If your youngsters opt for video games instead of a good book, children's author Coleen Murtagh Paratore recommends a way to get them back into the fold of the pages.
"If they have a book, and it's their own, it encourage kids to read with a pen in their hand," she said. "If something interests them, I tell them to make a note of it. That imparts the interactive nature of reading."
Mrs. Paratore, who will be hosted by the Greater Thousand Islands Literacy Council for a May 21 event in Watertown, said, "A lot of people think we're losing reading to technology. But readingisinteractive."
Mrs. Paratore is best known for the series of books featuring the tales of Willa Havisham and her glamorous single mother, Stella. "The Wedding Planner's Daughter," published by Simon & Schuster, has sold more than half a million copies. "The Cupid Chronicles" was published in 2006, and "Willa By Heart" was published in January; both are sequels.
Mrs. Paratore has published five other books and has four coming out next year.
"My 10-year-old female students can't wait to grab her Willa series books," said Debra J. Dermady, Greater Thousand Islands Literacy Council vice president and a fifth-grade teacher at Guardino Elementary School in Clayton.
"Coleen is an inspiration for our youth, as her main characters always have positive role models in their lives," Mrs. Dermady said.
She added that those characters always have a goal of trying to do something to make their community a better place to live. For Willa in "The Cupid Chronicles," it was saving her local library on Cape Cod, Mass.
Mrs. Paratore, speaking from her home in Albany, said that during her public appearances she often stresses the importance of libraries. She recalled riding the bus with her grandmother to the Troy Public Library and discovering its treasures.
"That's how I became a writer," she said. "I really love books."
She likes to get youngsters equally excited about books. She said that required school reading is important, but, "It's equally important for a child to have the sheer pleasure of just reading a book."
The author, who has three children, said she didn't intend to be a children's author. "In 1999, I started getting ideas in my head," she said. "I started writing them down."
She received close to 200 rejection letters before finding a publisher for her first book in 2004, "How Prudence Proovit Proved the Truth About Fairy Tales."
She was asked why she thinks her books about Willa have struck such a chord.
"Willa wants her mom, a single mother, to be happy and she wants to have a father," she said. "I feel every kid has a hurt somewhere. They can relate to somebody longing for something like Willa doesn't have."
Mrs. Paratore, with the planned August release of "The Funeral Director's Son," will no doubt expand her audience to boys. The book is also set in Cape Cod, where Mrs. Paratore and her husband have a second home.
Mrs. Paratore's book "The Cupid Chronicles" was on the ballot for the annual New York State Reading Association's Charlotte Awards. Students across the state read books on the ballot and voted for their favorites. Winners were recently announced. They are:
Primary grades:"The Great Fuzzy Frenzy" by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel. Harcourt, 2005.
Intermediate:"A Horse Named Funny Cide," by the Funny Cide team. Penguin Group, 2005.
Young adult:"Heat" by Mike Lupica. Penguin Group, 2006.
Named for the main character in E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web," the Charlotte Awards program is designed to encourage students to read outstanding literature and ultimately become lifelong readers.
