Guess what? Teens still love books.

Rick Kogan ventures out to some local high schools in search of continued love for reading and writing, and is encouraged by what he sees. A terrific and reassuring article, which I strongly suggest you read.

Talk to too many adults, read the papers, listen to the news and you'll get the feeling that kids today are mostly interested in video games and that their writing is exclusively of the text-message type.

But over the last few months, as we have visited all sort of schools, we have been pleased, very pleased, to discover that the written word is still important to fresh faces and young minds.

Personally, I'm not at all buying the literary mainstream's argument that youth readership is down due to kids being distracted by the Internet, text messaging, video games, etc. To me, the establishment's teeth-gnashing sounds an awful lot like one of the big retail chains explaining away their latest disappointing sales report by blaming the weather or high gas prices, instead of admitting that they simply don't really know how to compete in the marketplace and provide a product that people actually want to buy. Put some great books out there, Big Publishers, and people -- even kids -- will buy it. Say what you will about Harry Potter (and I'm not at all a fan), but Rowling's books are well-written, imaginative and fun, which is the reason that adults and kids snap them up by the millions.

While Big Publishers bemoan the loss of a love for reading of our youth, they should instead note the example of Chicago author Joe Meno, an immensely talented writer whose Hairstyles of the Damned is a funny, heartfelt coming-of-age novel that would appeal to most teens, and could have been a blockbuster for one of the conglomerates. But Meno, whose first two novels were published (and generally neglected) by a big publisher, instead published Hairstyles with an indie, Akashic Books, where the book got the loving attention that Meno was looking for. But of course Akashic doesn't have the marketing and distribution muscle of the titans, so while the book was a huge seller in indie terms, with one of the big publishers it could easily have sold millions.

And to cite a more personal example, my wife spends much of her weekdays on the Internet running her two online businesses, and also has plenty of quality time with her Nintendo DS, but still manages to devour that old-fashioned, offline, paper-based art form known as literature. So competing mediums aren't necessarily to blame, either, for the so-called demise of serious reading.

Put great writing out there, Big Publishers, and the readers will flock to your door.

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