2024-2025
Volume 28, Issue 3
About U.S.
A Publishing Tradition of Unquowa School
A Message From the Head of School
O
n a mid-summer day when my now grown son Zach
in the Digital Age, began the conversation of the effect of smart
was in 3rd grade, he and his friend Michael were
tech on the parent/child relationship. The many insightful
upstairs playing raucously while I was in the kitchen
conversations she had with our students that year accurately
baking and cleaning up. As I closed the loaded dishwasher, Michael came into the kitchen. He’d just finished reading
foretold where we might be today. In this summer’s community read, author Maryanne Wolf
Trumpet of the Swan, (oh, so actually only Zach was playing
refers to Steiner-Adair’s almost decade-old alert. Wolf’s new
loudly; Michael was reading quietly…)
research, which she presents to us in the form of letters to her
“What is E.B. White’s next book,” he asked me? He clearly
reader, makes clear the importance of a child’s relationship
planned to pick it up on the way home. When I explained to him
in infancy and toddlerhood to real books with pictures and
that this was White’s final
language heard from the
children’s book, Michael
voices of loving adults, and
questioned my authority;
she describes a thoughtful
how could I know? I tried
progression of the printed
to sensitively deliver the
page laced with minimal
news that E.B. White was
digital experience up to
no longer living, so there
age five. Wolf is no Luddite,
could not be another book.
however. She is a realist
There were, however, many
who not only knows that
other wonderful books
the digital world is not
that could be Michael’s
going away but that it has
next read. Unconsoled, he
amazing, non-redundant
tearfully responded, “But
qualities to offer, if used
you don’t understand. Now
thoughtfully. Wolf lays out
I can never keep knowing
that thoughtful progression
E.B. White.” Because I am a parent, an educator and a lifelong voracious
in her book. If, like me, you must admit that perhaps you’ve lost your
reader of fiction myself, decades later my memory of this
balance when it comes to your relationship with smart devices,
summer morning is still vivid. Its truth about fiction’s role
I invite you to join Wolf’s challenge to adults. If you’ve lost the
in human relationships reinforces a crucial component of
habit of deep fiction reading, find time this summer to return to
this summer’s community read here at Unquowa, Reader,
it. Choose a well-loved novel from your past to test your ability
Come Home: The Reading Brain in the Digital World by
in this digital world to stay in the moment of the printed word
neuropsychologist, Maryanne Wolf.
of human lives. I laughed when I read that Wolf chose Herman
Unquowa’s 2024 summer read of Jonathan Haidt’s book,
Hesse’s Glass Bead Game as her test book. It was one of the
The Anxious Generation addressed the impact of smart
novels which I hid in my very large geography book in 7th grade
technology on children’s mental health. Our yearlong discussions
and read each day to get me through my very dry geography
by teachers and parents on what we could do about that
classes that year. Apologies to my late teacher, but his lectures
issue was a powerful continuation of that topic. The Anxious
on the continents of the world and their main features were
Generation actually revisited a conversation which some of our
no contest for my attention to Hermann Hesse and the monks
community may recall beginning during our 2017 Centennial
whose lives he brilliantly painted in his book. Fingers crossed that
Celebration with resident guest speaker Catherine Steiner-Adair.
I am still able to be that attentive reader today. I wish the same
Her book, The Big Disconnect: Protecting Family and Childhood
for us all…
Sharon Lauer, Head of School