With love, mom.

Mother wit" or "mammy wit" is what the old folks used to call that intrinsic wisdom God gave women, guiding even the unschooled in caring for and protecting their families. Whatever it is, it sometimes seems to be in shorter supply in our modern age, and great forces in society seem to work against those who try to raise their children well.

For those of us who labor in the vineyard of words, getting our children to enjoy or at least endure reading and to achieve writing competence is an especially daunting task today. In this issue, Anna Deavere Smith, the incomparable actress, writer and visionary, shares her thoughts on nurturing artistry of all kinds, and Kim McLarin, a journalist turned novelist, explores her dilemma in creating fiction her children might read someday.

Most of us simply struggle with trying to get our children to pick up a book from time to time and like it. This is especially true in an era where everything from television to Web encounters to gangs might compete for their time and allegiance. Having raised four adopted sons, I share the frustration of many parents and can attest to having tried many tactics. My favorite--and I hope theirs---was the comics strategy. I credit comics for playing a role in my own love of reading. As children, my brother and I invested huge proportions of our weekly allowance of a dollar (it was a long time ago, and that amount went really far) in the adventures of Superman, Batman and a host of other heroes and heroines. We joke now, that had our collection not fallen victim to my mother's housecleaning when we left for college, we might have a rather large retirement fund from what they would be worth nowadays. We read many other things for pleasure, but comics helped to light a spark, fuel our imaginations and build our reading and writing skills.

When my own children were younger, I often made a surprise stop at the comics store and announced that they had a time limit, 20 minutes or so, and a cash limit, $5, $10 or $15, to pick whatever comics they wanted--within the bounds of decency. My husband, Michael, and I did other things to encourage literacy: reading to them nightly, presenting nice books as gifts and playing word games, for instance. We also had the eldest ones write book reports, thank-you notes and letters to Santa, all of which seems quaint if not archaic these days. (Michael, who is also an editor, has been known to correct the Santa letters and ask for several rewrites.) We also spent a small fortune in parochial- and private-school tuitions for other people to teach them the finer points of reading and writing. Years later, the jury is still out on how much of that "took." I would bet, though, that the "shopping sprees" for comics will remain among my sons' fonder memories.

Angela P. Dodson

BIBR Executive Editor