Reviewer: Rabbi Yonassan Gershom
Author of 'From Ashes to Healing' and 'Jewish Tales of Reincarnation'
Minnesota

"Valerie Kirschenbaum may well be the pioneer of a whole new genre of 21st-century authors: the "Designer Writer," who not only produces the text of a work, but also designs the colors, graphics, layout, variations in fonts, etc. It's a marriage of Art, Literature, Education, and Technology (to quote the cover.) We've already seen this happen in advertising. Now, says Kirschenbaum, it's time to bring color to the literary classics in high school textbooks.

This project began with a simple question from one of her students in an inner-city school: "Ms. Kirschenbaum, how come our books are not in color like they used to be?" The student pointed to a picture in her textbook, a medieval illumination of a tale from Chaucer. In the days before Gutenberg's printing press, most books not only had color pictures, they used colors in the text itself, as well as various styles of writing, to emphasize the most important words in a block of text. Gutenberg himself kept some of this style when he printed his famous Bible, which had ornate borders that were hand-painted later. But within a very short time, color left the writer's pallette, to be replaced by the stark black and white rectangles of text we see today.

In chapter 4, "The Gutenberg Cliche," Kirschenbaum discusses how this switch from color to black and white has affected the study of the classics. Alongside her discussion are actual historical examples of such authors as Virgil, Dante, Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas -- before Gutenberg (in color, varied types of text), during Gutenberg (blocks of text with margins illuminated in color), and today (black and white, no color.) The earlier colored versions certainly look more inviting to read. Kirschenbaum's students agree. As an experiment, she has designed handouts of the classics which use color and varying fonts to highlight the text. Overwhelmingly, the students prefer the color versions. Colors help them to find the main points, to get the rhythm of poetry, and to feel the emotions of the characters. The plain black text of the same material was overwhelmingly rated as dull, boring, hard to follow.

As Kirschenbaum explains, we lost color in texts because, when technology went from hand illuminating to the printing press, it was not cost-effective to typeset words in different colors. Typesetting also required that lines of text be straight and uniform. This "Gutenberg cliche" --square boxes of dull black text -- continues today, even though we no longer typeset our books ala Gutenberg. All publishing today is done by computer, which opens up a whole new range of possibilities if we can think outside box. Kirschenbaum's front-line experiments in the classroom prove that students are more attracted to color, and more likley to read a book if it is in color. After all, these kids grew up with TV, movies, video games -- all in living color. The only place they see plain black text is in school books. Our curriculum, says Kirschenberg, has not kept up with the way kids are learning today.

In the academic world, however, Kirschenbaum's work has received a negative reception, which she discusses in a chapter illustrated with Bosch-like characters and the flames of hell. What heresy! How dare this mere high school teacher -- who doesn't even have a Ph.D. -- presume to present a new theory of education? One foundation turned down her grant for research because there was no previous research in this area. (How's that for thinking in a rut?) A rude professor called her "Madame Nobody" to her face and dismissed her work without really looking at it. Such people would do well to remember that Albert Einstein was a lowly patent clerk when he published the theory of relativity -- a theory that forever changed the way we see the universe.

Discouraged but not defeated, Kirshenbaum decided to self-publish this book to demonstrate her theory. And she does it well. Not only is color effective, it doesn't cost any more that a similar book in black and white. (The list price of this book -- in full color -- is only $24.95). The resulting work is a collection of lavishly illustrated chapters that are a feast for the eyes and a challenge to the way we think about writing. This should be required reading for all educators -- I give it ten stars!

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