by Jen Weaver-Neist

I heard the most unsettling news last week—even though it was old news. Oregon Literacy, Inc. closed its doors as of June 20 this year due to lack of funding. After forty years of service—which included work with Oregon colleges and businesses, partnering with Multnomah County Library, and providing a toll-free Literacy Line since 1987—it all came down to an inability to raise $200,000, their annual budget.

Hmmm … how many Starbucks coffees is that? If you go with an average of $3.00 a day for five work days, that’s $15 a week. Accounting for a few weeks of vacation and some holidays, that’s (roughly) 49 weeks per year, or $735 for coffee per year. So, that’s a coffee-free year for about 272 people, or half as much Starbucks for 544 Oregonians for the sake of a literate, functioning, empowered future generation. If you look at it another way, just 5,556 publishing professionals in Oregon sacrificing 1 cup of coffee every month for a year would greatly benefit future buyers of our books, and this industry could use all the help it can get!

Some would say we’ve been under attack for years now, with television, video games, a growing lack of interest in “the ancient-language classics,” and now the internet taking all our young readers prisoner. Back in my day, I remember Mom hollering toward the backseat to “Crack the window! Crack the window!” when I’d start getting woozy from reading plain ol’ books on our road trips. My technological alternative then was a Speak N’ Spell and, later, a chunky (cassette) Walkman, but the first was so annoying that she’d soon option books again “to save on batteries.” As long as I had a book as a companion, I always had something legitimate (and parent-friendly) to do.

The teachers and librarians who stopped by our booth at BEA this year provided another angle to this timeless issue. They were drawn in by our Kid Beowulf banner (showcasing Bowler Hat’s premiere graphic novel) and the newly released copies of Visibility (a YA illustrated novel with a strong female lead). Not only did they like the idea of both, but more than one suggested that Bowler Hat create additional classics so that they could get kids interested in reading the tougher stuff—or any stuff—again. A vice principal in a local high school recently told me that the level of reading today is tragic, and that we’re raising an up-and-coming generation of both nonreaders and “I can’t read(ers).”

We can debate the reasons for all of this until the illiterate cows come home, but the fact remains that our society is going to have to do more than blame the technology, parents, and/or kids themselves. And I’d go even further to say that we, the professionals in publishing, have an obligation to groom our future bread and butter. All you have to do is witness the launch of a big hit book like Stephenie Meyers’s Breaking Dawn (the festivities for which I attended at Powell’s a few weeks ago) to know that the enthusiasm, loyalty, and imagination are still there; we just need to figure out—or remember—how to connect with them.

I’m going to go with the methods of the green movement right now and ask you to consider the one thing you can do today to help with improving literacy. Can you volunteer to be an after-school reader or tutor? Does your bank or grocery store have a program where it will donate points/dollars in support of local schools? Do you have a few books that you can donate to Women in Portland Publishing’s 3rd Annual Book Drive this year? (Ink & Paper Group is one of the drop points, and we invite you to contact us for more info.)

Let’s get the conversation started! (May I suggest a first step of taking the quick survey in this very newsletter?) There has to be more that we can do with the strengths and skills of our publishing community, and making books isn’t enough. And do Oregonians really need their daily coffee served to them each time—even from those bikini baristas that have been in the news? My mom would say you have to first make sure all of today’s youth can spell “bikini,” and then use a book to cover their eyes until they’re 35.