I just had my first review published on Amazon yesterday. Yippee! But if you’re a big fan of Richard Paul Evans and The Walk series, I’ll warn you that I cut him no slack.  The popular author’s style breaches kept this reader gritting her teeth, and more importantly, from focusing on the story – easy to do, considering the book has no real plot.

Here’s the link. Scroll down to “Bad Writing Makes a Best Seller?”  http://www.amazon.com/Walk-Novel-Pocket-Readers-Guide/product-reviews/1451625332/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

The same thing happens when I read a newspaper article with grammatical errors. I go to my AP Stylebook and double check. “Yup,” I say to myself, “punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks.” And then I forget where I left off.

Teachers should be mortified. But if everyone loves the book, why not jump on board? Just read all the positive reviews (and check out his sales). It’s as though some adults never graduated from “kiddy lit,” except most of that is far better written. Just open any book by Roald Dahl, Judy Blume, or Anna Myers.

The antidote to bad writing, of course, is more reading. If you have kids, read to them – a lot. Turn off the television and take the electronic gadgets out of their little hands. Then sit them down on the couch or snuggle up in bed. Tell them they don’t have to do a single thing except make pictures in their minds.

When your son complains, “I don’t want to hear about some girl named Heidi from the Swiss Alps,” tell him there’s a really cool goatherd named Peter who pops up later. Consider it career exploration. In this economy, raising goats isn’t such a bad idea. At least you can sell the cheese.

Reading should take kids out of their immediate world; teach them how to live in someone else’s shoes. It should expand their minds and vocabulary. And it should teach them about striving, and striving hard, for something outside themselves.

Evan’s novel doesn’t go far enough or, deep enough, into anyone’s world. The vocabulary is not robust with specific nouns and verbs that pack meaning. And he isn’t striving hard to overcome a string of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Here’s the story, in case you haven’t heard: Twenty-eight year-old Alan Christoffersen, a Washington ad-man, loses his wife and is screwed over by his business partners. He ties up all his affairs in a day, and sets off on foot for Key West, Florida (without first stopping at REI). He meets one quaint and philosphical person after another and mentions every piece of food he puts in his mouth, including Pop Tarts.  He never has any trouble with his tent, bugs, feral cats – nada. And he is apparently blind to his surroundings, as he never describes a single plant species. Except for one hugely foreshadowed set-back, this is no walk to remember.

This is an afternoon read, more like a short story. What makes it such a disappointment, is that it doesn’t stop with the last page. In fact, Alan doesn’t make it out of the state of Washington. You see, the book is a tease, a first installment, intended to make you buy yet ANOTHER book, Miles to Go, the next in the series.

If your kid did this with his English assignment, turn in an installment, the teacher would probably give him an incomplete.

Go to your public library, or search online for a good reading list for your children. Find books they haven’t read, including your childhood favorites, and start checking them off one by one as you read them together. Parents and teens can read  books separately and then discuss them. Many books have free online study guides available, some created by classroom teachers. But these should be for your eyes only. Don’t make family reading like homework.

And while you’re reading aloud, casually clarify meaning for your children. Use voices for your characters and make it interesting. Some books have old-fashioned phrasing, or are written in a dialect, like Huckleberry Finn, so be sure your child understands the meaning of words and idioms in context. Bring them up later in conversation, about five times, to reinforce them. By doing these things you are creating consumers of intelligent literature; perhaps even writers. FFG