One of my recent tasks as a kindergarten class volunteer was to help modernize the books on tape to books on CDs. Kids don’t know too much about tapes, plus the tapes get old, brittle, and they break (kind of like kindergarten volunteers.) Since I had a little technology expertise, meaning I knew the difference between a tape and a CD, and could copy one to the other, I volunteered to make CD copies of the old tapes. It’s really been kind of fun listening to these children’s books as they migrate. Right now, I’m halfway through the task, having delivered one box and picking up another.
One of the things I soon found out is that some of the tapes were already broken, and couldn’t be copied. I couldn’t let those books o to waste, so I decided I would read and record them onto a CD. How fun! I got all set up, with my Yeti Nano external microphone, found some tinkle bells for page turning notifications, and read. (The beauty of these books is they are meant to read along, looking at the pictures, and since most kindergartners don’t read that well, they need to know when to turn the pages. That’s why the tinkle bells.)
One of the books I had to replace was called “The Paperboy”, written by Dav Wilkey. Reading this book was fun in itself because the start of my career was managing paperboys just like the one in the story. Unfortunately, these paperboys are now extinct, just like the dinosaurs many of the kindergartners love to play with. But more on that later. If you would like to get your own copy, click on the link and purchase it from Amazon, but remember, as an Amazon affiliate, I just may get a bit of a commission.
The sad thing about this book is, as I have already noted, youth carriers are all but extinct. They have been replaced by adult drivers, who cover larger territories faster, but at the expense of personalized service, and the loss of a true first job for many young boys and girls. Personally, I think that is one of the underlying causes of some of our problems today – kids have not been expected to work or have a job, and even when they wanted one, they had disappeared. Oh well. Enough of my rant. Listen to the story, as told by me. No background music, but I did include page turn reminders.
