in on a "solution" when he finally finds himself putting in a word, taking it out, and then putting it back in.

Interestingly, his first novel, The Death of Vishnu, he wrote with a certain concision (which he also attributes to his math background), paring his drafts to the point of near abstraction - hoping readers would project in a large way their own imaginations onto his characters and setting. Though looking back, he feels he did so at the expense of a richness of detail, a more vivid naturalism that he strives to evoke in the much longer, The Age of Shiva. Initially a story from three characters' points-of-view, Manil discovered (200 pages in) that the book was really about Meera, the eventual sole narrator. Of course, finding an authentic female voice was a challenge, one he more than meets and is evident in the opening scene: a sensuous depiction of Meera breastfeeding her newborn son, Ashvin.

Manil was particularly entertaining reading a passage involving narrator Meera's progressive, secular, "my daughter will be kissing the feet of NO man - ritual or no ritual" father, Paji. (I must say, his rendering did rather smack of campy, over-the-top "Bollywood".)

Because he was gunning for tenure, Manil did not want people to think he wasn't 100% committed to mathematics; so, initially, he wrote under the radar, "sneaking" off weekends to attend writing workshops taught by the likes of Vikram Chandra (Sacred Games) and Michael Cunningham (The Hours) or, in the case of The Death of Vishnu, feverishly pounding out the final eight chapters while supposedly on a "math retreat" (gotta luv it). Most people, it turns out, were quite supportive of his literary success. Manil even mentioned that fellow professors came out of the woodwork announcing their own "creative" passions. (Though I can't seem to shake the image of some departmental colleague bounding after Manil in the faculty parking lot, lifting him by the lapels, and loudly confessing: "Mathematical proofs be DAMNED, Manil! I am an ACTOR, damn-it!!" and softly, humbly: "You have FREED me. And I thank you.")

Manil did mention that he has subsequently taught a couple of writing workshops at his University, but no more! (People are ...sooo sensitive! says a surprised Manil.) When it comes to teaching, Manil prefers the "black-and-white", "one 'right' answer" nature of math (though I had to point out that I would never have passed Calculus 1C had I not argued, and argued fiercely, for "partial credit".)~Terry

Keep checking our website for future Kepler's events.