On reading for pleasure

[ladyofastolat]

This is a predictable rant, because I know I've ranted about similar things before. In fact, I can probably leave half the words blank, and you'd all be able to fill them in. (Now, there's an idea for an LJ post…)

Anyway, someone at work has just given me "100 books every child should read", from this Saturday's Telegraph. It starts with an article by Michael Morpurgo about how schools should promote the sheer pleasure of books and stories.. I agree with every word he says. A terrifying number – Half? Thee quarters? I forget the exact number – of primary school teachers never read a story aloud to their children just for the fun of it. Philip Pullman read through the entire primary school Literacy Strategy and didn't find the word "enjoy" in there once. Novels are reduced to out-of-context extracts, and children are then invited to analyse the use of adjectives. Most school libraries I've seen are dire, full of tatty thirty-year-old books. Some secondary schools no longer have libraries at all "because it's all on the internet now, isn't it?" Scared by the National Curriculum, SATs and league tables, many teachers feel they can't justify spending ten minutes at the end of a day just reading for the fun of it.

So far so good, then. However, after his article, without a word of caution or introduction, we get "100 books every child should read." And what a list it is! Barely a dozen of the books were written within the last 25 years. Few are likely to appeal to reluctant readers. Apparently "early teens", for example, "should" be reading Great Expectations – a book that I'm Dickens never intended as "a children's book."

This list appears to be preaching the opposite message from Michael Morpurgo. "Push the joy of reading" doesn't match with "should". A lot of children never discover the joy of reading because their parents don't read, never encourage them to read, and never introduce them to books. Others, however, never discover the joy of reading because their parents push them too much. Over-ambitious parents can be the death of a child's interest in reading. We've all seen them in libraries: the parent who crossly snatches the child's chosen book out of their hand on the grounds that it's "too easy" or because they've "read it before", gets them a book that's clearly far too hard for the child, and then (presumably) boasts to the other parents, "Of course, she's reading books written for 9 year olds now."

Research has shown* that the children who love reading tend to do better at school. Research has shown that the best way to get a child to love reading is to let them choose their own books. Add that element of "should" and many of them lose interest. Some of them will want to relax at times with a "too easy" book. Some will want to reread an old favourite for the tenth time. Some will spend a year reading a single formulaic series, and loving it. Some will only ever read non-fiction.

This should be encouraged! By all means, try to gently introduce them to new experiences – to "better books", if you like. This is great! I have nothing at all against classics, and loved them as a child. (However, when I try to look objectively at some of them, I do wonder quite why they gained their classic status. I suspect a case of the emperor's new clothes in a few of them.) Read these aloud and enthuse over them, and perhaps the child will come to love them, too; enthusiasm is infectious, after all. But perhaps they won't. Times change. Children change. Interests change. Fashions change. Perhaps that worthy classic will leave them cold, while that "formulaic trash" inspires them and leads them to play rich games of the imagination, and to write stories of their own. It won't last, and they'll move on in time to something else - perhaps to that very classic they scorned six months earlier.

However, tear that "trash" out of their hand and tell that they will have to read this "good" book, whether they like it or not… What message are you giving about the joy of reading then? Reading is a chore. Reading is a test. Reading is something you have to do, not something you do because you enjoy it. "I am not a reader," they will come to think, and soon that prediction will come true. *

By all means, have book lists that suggest books that children might enjoy. Gently lead them to new discoveries. Recommend. Enthuse. But put a list of "100 books that a child should read" into the hands of over-ambitious parents, and I tremble at the result.

* I have read specific research on these issues, so these aren't empty statements. I'm just not citing the details here since this is an LJ rant, not an article.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

When I left school, I swore that I would never again read a book because I "ought to". I haven't.

Also, that, at eleven, we read Ivanhoe in class, but the teacher picked out all the descriptive bits (including, believe it or not, the "range of bars above the glowing charcoal" sequence where Isaac is being threatened with torture) and not things like the tournament to study. The result was that I was completely put off Scott until I picked up Ivanhoe again at fourteen (my parents had bought me a nice edition when I said I was doing it at school - they were very proud of the fact that I had passed the eleven plus and was going to the grammar school of my choice) which was exactly the right age for me, and found that, guess what, I enjoyed reading Scott after all!

My parents didn't have money to buy many books, so I read what I wanted to read from the library (boy's adventure stories and pony books and science fiction - not fantasy at all until I was about 12) and I used my pocket money to buy American comic books and Armada and Puffin paperbacks - but I had junior school teachers who certainly did read to us. Though it is now more than fifty years ago, I can still remember one teacher reading Ernest Thompson Seaton to us - which fed my passion for natural history as well as fiction.

Bah! to current educational thinking if it loses this joy for children.

And Bah! to dunderheads who can't remember what they enjoyed reading as a child.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I think I was quite unusual, in that I usually ended up loving all the books I "did" at school - loving them all the more as a result of studying them. I recognise that this is unusual, though. Being put off for a life seems to be a much more common result.

I devoured Walter Scott between the ages of 11 and 15 or so. I'm fairly sure I must have "done" the tournament scene at school, since I clearly remember reading that scene before I knew who the characters were, but all his other books I found voluntarily.

I do remember my parents gently suggesting that I probably shouldn't be wasting my birthday book tokens on Nancy Drew books, since I'd probably lose interest pretty soon, but they never actively stopped me. Since I was reading Tolkien and Rosemary Sutcliff and the like at the same time, I doubt they were really worried. My local library didn't approve of Nancy Drew or the Famous Five, so buying was the only option for these types.

[purplecat]

I still have many of my childhood books and I know I'm terrible at saying "Let's read this" for G's bed-time story when she'd rather read a Daisy Meadows. I hope we hit a happy medium between things she chooses herself and things I want to share with her, but it is hard to resist the desire to share something with her I recall enjoying.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I think it's great when parents (and teachers) read from something they genuinely love themselves. Even if the child ends up not taking to the book itself, simply seeing an adult they look up to enthusing about reading teaches a great messages. Enthusiasm can be really catching. I remember my whole class frequently being swept away by our teacher's enthusiasms, whether for books or other things (which is one concern I have with the National Curriculum, since it doesn't allow teachers to do this in the same way.)

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

*signs up to join crusade*

I was very lucky, I was encouraged to read, but allowed to pick my own books. Once when I picked a book I subsequently found I didn't like I was told that I didn't have to read it if I didn't want to.

At primary school age reading was one of the things that I was genuinely very good at: I was awful at writing, good at maths and utterly hopeless at sport.

I did once try reading David Copperfield; it was awful! I tried really, really hard to read it; and on more than one ocasion. Luckily by that time I knew that I didn't have to finish a book.

When I was about fifteen I was getting whole armfuls of books from the mobile library that came round every two weeks and was devouring them at a rate of two or three a day. Most of them were inch-thick SF books.

Over my childhood I read several books more than once, one seventeen times. Others I went back to simply for the joy of reading them despite them being years too young for me.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

When I'm in a school, I often say "put your hands up if you've ever started a reading book you think you'll like, got half way through it and thought 'This is boring. I don't want to read any more of this'" The children look really nervous, hands hovering, not sure if they're allowed to admit to this. I then put my hand up firmly and say, "I have." I then tell them this is perfectly okay - that I do it all the time, and I bet all their teachers have, too. (I glare at the teachers until they nod. To their credit, most teachers have already put their hands up before I have to start glaring.) The children then put their hands up with a visible sigh of relief. I find it very sad.

I do the same with asking them if they've ever read a book more than once. They're more happy to admit this without being prompted, but even then, some look guilty.

[segh.livejournal.com]

Not all parents are over-ambitious, and I know some who don't read themselves but want their children to, and don't know where to start. Mightn't a list be helpful to them?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, definitely. I just wish it had been phrased as suggestions, rather than as books they "should" read. I also wish the list had better reflected the sort of stuff today's children are really loving, not somebody's (whose?) idea of what they should be loving. If you'd asked a group of children's librarians to put together a list of "books that are likely to inspire children to love reading" it wouldn't have looked much like this list in question.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Phrases like "100 books every child should read" are just journalistic tics, I'm afraid, on the same lines as "Every government minister should be issued with a copy" or "This book should be required reading for xyz." I doubt whether even the people who drew it up actually believe that every single child should read every single book on that list - even though that's what they seem to be saying.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I'm sure they didn't mean it that way - though there was no introduction or note of any kind to qualify it, or even to say who had put together the list. It just annoys me, since I've seen parents believe a list like this as if it was gospel. They come into the library clutching it, and borrow every book they can find off the list, not bothering to open it to check for level, or to read the blurb to see if it matches their child's interests. The stakes are so high. If children are struggling a bit with reading, they can so quickly generalise from "I don't like this book" to "all books are boring", and go on to believe this for life.

[gileswench.livejournal.com]

So with you, as is so often the case.

I love how my parents managed the reading thing. They read constantly, so books always seemed as natural as breathing. They read to us, so they were sharing their enthusiasm. Whenever one of us developed an interest in something, at least one age-appropriate book suddenly appeared out of thin air. We were never told not to read a book a second time or not to read something that might be trashy. We were never forced to read any particular books outside of what we were assigned in school.

The result? We all love books. Books are our friends. One brother uses them mostly in a research way, but that was always the case even as a child. He was more inclined to hard facts than Chelemby and me, but he still adores Little Bear and Lord of the Rings as well.

At seven, I was reading Frances Hodgeson Burnett (A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, NOT Little Lord Fauntleroy which I've never been able to stomach) and relatively basic books about Henry VIII...but I was also reading Dr. Seuss. Mom never made any attempt to stop me reading little kiddie books. I think she figured a fondness for Dr. Seuss and Amelia Bedelia showed that I was enjoying both the sound and the sense of words, and those were precisely the qualities she was hoping for.

At fourteen, I read War and Peace for the first time, quickly followed by Sybil and The Stranger...then followed up all that heavy reading with another go at Charlotte's Web. Every single book on that list was my choice.

Books have always been my friends. Today, those friends include works by Great Authors and more recent 'throwaway' fiction, intense scholarly studies and lightweight overviews of Stuff That Sounds Kind of Interesting.

Buf if books had been what they all too often were in my later schooling, I might well not be interested in reading today. I know I would have detested Shakespeare if my 'formal introduction' to him in high school had been my real introduction. We were instructed to read Othello silently at our desks during class, and then as a final had to write out one of Iago's speeches word and punctuation perfect from memory and write a one-paragraph explanation of what it meant. Thank goodness my junior high drama class had been taken to see a gloriously raucus and bawdy production of The Taming of the Shrew about three years earlier and I'd seen Olivier's Henry V!

At least we never had to study random bits out of context anywhere I went to school. That sounds beyond ghastly. If we were studying a book or a story, we read the whole thing.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

That sounds ideal! And the way they made you study Othello... Agh! What on earth were they thinking? And then they wonder why so many young people think these things are boring...!

The "reading only extracts" thing is a product of the Literacy Hour, introduced by the government ten years ago in an attempt to improve literacy standards. It's worked in that children are getting better at passing tests. It's not worked in that they're visibly worse (visibly to us librarians, that is) at actually reading books, and the number of children who say they enjoy reading has fallen over those ten years. The Literary Hour is very structured. The introduction of the Literacy Hour (coupled, I should add, with health and safety rules) caused a massive drop in the number of schools taking their children to the local library. "We're do busy doing literacy to let them read", was effectively what they day.

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

I agree with every word you said.

When I was doing my student teaching, I set aside of portion of every single schoolday to read to my kids. There were no questions afterward, no analysis, no tests. It was reading for the pure pleasure of it. I read Charlotte's Web to my second grade kids, and I was not the only one crying at the end.

I learned to read at age 3 because my mother read to me all the time. And I would insist on "reading" the books back to her. She thought - correctly at first, no doubt - that I was merely parroting the words I had heard a hundred times from her. She knew it was the real deal when I read a brand-new book to her without ever having heard it before.

When I was a kid, we went to the library every single Saturday. It was a tradition. If I found a book stamped with a red A for Adult, I gave it to my mom and she checked it out for me, no questions asked. If she saw I was checking out Black Beauty for the thousandth time, she would say, "You've already read that!" and I would say, "So? I like it!" and that would be the end of the conversation. I can remember evening after evening, watching both my parents sitting in the living room, the television off, both of them quietly reading a book.

For as long as I can remember I've loved to read. And I give all the credit for that to my parents.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

That's great! One of the best ways to get children to want to read is to be seen reading yourself - to be seen lost in a book, weeping over it, laughing. I saw a survey recently that asked teachers if they read themselves. Most said yes, but quite a few said they didn't - they were far too busy to read.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Hear! Hear! I haven't read all the comments yet but I know so many people who have been put off reading by what they had to do at school (when it was something like read Gerald Durrell and write a few essys & character studies), so I shudder at the thought of what hoops kids today have to jump through - from too early an age too by the sound of it.

When The Big Read came out Na'Lon and I tried to read various books that neither of us had read before which were on there, some were good, some were good but 'work' (To Kill a MOckingbird), some were okay but short (The Alchemist) and some were pure shite but highly reccommended by the LitCrit crowd, in this case Fowles' "The Magus" which I stopped reading a third of the way in and am not at all interested in finishing except for the reading equivalent of the hair-shirt medal. And frankly I'd rather watch paint dry as I'm sure that will only seem to last ages.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

At least with adults, they've already made up their mind about whether they like reading or not. They can try books in a list like this, realise they don't like an individual one, and move on. It's more dangerous with children because they're just beginning to form their attitudes and can be put off for life by one bad experience - especially if coupled with a well-meaning parent or teacher forcing them to keep reading it to the end, thinking this is for the best.

Reading

[themis1.livejournal.com]

I don't remember my mother ever reading a book (she did read Woman and Woman's Weekly, though), but my father read all the time and we always had books in the house. My (10 year older) brother read science fiction, and by the time I was 12 I had read every book in the house, including father's Dickens (didn't enjoy it much), Gone With The Wind (not sure I actually understood it!) and ... yes, all the science fiction! I had read the entire junior library long before I was old enough to be allowed into the adult library - I always thought that was a stupid rule, not allowing a child to take out an adult book even if accompanied by an adult who'd checked it was OK! I guess I was just the sort of child who'd read the label on a jar if nothing else was available ... but had I been *told* what to read, I suspect I would have been a lot less happy.

I was slow starting. I've always tended to laziness, and I guess reading seemed too much like hard work. I have a wonderfully clear memory of my father standing in my bedroom door saying he couldn't understand why I didn't want to read, because all the knowledge in the world was just out there waiting for me ... I must have taken him at his word, since my memory is that from that moment on my and books became inseparable!

What I've found down the years is that people who grow up in houses with books seem more likely to end up with a love of books - but that's not scientific, just observed.

Internet replace books? Nope, it just doesn't have that delicious *smell* that paper acquires with age!

Re: Reading

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I don't remember learning to read. My parents have told me that they suggested occasionally that I might want to start making sense of these word things, and did some gentle attempts to make me think that way, but I showed no interest. Then, when I was just about to start school, I suddenly panicked, thought I'd be expected to read fluently before I started, and announced "I'm going to learn to read now"... and did, pretty much instantly. Had my parents pushed me more, though, I wonder what the result would have been.

I find it very depressing how many households supposedly contain no books at all. And then you have that stupid estate agent thing, when they tell you to get rid of your books if you want your house to sell...!

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

I was extremely lucky with something that happened when I was in 2nd year middle school - I realised at the time that I was very lucky, but now I appreciate it even more, and how very unlucky most of the other children were. My school (or, more probably the LEA) introduced a new reading scheme. It had, as far as I recall, stages from 1-12, where 12 represented the age-level they felt you should have reached by the time you were 12, i.e. end of middle school. (Level 1 was for very, very beginning readers.) Well, the flaw in this plan is obvious, right? And blessedly, they started the scheme with what seemed like rather a decent assessment of your 'reading level'. I believe I was assessed at level 20. What this meant for me in practice was that I and another girl were given absolutely free rein of our entire (rather good at the time) school library, no supervision, no checks, to choose what we wanted, and got to spend several lessons a week for the next three years *just reading* lovely, lovely books, while our poor comperes were working through the 'readers' and doing the questions and exercises at the end of every section (I assume in the later years there must have been more children who had reached the end of the 'readers' and joined us in library privileges). To be fair I can't really say how good/bad the readers were - they seemed to consist of short stories or extracts or versions, often cut-down or paraphrased, of a fairly wide variety of things - but I do know that for me at least they were seriously lacking in appeal compared with the option of just choosing what I wanted to read and then reading straight through it to the end (or possibly not; though I don't recall not finishing any books, I also don't recall that not being allowed - and really, they wouldn't have known!) I *think* I was asked to write up a paragraph or two about each book I read, sort of like a book report, I guess, but I don't recall that being a hardship; indeed I scarcely remember that aspect of the deal. As I say, gloriously lucky to be given school time to do what I considered a leisure activity ;-)

[gervase-fen.livejournal.com]

We've just been interviewing for a Saturday position, and of course we ask "So you want to work in a bookshop - what do you like to read?" Three applicants seeking their first job after GCSEs said "Great Expectations" and one said "The Return of the Native". Go figure...

We also interviewed a girl, the same age, for a Sunday position who had not only read Rebecca but had also then moved on to Jamaica Inn, and gave such a good precis of it that I wanted to read it myself. She starts next week.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

There's something else at work here I think.

Namely that if something is fun, it can't be good for you. This applies doubly for children. So because computer games are fun, they must be bad. Children should be made to read books. And not just any books. Not the books they might want to read, but the 100 books that they "should" read.

"Should" is a horrible concept to introduce to a leisure activity.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I hear this from pre-school leaders, too. The whole philosophy of pre-school education is "learning through play."* As far as the children are concerned, they're playing and having fun; they just happen to be learning subliminally while doing so. However, some parents apparently get quite pushy and say that this isn't good enough. They want to see concrete results and firm evidence of things that look properly like Learning. They don't want their children to do "just playing". We're talking 3 and 4 year olds here! It's very sad.

* Yes, there is a Pre-School Curriculum, which the press got all riled about a few years ago, saying how awful it was that little three years olds were going to be put at desks and taught tables and dates. However, had they bothered to read the curriculum in question, they'd have seen that it was about learning through play. The curriculum was just there to ensure that a full range of play opportunities were provided that fulfilled certain developmental needs.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Had a conference on children's literature today at work (specifically war in children's books) - sneaked in at lunchtime, because Kevin Crossley-Holland was one of the speakers. He was brilliant, but I'm less sure about one of the others, who criticized fantasy for, among other things, being too long.

Excuse me? It's a problem when kids choose to read long books?

But my blood pressure was much soothed by hearing K C-H reciting bits of Battle of Maldon in the original, and his eloquence in arguing that children's books shouldn't try to avoid difficult subjects like war, or pretend that it doesn't happen, but should embrace them.

- Creatrix

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I do think he might have a point there, actually. (Though of course I wasn't there so don't know exactly what he said or what reasons he gave.) I have sometimes got the impression that authors and publishers have looked at the long Harry Potter books, and decided that "children's fantasy books have to be huge." I've read quite a few that seem to me to be far longer than they need to be - i.e. that are (in my mind) long just for the sake of being long, and would actually be a lot more effective at half the length. I feel this in adult fantasy series fairly often, too - that publishers expect these things to come in trilogies or endless series, but that quite a lot of the tales these authors have to tell would be better told in a single book or a shorter series.

At a slight tangent

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

I never cease to be amused by the fact that my mother thought I was mentally deficient as a small child, because I just would not read (Janet and John books). "See John chase the ball" OK, been there, done that, worn the T-shirt.

For some unknown reason she got from the library a book much too "old" for me - Billy Bunter I think, and I started to read and started to laugh, so I kept reading.

Prior to that my parents read books to me, and I enjoyed the stories. Mercifully I was not put off too many books by being forced to read them at school.

[natika.livejournal.com]

I'm sitting in on one of the MA-level courses this term (on Education For All) and as a warm up in the first session we were asked to describe our primary school experiences - there's several nationalities in the group so interesting things came up. However /all/ the Brits (none under 25 years old) distinctly remembered being read to as one of their clearest memories of primary school. I wonder how many kids take that memory away these days.

I remember the act of being read to almost more than the actual books - the only book I remember clearly is The Hobbit in 3rd year juniors to the point that whenever I pick it up I start hearing it in my teacher's voice - and it never detracts! (Though more is coming back - the same teacher read us The Silver Sword. And another book with a girl called Joanna in who lived in occupied Holland... Little Riders?) I'm sure we were read Danny Champion of the World too in 2nd year because I still have a stuffed pheasant I made out of felt - don't remember the teacher reading it though!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Some of my happiest school memories are of the serial story being read at the end of the day, too. It's sad that a whole generation of children is growing up without that memory. The 4 and 5 year olds still get read to, but very few 8 and 9 year olds. Though there are some signs that it's beginning to turn around, and that more teachers in primary schools are finding the time to read aloud for sheer pleasure. I hope it continues this way!

[no-mad-skillz.livejournal.com]

Hello. *waves across the Atlantic*

I stumbled across your lj, as one does, through friends of friends and hours of tangential clicking, and I've been working my way back through your posts. Heh, I realize that that must sound creepy.

I'm told I learned to read at 3--certainly I never remember a time I wasn't reading--and was one of those children who had to be reading something, even if it was the ingredients on the toothpaste tube. My house is filled with teetering piles well-ordered shelves of books, and I have read to my children from the time they were infants. I was, therefore, completely baffled that they seemed to have no interest in learning to do the wonderful thing themselves, and that their reading came reluctantly and late.

A turning point for Elder Son came last year, when his incredible fifth-grade teacher (what would you call fifth grade?) turned him on to a love of learning. *pauses to worship at the shrine of Mrs. P--* One of the things she did, every day, was read to the class.

Elder will be turning 12 in a few days' time. He rarely can be found without a book these days, and birthday and Christmas wish lists are always for books, to the occasional ruin of my bank account. (The only book I've ever refused to buy was Eragon--I told him to check it out of the library.)

I've enjoyed these comments here, which remind me not to worry about Younger Son, not to push, not to stress, to banish the word "should" from my thinking about reading, and to try to buffer them a bit from our ridiculous school system of everything for the test. And, most of all, to let them see me enjoying books.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Hello! Glad you found the post interesting. This is a topic I feel strongly about, so my ranting does probably tend to be a bit... biased. I hope you younger son comes to enjoy reading. It usually happens in the end, when a child stumbles over that one book that they are desperate to read. I've seen that magical moment happen several times, and it's wonderful.