good morning. welcome to mosaic. i am rabbi eric weiss. i am honored to be your host. the world is so complex. one of the ways we are able to interact with complexity is by developing the simple skill of reading, the way in which we learn from books, the way books teach us, the way we are able to interact with the world by what we learn when we read. we would like to introduce you to a conversation this morning. welcome vivian and howard. >> thank you very much. >> it's a pleasure.

>> vivian, what is pj library? >> the pj stands for pajamas. it's a program of the jewish community federation of san francisco. it provides free jewish children's books and music to kids in the bay area starting at six months through the age of eight. we have another program that's relatively new called pj our way which are chapter books and graphic novels that are also free with jewish content for kids 9 to 11 years of age. >> fantastic. is pj library just a local program? >> it's actually an international program. it was started in the u.s. but it currently is in 12 different countries and in the past ten years has given away over 12 million books in the united states and canada. >> fantastic. i know we will come back to pj library. howard, why don't we talk about the jewish community library in

san francisco. >> sure. jewish community library is a full service library, like any other, except we are basically only dealing with jewish topics. but that said, it's really with the whole gamut of the jewish experience, not only religion but culture and history and every perspective imaginable. we have a small branch at the palo alto jcc, san francisco jcc in addition to the main branch in san francisco. >> i was thinking we can in some ways take reading for granted. that's something that we have a luxury of in the bay area. certainly not immune from issues of illiteracy but in the bay area we have a high degree of literacy, interaction with books and reading. it's something we kind of take for granted. i am wondering if each of you can talk a little bit about the programs you offer, the ways people interact with your books with reading and what that does

for folks. howard, can you talk about programs at the jewish community library and then we can ask vivian. >> sure. from my angle, i don't take it for granted that we read and actually maybe we can talk later about i think we are having challenges with time and technology that's having an impact on the degree to which we read meaningfully. one of the things we try to do at the library is promote reading in book groups. a lot of our programming is devoted to helping people get together and read books together and also to interact with authors and lecturers but with really a goal of stimulating reading as an activity. >> vivian. >> for pj library, what we know is that reading has such a huge impact on brain development and emotional development, language development in kids, especially in the critical ages, 5 and under. pj library really wants to

enhance the sacred time of parents reading to their children at bed time. that's why we call it pj. you are in your pajamas listening to stories from your parents and really infuse the moments with jewish content and stories. really jewish values are universal values that so many people can relate to. when you read to a child, you are really connecting with them in a different way. it's so important for bonding and for children to just appreciate stories, have their imagination go different places. really with the busy day, just to be calm and be in a story and be taken away. it's a beautiful time for families. >> we are going to take a quick break. before we do, can you say in a very concrete way how does somebody actually just sign up for pj library? >> in a variety of ways.

the easiest way is online. we have a website at pjlibrary.org. you can easily enroll for any child in your family. each child gets their own book delivered to their home in the mail. it is entirely free. children are thrilled to get their own books. the envelope comes with their name on it. every month they have a new story to read about a holiday coming up or a story about a brave young girl or boy or something that children can relate to and learn from. >> wonderful. vivian and howard, we will take a quick break and come back to mosaic in a moment. please join us back here on mosaic in just a moment.

>> good morning. welcome back to mosaic. i am rabbi eric weiss. i am honored to be your host. we are in the middle of an important conversation about reading and how it functions in our lives especially in a complex world. vivian is program coordinator of pj library, pj meaning pajamas. howard is director of the jewish community library in san francisco. welcome back. >> thank you. >> howard, we were talking a little bit about the break about the notions of taking reading for granted and how

reading is changing and how that impacts perhaps the way we even understand the word. so i wonder if you can speak more to that and the ways in which the programming at the jewish community library actually in the most basic sense encourages reading. >> sure. from my perspective, i sometimes judge it by my experience on the bus. say 15 years ago, a lot of people were reading physical books on the bus. >> ten years ago, a lot switched to kindles. now, most people have their head in their phones. part of what that tells me and what i know from speaking with a lot of people is there is less reading of fiction and nonfiction, more sustained reading among adults than there was. a lot of people are doing facebook. a lot of people are doing communicating on their phones. the truth is that our time is less than what it once was. many of us, especially in the bay area which is so tech

savvy, bring our office home at night. we have all of our e-mail, all of our documents in the cloud. we are not making the same leisure time for reading that we once did. i think our reading is suffering. one of the things we do in the library is really try to call attention to the importance of reading. i think it is quite important. we create opportunities for people to want to read, to read in order to share their experiences, to learn about the books they read from other people's perspectives and share experience with authors. we have lots of opportunities for people to make reading more central to their lives. that's a priority. >> interesting. you said sustained reading. meaning part of what you observe is maybe i am just -- maybe i am thinking out loud because we have a focus or e- mail duration and that's not sustained reading. sustained reading is a novel, story, book, something chapter

after chapter. is that what you mean by sustained reading? >> correct. there is research being done. one of the issues with the digital age is a lot of habits have changed faster than we have had a sense of what the research tells us. the research happening now is really telling us that the kind of reading that we do that's more leisurely that's taking in information in a deeper way, it affects our brain. it enters us in a different way than say articles we read when we are looking at our tablet or on our phone. we are sort of substituting one kind of reading for the other kind of reading. our encounter with the world is changing as a result. >> interesting. vivian, pj library, literally when you sign up -- >> yes. >> your child gets a book. perhaps one of the books that's on the table, they literally get a book in the mail. >> yes. >> the assumption is the child

will be sitting down with an adult, probably a parent, but it might be a different adult in their lives, literally reading the full book to them out uds. when they sign up, the books are age appropriate and developmentally appropriate. babies would get board books and so on. they grow as the child grows. in the very early ages, the books would be read to kids. i would say on howard's point about attention span and technology, it's really important to have books in your home, that kids see that. they see you are reading as a parent. reading is important to you. not only just reading to your child, but reading in general. kids need to see that and see parents off their cell phones at home and off their computers. we at pj library have been struggling with the idea of putting books on kindles. many families use kindles rather than paper books. we keep coming back to there is

something magical about having no technology and having just a paper book in front of you and you can turn the pages together and point at the different illustrations and talk about the story. it really is a way to engage your child on a whole different level and have their undivided attention as a parent and a child. each pj library book has informational flaps on either side that talks a little bit about the content of the story, what the jewish holiday may be that's being celebrated, or the value that the book illustrates. it also has recipes or online links if you want to learn more. the idea is to do hands on activities too at home with your kid based on the story being told. it really encourages down time, down time and a time exclusively meant for learning. >> interesting. we are going to come back and continue this conversation in just a moment here on mosaic. [piano playing slow tune]

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good morning. welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation with the program coordinator for pj library and the director of the jewish community library in san francisco talking about reading and the importance of reading in a complex world. howard, why don't you talk about some of the programs that the library has such as the one bay, one book club program. >> sure. the library does a lot to support book clubs. book clubs are so wonderful. one of the great parts about the bay area is so many people are involved in informal experiences like book clubs. we try to support them by providing through our book club in a box program 12 copies of a

given title. we have 120 titles for people to choose from. they're available free to any book club that is interested to borrow for a month or two. we have a program called one bay, one book in which we select one book for a given year that we invite readers throughout the bay area to read and discuss together. our selection this year is called septembers of shiraz, a novel set in iran just after the revolution. it's about a family that's stuck there and the father is unfairly imprisoned. it's a fine book, and the author will be coming to speak in palo alto and san francisco in june with all the people who have been reading the book this year. >> if somebody has never been a part of a book club or is interested in joining a book club or starting a book club, what services actually would the person get for constructing their own book club and

choosing a book? what do they get from the library? >> one thing is we have a drop in book club at the library for people not part of a group who maybe don't want to level of commitment. we also help people set up their own and connect to other people and then have a guide to holding effective discussions and then there are the books to choose from making it easy to start. >> so should we say that the contact information for jewish community library is to go on the web at jewishcommunitylibrary.org or call (415)567-3327. >> one thing i want to mention is we have actually done book clubs with kids with a number of the books that are available in pj our way which vivian, the program which vivian runs. for me this has been wonderful because when kids are at the age, talking about late

elementary grades primarily, they can now engage with jewish history, with aspects of the jewish experience that are much harder to share when the kid is much younger. we have had rich discussions for instance in a book called the secrets of the house of delgado about experiences during the spanish inquisition, a book called black radishes about a boy in the 1930s in france. they're fantastic ways to start exploring jewish historical experience which doesn't get shared generally in school or even religious school often. >> vivian, when somebody for example has a child and they sign up for pj library, that child gets their own book once a month from, say, birth until? >> they can sign up at birth. the books start at six months. they go all the way through the age of 8. a child that signs up as a baby could get a free book

a month until they are through the age of 8. at that point, we want to continue this beautiful pj library experience and they can sign up for our pj our way program which howard mentioned. it is geared towards kids 9 to 11 years of age. they sign up at pjourway.org. what is nice about the program is they can choose the book that they get every month for free. so they can really read reviews of books and figure out what subject they're interested in and choose every month. there are book clubs online. you can review the books online. it's a nice way for kids to connect online in a safe environment to discuss reading and the books. >> the bay area is so diverse. >> yes. >> one of the things about the bay area is so many of us are interconnected with family, nationally and internationally. if somebody in the bay area is listening about pj library but

they have a young member of their family in a different state, a different country even, then can they access pj library? >> absolutely. pj library is available in over 200 communities across the u.s. it's also in canada, australia, united kingdom, russia, latin america. they can sign up online. they can google pj library and find the country in which their child is and they can easily sign them up. if they go on our website and put in the zip code of the child, it will pop up which community they can sign up in. >> fantastic. we are going to take another quick break and come back in just a moment here on mosaic. [ cell phone rings ]

>> yeah, i'm watching it too. i see them every day. >> the curtains, they're always drawn in this place. >> i know. >> that guy, it seems like he's in charge of them. i don't know, i don't feel very good about this. >> we have to report this. >> yes, absolutely.

good morning. welcome to mosaic. i am rabbi eric wei ss. i am honored to be your host. we are about to end unfortunately a wonderful conversation about reading in a complex world. welcome back howard and vivian. >> great. thank you. >> we have been talking so much about the power of reading and trends in reading and the diversity of the books that actually are both certainly in

the library itself but also in the context of pj library and the books that a child from 6 months to 8 years and beyond can receive every month. i am wondering if you can talk about what trends you see in children's literature in the kinds of books being written and the kinds of books being read, the kinds of books people are interested in. maybe howard we can start with you and vivian, you can chime in. maybe also we can talk about the actual diversity of the books available through pj library. >> absolutely. >> it is an important question. we just had a survey of the bay area jewish community that found about a quarter of bay area jews live in households with people of color who may be jewish themselves, may not be. but it is very important that we realize and act on the knowledge that we are a very diverse community. i know jewish children's books pretty well. they have not historically reflected that fact.

it's a wonderful thing to see that we are really starting to see emergence of many more jewish children's books that reflect ethnic and national, religious diversity of jews so kids can grow up with a sense that dark skinned jews are no different as jews from jews with light skin. that's a very important thing for people to grow up with, and we are seeing that now. i am very happy. >> for pj library, absolutely we embrace diverse jewish community that's really reflected across the the country. i would say no more so than in the bay area. we know that this is our community. we welcome it. we want to embrace it. we want that reflected in our books as well. it is a priority to not only have diverse families but also female driven main characters which is really something families are looking for, have always looked for, especially now when we are really embracing the power of women,

to have little girls read about bravery and all these wonderful jewish role models we have in history of women who have stepped up. in terms of diversity, there was a book that came out in november in honor of hanukkah. it's brand new. i have received several e-mails about it from local families. it's called the queen of the hanukkah dosas. it's a wonderful book about a hindu jewish family that incorporates indian dosas which are similar to latkas into holiday plans. there is a precise ter who -- sister who ends up saving the day. it reflects this lovely family that really represents all different skin colors and what makes up a family. no family is alike these days. it is important for not only parents but also for kids to

see themselves reflected in our books. it makes them feel valued. it make them feel like they're part of our community, and we want that. it is important for families to know that the jewish community embraces them. >> it seems important when we are talking about children's books. when we talk about diversity, that's a big word. >> yes. >> it seems to me when we get really concrete about it, what it breaks down to is that an illustration reflects a child of color, a jew of color. >> yes. >> a diversity of say skin color in a family but also reflects different behaviors so there are ways in which we give signals of diversity as wonderful by the way the story reflects cooking and food or a celebration, an outing, something they do in terms of interacting with the world around them. are there other ways in which you think the books reflect diversity for a child's mind

that build the building blocks of inclusion? >> absolutely. i can think of a certain book that i absolutely love from pj library called the only one club. it's about a girl who goes to public school. she feels she is the only jew in the class. she soon discovers that she may be the only jewish child but there are other children who are the only ones with red hair, only ones with freckles. everyone has their own uniqueness. embrace that in a real way. >> howard and vivian, believe it or not, we have come to the end of our conversation. we put a comma in the conversation so to speak and we encourage you to please pay attention to reading and books and in particular to the children in your lives. thank you so much for being with us here on mosaic.

in san francisco's inner sunset neighborhood. crews pull out a body after a building goes up in flames overnight in san francisco's inner sunset neighborhood. >> a house party gone horribly wrong after a fight breaks out. two teenager's lives ruined in one afternoon. it's 6:00 am on this sunday april 22. >> crews this morning remain on the scene of a deadly three alarm fire in san francisco. the fire department was called just before 10:00 last night to a residential building near 8 8th avenue and noriega street south of golden gate park. one person was found dead and a firefighter was seriously injured. at one point more than 100 firefighters were at the scene. some adjacent buildings had to be evacuated. the fire was difficult to tt