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Lesson of the Day: ‘If You Look at Your Phone While Walking, You’re an Agent of Chaos’

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Lesson of the Day: ‘If You Look at Your Phone While Walking, You’re an Agent of Chaos’

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

Featured Article: “If You Look at Your Phone While Walking, You’re an Agent of Chaos” by Veronique Greenwood

Be honest: Do you ever look at your phone while walking in a crowded hallway at school or on a busy sidewalk? Do you see others doing this? Have you ever thought about how this simple action might affect the people around you? A recent experiment by Japanese researchers revealed how just a few distracted walkers can throw off the movements of a whole crowd.

In this lesson, you’ll learn more about the experiment — how it was conducted, what researchers found and what the implications are for individuals and society. Then we invite you to evaluate several solutions for stopping distracted walking or to propose one of your own.

Imagine, as the researchers you will read about in the featured article did, you want to study the effects of distracted walking on crowd movement.

First, make a prediction: What do you think would happen if several people were walking while looking at their phones in a crowded school hallway or on a busy sidewalk? How might these distracted walkers affect the way the crowd moves, if at all? Why do you think this would happen?

Now watch the 30-second video embedded at the top of this post, which shows one of the experiments researchers created to study the effects of distracted walking.

You might watch the video several times. First, get a sense of the experiment:

Then watch it again to observe what the experiment shows about the effect of distracted walking on a crowd:

  • What patterns do you notice in the way the crowd moves, if any?

  • How do the people in the red hats move compared to those in the yellow hats?

  • What effect do the distracted walkers have on the crowd as a whole? How close was your prediction to the outcome of this experiment?

Read the article, then answer the following questions:

1. How is walking through a crowd “like a dance we perform with those around us,” according to the article? Why does looking at your phone disrupt that dance?

2. Hisashi Murakami, a professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology, and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments to study the effects of distracted walkers on crowd movement. What did they observe about crowd movement in the first experiment, with no distracted walkers?

3. In what ways was crowd movement affected in a later experiment, when distracted walkers were at the front of the pack?

4. Why might looking at one’s phone have these effects?

5. What are the real-world implications of this study? What does it reveal to us about the ways we navigate crowds? How might individuals and cities use this information to improve crowd movement in the smartphone era?

Now that you know the effects distracted walking can have on crowds, what should be done to combat it?

Look at four solutions:

  • Redesign Cities: In the article, researchers suggest that architects and city planners take distracted walkers and their effect on crowds into account when designing buildings and cities. In 2019, the city of Manchester in Britain introduced a pedestrian “slow lane” for people using their mobile phones.

  • Take Personal Responsibility: In “Texting While Walking Is Dangerous. Here’s How to Stop.,” Brian X. Chen suggests that individuals take control of their technology use and employ several strategies to not look at their phones while walking.

  • Outlaw Texting While Walking: Some cities have gone as far as banning distracted walking. In Honolulu you can be fined up to $35 for viewing your electronic device while crossing streets.

  • Install an App: Several apps have been developed to help people manage walking and looking at their devices. For example, Type n Walk lets users type while using their phone’s camera to see what is ahead of them (though how well it works is up for debate). Another app, called Look Up, reminds pedestrians to take in the sights and sounds around them and engage with other humans.

Which of these solutions, if any, do you think would be most effective for pedestrian traffic snarls and collisions on city sidewalks or crowded hallways? Why? You can read more about each idea by clicking the linked articles or conducting your own research.

If you don’t think any of these ideas would work well, propose your own solution. Explain it in detail and why you think it would be the most effective fix for distracted walking.

About Lesson of the Day

• Find all our Lessons of the Day in this column.
• Teachers, watch our on-demand webinar to learn how to use this feature in your classroom.

Popular Podcasts

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Popular Podcasts

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

This last year of confinement led many of us to devour podcasts as a form of entertainment, escape and solace.

Are you an avid fan of podcasts? If so, what is your favorite podcast genre? Are you listening to any engaging podcasts currently? What podcasts have you loved and would recommend to others?

Tell us in the comments, then read the related article for a list of podcasts to binge. If you’re interested in creating your own original podcast, consider entering our Fourth Annual Student Podcast Contest.

About Picture Prompts

• Find all our Picture Prompts in this column.
• Have an idea for a Picture Prompt? Tell us about it.
• Teachers, discover more ways to teach with our Picture Prompts and learn how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning.

Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Should Corporations Take Political Stands?

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Should Corporations Take Political Stands?

Georgia Republicans on March 25 passed a sweeping law to restrict voting access in the state. Before the vote, the biggest corporations in Georgia declined to weigh in. However, after the legislation was signed into law, Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola reversed course and both expressed their “crystal clear” opposition to it.

Should large corporations stay out of politics? Or, do they have an obligation to speak out on issues important to their values?

Companies that remained silent last week as Georgia Republicans rushed to pass a law to restrict voting access reversed course on Wednesday in the face of mounting outrage from activists, customers and a coalition of powerful Black executives.

Delta Air Lines, Georgia’s largest employer, had made only general statements in support of voting rights last week and had declined to take a position on the legislation. That muted response drew fierce criticism, as well as protests at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and calls for a boycott.

But on Wednesday, Ed Bastian, Delta’s chief executive, made a stark reversal. “I need to make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values,” he wrote in an internal memo that was reviewed by The New York Times.

Coca-Cola, another of Georgia’s largest companies, which had also declined to take a position on the legislation before it passed, made a similarly worded statement.

“I want to be crystal clear,” said James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s chief executive. “The Coca-Cola Company does not support this legislation, as it makes it harder for people to vote, not easier.”

Less than a day before the abrupt reversals, a group of prominent Black executives called on companies to publicly oppose a wave of similarly restrictive voting bills that Republicans are advancing in almost every state.

But the statements won’t change the outcome in Georgia, where the new law introduced stricter voter identification requirements for absentee balloting, limited drop boxes in predominantly Black neighborhoods and expanded the legislature’s power over elections.

“It is regrettable that the sense of urgency came after the legislation was passed and signed into law,” said Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation and a board member at Ralph Lauren, Pepsi and Square.

Lesson of the Day: ‘A Union Drive at Amazon’

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Lesson of the Day: ‘A Union Drive at Amazon’

To learn more about the purpose of unions, read this excerpt from Teen Vogue, “What a Labor Union Is and How It Works” by Kim Kelly:

Unions facilitate the process of collective bargaining, which allows an organized group of workers to sit down with their employers, address concerns, make demands, and negotiate a legally binding contract to determine their terms of employment, which includes pay, benefits, hours, workplace safety, severance, health care, family leave, diversity, company transparency, and more. It offers workers a seat at the table, and allows them to directly advocate for themselves and their coworkers. A union also provides workers with guidance, organizational resources, and can offer legal counsel throughout the bargaining process, as well as support and resources after the contract is finalized. Union members select their own officers and representatives and make decisions collectively.

Listen to the first 37 minutes of “The Daily” podcast episode “A Union Drive at Amazon,” then answer the following questions:

1. How did Jennifer Bates’s experience as an Amazon worker change over time?

2. What is your reaction to the “time off task” system at Amazon? Some workers appreciated this system, while others found it oppressive. How might you feel about having your time working, or resting, monitored in this way?

3. How did communication happen at the Amazon warehouse? How did that system contribute to some workers feeling isolated and unsupported?

4. The podcast details different surveillance methods that were used in the Amazon warehouse. Why do you think Amazon watched its workers in this way? Do you think they have a right to do so, or does it infringe on workers’ privacy?

5. What was the breaking point for Ms. Bates that made her want to form a union?

6. How did Amazon change its policies after workers started to have conversations about unionizing? Amazon claimed that those changes were not made in response to the union, but why did Ms. Bates and other workers feel suspicious about the changes?

7. Why do Ms. Bates and the other union activists want to have a union at Amazon? What are the implications of a win, not just for Ms. Bates, but for labor unions more generally?

Gies College of Business partners with Coursera to offer scholarships to degree students

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Gies College of Business partners with Coursera to offer scholarships to degree students

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of a global scholarship program for the Master of Business Administration (iMBA), Master’s of Accounting (iMSA), and Master’s in Management (iMSM) graduate programs on Coursera. 

Together, Coursera and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Gies College of Business will provide a limited number of scholarships per year, covering 70% of a student’s full tuition. These need- and diversity-based scholarships aim to improve access to a top-quality education for students interested in careers in finance, marketing, management, and accounting.

“Our mission as a land-grant university is to broaden access and deliver a high-quality education to all who desire it and are committed to pursuing it,” said Brooke Elliott, Associate Dean and EY Professor at Gies College of Business. “I’m thrilled that we’re able to partner with Coursera to offset some of the cost of our graduate degrees so that more learners from anywhere in the world can pursue a life-changing business education.”

Students who plan on enrolling in the Fall 2021 cohort of any of the three Gies College of Business online degree programs on Coursera will be eligible to apply for a scholarship as part of their program application to the iMBA, iMSA, or iMSM programs. Recipients will be selected based on need, academic standing, and essay submissions outlining their need for financial assistance, as well as their experience demonstrating a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion via personal mentorship or community involvement.

“For several years, Coursera and Gies have worked together to increase access to affordable education,” said Betty Vandenbosch, Coursera’s Chief Content Officer. “We are honored to continue that legacy by offering need-based scholarships to learners worldwide. These will provide students—who otherwise may not have had the opportunity—the means to pursue a high-quality degree from a leading institution. I’m excited to see how the scholarship program will affect the recipients’ lives and careers moving forward.”

For more than 100 years, Gies College of Business has designed its innovative programs to empower and prepare students to become successful business leaders and entrepreneurs. Currently, Gies is ranked #8 in public business schools across the United States by Poets&Quants, and 94% of graduates would highly recommend the iMBA program to a friend. We’re honored to partner with Gies to support more learners across the globe.

Fall 2021 applications for the iMBA, iMSA, and iMSM are all now open, with the first cohort beginning in August 2021. In order to be considered for a scholarship for the August start date, please submit your application by the June 1 deadline.

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How software is created: Team members, tools, and more

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How software is created: Team members, tools, and more

If you’re new to coding, or even just curious about the dozens of apps and websites you use every day, you’ve probably found yourself wondering how applications are built. We’ve got you covered.

In the video below, web developer Pat DePuydt walks us through The Development Cycle — the process through which an idea becomes software. He introduces us to the key members in an application’s creation and illustrates how they all contribute to its development with an adorable example: Kitten Academy. Read on — or watch the video below — to learn more.

The Development Team

Let’s say you’re working for a company that decides to create a website to connect new cat owners with veterinarians who can answer all their questions. This is a huge project that will require various members to contribute to its execution. In this section, we’ll take a look at each of the key members of a product team and the roles they play.

Product managers

First, we have product managers, who Pat compares to ship captains. Responsible for keeping the ship on course, product managers have a high-level focus, oversee the product’s success, and manage its many stakeholders. Product managers supervise the entire development cycle and break its many complexities down into projects that they delegate to project managers.

Project managers

Project managers work directly with developers and designers to make sure everything stays on track. They also help product managers make decisions and keep them from being blindsided by sending important matters up the chain of command. Project managers oversee the creation of complex features, breaking them down into epics that they assign to developers and designers.

Let’s go back to our Kitten Academy example. One of our designers recommends implementing a video conferencing feature into our website. Our product manager will be responsible for overseeing its buildout, so they send it along to the project manager, who breaks it down into smaller projects that they assign to designers and developers. The smaller projects might include building user flows, visual designs, account management features, and reminders.

Designers

Each team member plays a vital role in the development cycle. While product and project managers oversee the application’s progress, designers and developers bring the ideas to fruition.

Designers usually come up with an application’s features and create user flow charts to illustrate how people will interact with it. This phase includes some visual design, typically wireframes like those in the example below.

Developers

After designers decide on the application’s features, developers make them a reality. This sounds straightforward, but even the simplest features can require large amounts of time to create.

Let’s say someone comes up with the idea to include a dropdown list of available vets for each time slot on Kitten Academy. While this would be a great feature, our developers would have to build and maintain a database of KA veterinarians, along with an application for them to sign up and set their availability. This could potentially double the project’s developmental time.

In this case, our developers would explain to our project manager that the dropdown functionality was out of scope with the project’s current timeframe. Our project manager would then relay that information to our product manager, who could either extend the deadline or deem the feature noncritical.

Developers usually consist of a mix of front-end and back-end engineers. Front-end engineers use programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create the parts of a website that users interact with. Back-end engineers use Python, Ruby, and other languages to develop the hidden background processes that keep everything running smoothly.

Processes

Now that we’ve taken a look at the key members in an application’s development, let’s go through the processes in which plans are developed and executed.

Sprint Cycle

The sprint cycle involves planning and executing all the work related to the project and identifying any pressing issues. In this phase, work is broken down into tasks, and tickets are assigned to be completed in sprints. Pat summarizes the sprint cycle in five steps in the video above:

  1. Roadmapping: The team decides whether to undertake the project, estimates the length of its duration, and assigns team members their tasks.
  2. Sprint Planning: Team members are informed of the priorities for the next release cycle.
  3. Sprints: Time-boxed periods in which specific tasks are completed.
  4. Backlog grooming: Identifying tasks and issues that had been placed on the back burner but might now become more relevant for the product’s success.
  5. Retrospectives/Retros: The team discusses what they should start, continue, and stop doing in the next sprint. Many teams use Kanban boards in this phase.

Types of tickets

Traditionally, there are three types of tickets: epics, stories, and bugs.

  1. Epics: High-level tasks (e.g., creating user accounts so people can sign up for Kitten Academy) that are usually broken down into stories.
  2. Stories: Subsets of epics (e.g., building user interfaces, appointment dashboards, and pet info storage).
  3. Bugs: Unintended software behaviors that stem from coding issues (e.g., letting people from other countries sign up for KA despite it only being available in the US).

Quality Assurance

To keep from breaking their websites, most teams have an identical copy of its server where they can deploy new code and test its functionality. A developer or QA engineer can then test all the ways a user might interact with the software (either correctly or incorrectly). If the new code passes this stage, it goes live and is implemented into the website.

Throughout the processes listed above, developers use various tools to keep track of tasks and work on code simultaneously. In this section, we’ll discuss Kanban boards, Git, and GitHub.

Kanban boards

Kanban boards are used to visually depict work in various stages of development. We actually use them ourselves here at Codecademy. While completing a Career Path, learners use Kanban boards to keep track of their Portfolio Projects’ progress.

To create a Kanban board, all you need are cards and columns. The cards represent work items, and columns represent stages of completion, as seen in the example below.

Popular tools used to create Kanban boards include Jira and Trello, but you could just as easily use a whiteboard and some post-it notes. Note that the example above is just a model. Most teams have their own ways of building Kanban boards, unique to their own types of tickets.

Git version control management software

Git is a command line software with user interface features that allow developers to track changes to an application. It’s used locally to push up and pull down changes and track them to a remote repository.

GitHub

GitHub is a popular remote code-hosting software. Despite sounding similar, it’s completely different from Git. Whereas Git tracks changes to code on a developer’s computer, GitHub is where those changes are stored so other developers can download it and use it in their work.

As a developer, you can use GitHub to submit a pull request to allow your teammates to review your code and ensure it doesn’t conflict with their own. It also gives them a chance to make sure your code is written properly. As Pat points out, it’s important that your naming and programming patterns match the rest of the codebase.

Another advantage of pull requests is that they help ensure your code runs in different environments. Once your feature is complete and running smoothly, it could then be implemented into the application.

Getting Started

Now you have a basic understanding of how applications are created. The next step is getting in there and doing it yourself. To help you get started, we offer a wide range of courses and Career Paths:

Black and Brilliant AI Accelerator: Meet the Coaches

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Black and Brilliant AI Accelerator: Meet the Coaches

The Black and Brilliant AI Accelerator kicked off in March, and we’re excited to share a look behind the scenes. We’ll share a recording of the introductory session and introduce you to some of the coaches. Plus, we’ll share a sneak peek at what’s to come for the learners in the program, several of whom we introduced you to last month.

To kick off the session, hosted over Zoom on March 15, Tony Effik, who co-founded Black and Brilliant with Perky Noah-Effik, shared the inspiration behind Black and Brilliant — and this accelerator program. “We believe that with the right kind of support, with the right kind of training, and with access to networking and resources, a new generation of Black and Brown people from around the world can enter leadership roles across industries.”

Meet the coaches

The learners in the accelerator program will be making their way through the Data Scientist Career Path on Codecademy. They’ll also be working with a collection of expert coaches to explore responsible AI, social justice, and bias in machine learning.

While much of the mentorship and coaching will be one-on-one with the learners, there will be recordings shared throughout the duration of the program. So feel free to make your way through the course on your own and follow along for video updates from The Black and Brilliant Advocacy Network on LinkedIn.

In the introductory session, we got to meet many of the coaches, whom you can learn more about below. You can find out more about them below. These coaches understand the industry from all different angles — some have technical knowledge, others come from academia, and their backgrounds span everything from AI to data science, research, and design.

Mahir Yuvaz

Mahir Yuvaz has a background in product development and data science. He formerly ran the data science team at RGA, co-founded Topos, and is currently the Director of Engineering at Etsy.

“Data science and machine learning-related roles are still heavily a work in progress in the industry,” he says. “They are not well-defined in some organizations.” Mahir will be sharing his experience in navigating those ambiguities with accelerator program participants.

Yla Eason

Yla Eason has a background in Learning and Development and is currently an Assistant Professor of Practical Practice at Rutgers. Yla joins the AI Accelerator to provide career coaching to participants.

“The hard skills will get you hired and the soft skills will get you fired,” she says. Yla stresses the importance of street smarts, how to navigate having crucial conversations, how to present yourself, and business communication. She also teaches search engine marketing and digital marketing.

Michael Horn

Michael Horn is the Chief Data Officer at Huge, a product and digital experience design company. Michael is also co-author of a Data Practices Manifesto in partnership with The Linux Foundation and data.world.

The manifesto, Michael shared on the introductory call of the accelerator program, “looks at principles as a function of values — personal values, corporate values, and employment values — and making sure that everything we do as data professionals is guided by a code of practices that is defensible today as well as to our future selves when things are not such a Wild West as they are today.”

Marc Maleh

Marc Maleh is GVP Emerging Experiences at Huge. His background is in the intersection of technology and design and he works as an adjunct professor at NYU where he taught a class on designing with artificial intelligence.

Mark is interested in the intersection of humanizing data, humanizing technology, and will be coaching accelerator participants on how they can position the work that they’re doing in their careers.

Nana Essuman

Nana Essuman is the Director of Data Engineering at Condé Nast and has joined the AI Accelerator as a mentor to help participants figure out how to get data into their projects.

Nana shares that one thing that doesn’t get emphasized when you’re a data scientist is that once you finish building your models you need to move them into production. His expertise will help learners get their data to a point where they can start doing feature engineering on top of their models.

Valarie Embrey

Valarie Embrey is a Masters student at Rutgers School of Business as well as a VP on the Institutional Technology team at Citibank. Valarie will be providing career coaching and mentoring participants when it comes to increasing the performance of teams.

Ruth Ikwu

Ruth Ikwu is a Research Associate at Cardiff University’s Center for Cyber Security Research and works as a data engineer. She explains, “60-80% of data science projects are going to be getting and clearing your data.” She’ll be available to help participants with this, along with social network analysis.

Femi Anthony

Femi Anthony is a Lead Data Engineer at Capital One. In the intro session, Femi touched on the demand for data engineers vs. data scientists. “It’s one thing to create the model in Jupiter Notebooks,” he says. “But actually getting it into production is where you need the data engineers — to actually scale and get the model running every day with very little trouble.” Femi will be available to help mentor participants in this area.

Bashir Mohammed

Bashir Mohammed is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Berkeley Lab, working on a postdoc in Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence High-Performance NEtworks (DAPHNE). He’s also an experienced AI and Machine Learning Engineer.

Bashir touched on why clearing and processing data is so important. “Good data leads to good results,” he says. Bashir also shares an introduction to AI and Machine Learning in the 8-minute video below.

Sakinah Adebola Abdul-Ibiyeye

Sakinah Adebola Abdul-Ibiyeye works at Paypal in Dublin and has joined as a mentor to support participants looking to develop projects related to payment, including fintech and e-commerce, as well as cloud security.

Quincy Olatunde

Quincy Olatunde is VP Data Product Management at NBCUniversal Media. While he has a background in programming and technology, he works more on the business side now.

“I’m a product person who understands data,” Quincy says. He’ll be available to help participants take data and turn it into meaningful insights and storytelling to share with consumers.

Alexander Liss

Alexander Liss is Head of Data Science and Analytics at Wunderman Thompson. Alexander uses ML and analytics to turn business problems into opportunities for innovation and growth, and his long-term vision is to use AI & ML for double-bottom-line impact on both social good and business profit.

Alexander shares an introduction to Supervised Learning in the video below.

Tokunbo Michael Hiamang

Tokunbo Michael Hiamang is a data scientist and semantic engineer, specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP) at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Cancer Research Center. Tokunbo was unable to make the official kickoff meeting but will be sharing a video for learners on NLP. We’ll share it here when it’s available.

Steve Kaneti

Steve Kaneti is a Senior Data Engineer at DoubleVerify with experience turning research and initial concepts into consumer-facing products in both the hardware space and SAAS space.

What’s coming next?

As we mentioned above, in addition to learning on Codecademy, participants will be diving into topics including UX, Responsible AI and Social Justice, and the Business of AI. We’ll share updates in the coming weeks, but here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect, described by Tony Effik:

  • User Experience: In the world of data science, you’ll need at minimum to present data through infographics and data visualization, but you might also be called upon to work in situations where you are building platforms and applications that require UX design, user research, and creativity. Learners will explore these topics and prepare for working in that world.
  • Responsible AI and Social Justice: We want our learners to be a new voice in the room in the world of AI. That means being proponents of Responsible AI and Transparency, helping the industry develop best practices for the AI industry by reducing systemic injustices and furthering equality. That will manifest in many ways but will include data literacy and equality, consent in user experiences, and ethical practices in marketing.
  • The Business of AI: This accelerator course is meant to serve as on ramp into the world of AI. This workstream of the program will provide all the “cheat codes” for starting a successful career. We believe so much of today’s success is the soft skills and understanding how the business is structured, how it works, and how to navigate, network and collaborate with people in the industry. We’ll help our learners discover the cheat codes and map the business for them.

We’ll be back with more updates here on the Codecademy blog. In the meantime, follow The Black and Brilliant Advocacy Network on LinkedIn to stay in the loop!

Word of the Day: impervious

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Word of the Day: impervious

: not admitting entry or passage or capable of being affected

_________

The word impervious has appeared in 123 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Feb. 18 in “Osaka and Brady, With Powerful Strokes and Zero Pretense, in Australian Open Final” by Karen Crouse:

Osaka, 23, and Brady, 25, have displayed ruthless power in their matches and disarming vulnerability in their news conferences. Their egos don’t appear to be Faberge eggs in need of careful handling, constant caressing and everyone’s adoring gaze.

They don’t pretend that they’re impervious to pressure or act like they are all-knowing. They don’t seem to act at all.

Osaka staved off two match points in a fourth-round three-setter against Garbiñe Muguruza and didn’t panic when she faced a break point while trailing Williams by 0-2 in the first set of their semifinal. She has improved her mental toughness, she said, by talking to her coach, Wim Fissette, and “expressing the nerves that I feel instead of bottling it all up and trying to deal with it by myself.”

Can you correctly use the word impervious in a sentence?

Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.

Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.

If you want a better idea of how impervious can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.

If you enjoy this daily challenge, try using multiple Words of the Day in a 50-word story that you submit to our Monthly Vocabulary Challenge.

How Much Do You Know About Belarus?

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How Much Do You Know About Belarus?

Can you find Belarus on a map? What else do you know about this Eastern European nation with 9.5 million people?

What Children’s Books Have Had the Biggest Impact on You?

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What Children’s Books Have Had the Biggest Impact on You?

What books or authors stand out from childhood? Did any unlock the magic and joys of reading for you? Did any inspire, shape or guide the person you are today or hope to be?

Beverly Cleary, the author of such classics as “Ramona Quimby, Age 8,” “Henry Huggins” and “The Mouse and the Motorcycle,” recently died at 104. Did you ever read any of her books? Do you have a favorite book, series or character that she created?

In third grade, I wanted to be a mouse.

Not a timid mouse. Not a quiet mouse. And certainly not Mickey Mouse.

No, I wanted to be Ralph, the mouse with the motorcycle.

In the many appreciations of Beverly Cleary that have been posted since her death at age 104 last Thursday, there has been plenty of rightful attention paid to Ramona, her most famous character. Though I have nothing but respect for Ramona, my heart has always belonged to Ralph. Ms. Cleary always said she wrote “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” for her son. In doing this, she didn’t welcome just one boy into the world of her books; she welcomed generations of boys like me.

Third grade was a crucial time for me as a reader. I felt I was coming to a fork in the library aisles, where one path led to the Hardy Boys doing hardy boy things while Nancy Drew did mysteriously girl-coded things down the other. Even though Princess Leia was my favorite character to be when I played “Star Wars” with my friends (unusual, but not that unusual) and Marion Ravenwood was my favorite when we played “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (highly unusual, to the point of oddness), I still felt I needed to head for the mountainous boy-book terrain. I was supposed to read for action, not depth. Feelings were not a mystery the Hardy Boys ever needed to solve.

Then I found Ralph.

We meet him in Room 215 of the Mountain View Inn, where a boy named Keith has just arrived. (Keith’s parents are in an adjoining room.) As soon as Keith settles in, he pokes around the room, coming very close to discovering the knothole behind which Ralph and his mouse family live. Then Keith does exactly what I would have done, had I been the one checking into Room 215: He takes out his toy cars, plays with them, and then lines them up in a neat row before he goes to sleep.

Like most boys my age (and some, but not nearly enough, girls), I had an abundant collection of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. Unlike most kids my age, I gave each of my cars a name and a personality, and it was usually the sedans that got the most play. While some of my cars raced, most of my time with them was spent on storytelling that I’d now call relationship oriented. In my hands, they came to life.

Because of this, I knew exactly how Ralph felt, the first time he watched Keith play:

Ralph was eager, excited, curious, and impatient all at once. The emotion was so strong it made him forget his empty stomach. It was caused by those little cars, especially that motorcycle and the pb-pb-b-b-b sound the boy made. That sound seemed to satisfy something within Ralph, as if he had been waiting all his life to hear it.

Beverly Cleary knew what she was doing. She was writing directly to the reader, showing that she knew us and what our lives and feelings were like. She helped me realize I didn’t need to change myself into a detective or a knight or a Revolutionary War soldier in order to have an adventure or to be a boy. The adventure would come to me as part of the life I knew. Claiming a book about a talking mouse as a work of realism might seem a stretch, but Ms. Cleary’s magic was that she placed her flights of fancy so firmly in the lives of her very human characters that reading her stories always feels like soaring through real life. This was an inspiration to me as a reader and, later, as an author; it’s not a coincidence that I can trace back my writing career to the stories I wrote in third grade.

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