Local Children's Author Pleads Guilty to Possessing Porn

Luckily, I never met KP Bath, the author of two middle-grade books - The Secret of Castle Cant, and Escape From Castle Cant - even though he lives less than 10 miles from me. [In a rather creepy coincidence, the ad displayed on the Amazon page says I can find Portland-area babysitters. Trust me, this guy is not someone you would want watching your kids.]

Yesterday he pleaded guilty to possessing child porn. And not just any child porn. "Prosecutors have alleged that some of the images were of infants, toddlers and prepubescent children, some of whom were bound and appeared to be the victims of sadistic and violent behavior."

Little Brown dropped him after he was arrested. He was supposed to have a new book out last fall. It's possible I would have reviewed it for the Oregonian.

The full story.

I'm not a believer in the death penalty, but it's hard to think that a person like this could ever be rehabilitated.

Bribery works!

A couple of years back, we did something that seemed kind of radical for Teen. We stopped giving her a flat allowance and started paying her to read and play musical instruments.

I always felt a bit defensive about it. But now comes some scientific proof that that sort of thing works. A researcher studied five different ways to improve student performance. For each method, there were matched control schools. Success was measured by performance on standardized tests.

The most successful method: “Paying second-graders to read books significantly boosted their reading-comprehension scores on standardized tests at the end of the year — and those kids seemed to continue to do better the next year, even after the rewards stopped.”

Other efforts had more mixed success. These including paying for better grades, better test scores and better behavior.

Adults are motivated by money. Would many of us work at our jobs if there was no pay? Why should kids be any different?
Read more about the study here.