Dr. Paul Mullen Transcript

January 26, 2008

Announcer: You’ve been listening to Sound Authors, where authors sound off. If you’d like more information about Sound Authors and Dr. Kent’s guests, visit SoundAuthors.com. Now, back to Dr. Kent and friends.[music]

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is a beautiful day in New York, and because I’ve been sick and supine on my back the last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about children’s books. My next guest, Dr. Paul Mullen, is a great advocate for children and for illiteracy, which is quite a problem in this country, and something that doesn’t get talked about enough. His book is called “The Day I Hit a Home Run at Great American Ballpark”. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Paul Mullen: Thank you, Dr. Kent. I appreciate you having me on.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. Talk a little bit first about your book, and then we’ll get into illiteracy.

Dr. Mullen: Well, the theme is that every child dreams of greatness. Certainly the main character in this story, whose nickname is Fuji, his dream is hitting a home run at Great American Ballpark, which is the ballpark the Cincinnati Reds play at.

Dr. Kent: What does that say about all children? What’s your message to all children?

Dr. Mullen: Well, all children have a dream they desire, or a goal or aspiration. It’s up to us as educators, and especially parents, to help them to hone in on that dream.

Dr. Kent: Right. Your goal in writing this book, and in the whole crusade that you’re on right now, is to educate us about the illiteracy problem in Ohio and in the United States, as well as in the entire world. So could you tell us a little bit about that, and the reason for writing this book?

Dr. Mullen: Certainly. The key about this book, which kind of separates it from some of the elementary-type books… We have got to establish a couple of things here. First off, that in elementary school, teachers spend a lot of time on deciphering words, helping students with phonics and what we call decoding of words, and your basic grammar structure.But where we’ve been lacking — and I think is equally important — in the middle school years, is this thing I call a healthy inner voice. It’s that self. If we don’t start channeling and helping middle school students with that inner voice, we’re going to continue to see what we’ve been seeing. Children turn off. Especially young adults turn off from reading.

Dr. Kent: Right. And what is the importance of reading?

Dr. Mullen: You’re talking to a writer, of course, but reading is a gift. It really is. Unfortunately, with television and video games, we know that it only works on the left-hemisphere of the brain. With reading, you can gain this inner… It’s basically like the inner conscious. It’s like the author’s saying, “Come with me, I’m going to help guide you through this story.” There’s just nothing else out there, from an entertainment perspective, that’s going to give a student that same value.

Dr. Kent: Right, so how about the Harry Potter phenomenon? They say that books are coming back to schools because of Harry Potter.

Dr. Mullen: Certainly that has a lot to do with it. My thoughts are, and the reason for this is, I wanted to create a real world self-quest, and that’s the reason why Fuji is such a believable character in this book.It’s just been phenomenal, the number of people who have written to me, especially adults, and have said, “You know, I tried reading this book.” Because they realized it wasn’t a fictional character. A lot of Fuji is within me. And when they identified with Fuji, they said they really felt his hardships and triumphs in the book.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about the story. Can you reveal some of the plot without telling us all of it?

Dr. Mullen: Well, I can say this, and it’s very important. My father was a strict disciplinarian. He was as Catholic as Catholic can be. Of course, I came from a large family with three older brothers and two sisters. It was always my brother’s dream and it was my dream — and even my father’s dream — for us to be able to play at this Major League ballpark, back when I was a child. Growing up in the Cincinnati area, that’s what we all aspired to, was the one team from two different divisions that got to play on this Major League field.Well, Fuji was the last of the boys to have this opportunity. So his father pushed him harder than any of the other boys, because he knew this would be his last moment for his one son to play on a Major League field.

Dr. Kent: Wow. And it is a huge part of all of our lives growing up. I grew up in the Midwest as well, and I played baseball. I played T-ball. I looked up to - my person was Kirby Pucket - at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. We all had all our ballparks and we all had our favorite heroes.Maybe it’s a special problem also for boys that we don’t necessarily grow up thinking reading is the coolest thing.

Paul: Yeah. I was fortunate that my father was a very verbal person. He’d sit down and he would talk to us and reading was always important to him and I’ll tell you why, because he was pretty much an introvert and reading always gave him delight. He always instilled that in us as well, and that’s one of the fortunate things.But you are right. What happens today is too much is centered on the act, which is playing the game. And not enough on the other part of the game which is what is that drive that’s going to get them to that next level?

Kent: Right. And talking about, in sort of the game of life, literacy is a very under talked about thing in this country. Our literacy rates are far lower than Europe’s, they’re lower than even some third world countries. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Paul: Yeah, and that’s more of a recent phenomena. It’s only been within like 10, 15 years that that shift was. We were like number 3, now we’re down in the lower 12, with Russia now being ahead of us as far as literacy rates.My contention is this. What’s happening is we focus so much on the mechanics of reading, the decoding of words, and giving students reading tests, that we’re failing to realize the most important thing about reading which is what I talked about, that inner voice, being able to ride along with the story with the author.One thing we all have to realize, that a writer, that is a gift, that’s not something taught. So as a reader, you have to be able to follow along with that. And my thought is this, if a student lacks that inner voice, then how are they going to follow along with that story if they’ve really never been taught or been given that capability of knowing what an inner voice is?

Kent: Right, and so you’re talking about these books can give a window back to our kids. Now, I know when I was a kid, I definitely would have preferred sitting in front of the TV all day long if I’d have had the choice. Are our schools doing it the right way? Do you think they’re still able to teach kids how to read and not over stimulate them and all of that?

Paul: I really, because I actually taught reading, I’m one of those rare kind of writers. I actually got the chance to teach junior high students, and they were in an intensive reading program, and I will say that the United States is really launching an intensive effort to try to bring up the standards of reading literacy in America. And I will say that in elementary school, we’re starting to see improvement in that.But my point is this, we need then those bridge books. Like this book, it’s what I call a bridge book, which helps take students from reading and decoding and deciphering words, to actually learning how to read an entire story. So what Fuji does is he kind of waves them in and says come on with me and I’ll show you what inner voice is. I’ll show you how to go about self discovering yourself.

Kent: Cool. So where can we find out more about all of this?

Paul: As far as the book, you mean?

Kent: Your book and about you and your project. I know you also go out and speak at schools and do all of that. Where can we find out more?

Paul: Right. I will be in February 6th, I’ll be in Colorado at the International Reading Convention there. And I’ll actually be speaking about this phenomena that I call inner voice syndrome, which I think is what we’re seeing with some of the prisoners in the United States, as far as that lack of self-conscious.But as far as getting the book, you can either go to my website. You can read up on some of the statistics I have there. Plus I have a little baseball on my website that says “top 10″ and that top 10 gives you what I’ve created as the top 10 ways of getting kids excited about reading. Because it does come down to that, we have to get our students interested in reading.

Kent: So people can come visit www.thedayihitahomerun.com is that correct?

Paul: Yes, that’s correct.

Kent: It’s been a great pleasure speaking with Dr. Paul Mullen about his book, “The Day I Hit a Home Run at Great American Ballpark” and his concepts about inner voice, fascinating stuff? I wish you well at the conference coming up and I in your work.

Paul: Well, thank you Dr. Kent, and I appreciate you having me on your show.

Kent: My next guest is Reed Burgess of the wonderful bluegrass performing group “King Wilkie.” You’re not going to want to miss that. Come on back.[music]

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