Howie K.
Yelp
The moment my 14 year-old got hold of an iPod, she set down her books for good. Er, unless we revoked the iPod, that is, because her grades were slipping or something. Then she'd return to old fashioned books, fleetingly, for a few chapters, maybe. But if she could exist in her own media wonderland, it would be digital and stuck in a cloud.
This bodes very, very badly for independent bookstores, especially because our daughter actually loves books. I've met a lot of kiddos in my time, and Aura is without question one of the nosiest bookworms of the lot; just a year ago, we'd bring home a haul from the library and she'd have the stack finished over a weekend. Her imagination, curiosity and thirst for adventure was unquenchable.
But books don't "like" you. They don't post pictures, or check in, or let you choose an emoticon. They're far to real, honestly, to care.
Swinging through the vines of the Wild Rumpus rainforest, this attitude - an insistence on being Real - inhabited the place. Aptly titled, the Rumpus hops on a boat out to sea and never looks back to the shore. It plays games in the trees with a kid named Max and doesn't give a damn whether you care. It's a wonderland of books for peeps of all ages - and I do want to emphasize this, as the latest from Stephen Colbert sat on the front window - but the focus is on the kids, obviously, since our habits, good and bad, begin in those formative years. Feathered friends, creepy crawlies, soft purr balls and other creatures peep at you from the underbrush, and something's always happening on the other end of the island.
Perhaps this is precisely the attitude the independent bookstore must adopt as our content finds itself on electronic devices, rather than the worn pages of loved books. It certainly appears to be a successful model for Wild Rumpus. As we were leaving, I caught a glimpse of a couple of little girls - younger, maybe 8 and 10 - entering the shop with an exuberance I've never witnessed in my life. So maybe they, and an army of others, are learning to disconnect from the digital realm and use their personal wiring to enjoy the world.
But somehow, I don't quite buy it, and I'm really frightened about the future of the book. Thanks for trying to keep the dream alive, Wild Rumpus.