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Contact: Stacey J. Miller

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Lost in Lexicon:
An Adventure That Pits Kids’ Intelligence Against Their Attraction to Pixels

Do video games and electronic devices affect children’s brains? Pendred Noyce, MD, says the research is
mounting that pixels both positively and negatively influence kids’ intelligence and creativity. Dr. Noyce
shares that the average American 11-14-year-old spends ten hours a week playing video games, for
example. Those hours spent in front of the screen may help kids gain sharper perceptual skills and the
ability to manipulate 2-D representations into 3-D renderings (in part, that’s the ability to figure out what we’ll
see when we turn a corner). But Dr. Noyce isn’t convinced these potential benefits of screen time outweigh
the negatives which include sagging grades, developing violent tendencies, and gaining weight.

In her new children’s novel, Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers (Tumblehome Press), Dr.
Noyce explores the dilemma of two young characters whose world revolves around screens and gadgets.
The children, 13-year-old cousins Ivan and Daphne, are staying with their eccentric old great aunt, Adelaide,
for the summer. It’s an idyllic life except that Aunt Adelaide won’t allow the children to watch television or
use computers in the evenings. Outdoors, there’s plenty to keep the kids busy – as long as the nice weather
holds out. But when it rains for three days, the children can’t think of anything exciting to do with their time.

“Is that what it’s come to?” asks Aunt Adelaide of Ivan and Daphne. “You need a screen to entertain you,
and without it, you’re determined to be bored?”

Ivan and Daphne admit that, in a fast-moving world, they do need their electronics. Aunt Adelaide presses
the point. “I thought we could hold it back,” she says. “But here it is, come upon us.” She walks around the
kitchen and sitting room, scooping up books and stacking them, and putting away puzzles. “No need for
libraries, no need for books. No need for invention,” she grouses.

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So Aunt Adelaide takes matters into her own hands. She sends Ivan and Daphne on an adventure
that begins in the barn with a copula and an anagram, and takes them into a strange world called
Lexicon.

Once the kids lose sight of their great aunt’s barn and farm, they realize the rain has stopped – and
they’re in another land in a parallel universe. Ivan wants to turn around and return immediately, but
Daphne convinces him to forge on. “Don’t you ever read any books?” she asks him. “We go in, we
have adventures, we come home. Maybe we find treasure.”

“Right,” Ivan agrees. “Nothing could go wrong with that.”

As readers of The Phantom Tollbooth and other children’s adventure stories might predict, Daphne
and Ivan proceed to face challenges (that include a plague of punctuation, the Times Table Inn, the
Mistress of Metaphor, the Meter Yard, the Poetry Council, involving language and math in cleverly
written, engaging encounters.

Everywhere Ivan and Daphne venture, words and numbers run wild. Villagers beg them to find
Lexicon’s missing children, who have wandered off while their parents were distracted by lights in the
sky. Kidnapped, imprisoned, and mesmerized, Ivan and Daphne trek from village to village in search
of clues to restore the lost children to their homes.

Dr. Noyce hopes that Lost in Lexicon will engage children and their parents, and serve as a reminder
that there’s more to childhood than video games, iPads, and computers. “There’s nothing inherently
wrong with pixels, in moderation. It’s when kids overlook the beauty and the magic of language and
numbers that they lose out on what makes childhood such a wonderful time – and that’s a crime that I
think we can all solve together.”

Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers

Written by Pendred Noyce
Illustrated by Joan Charles
Tumblehome Press
ISBN: 978-0-9845250-0-3
$12.95
October 2010

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