ladyofastolat | On reading for pleasure

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On reading for pleasure

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.

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Certainly they can. Some do. Some, however, never do. It certainly seems that if someone isn't a keen reader by 11, they're not likely to read much at least through their twenties and thirties. Admittedly, many people who are keen readers at 11 go off it during their teenage years, and don't return to it for many years, but usually do return eventually. Habits can be changed, though. My Dad was put off novels by school, and didn't read a single one until a few years ago, when he joined a U3A book group (where he's the only man) and now keenly reads novels.

What I was meaning to imply was that if an adult is reading their 501st book and really hates it, they're not likely to say "all reading is boring" as a result. If a child is reading their first ever "real book" and doesn't like it, they're more likely to generalise from that experience.

Do they really? Good heavens, it would put me off - the first thing I look for is plenty of shelving space!

There's some stats that say every household has an average of 2 books - I'm sure this can't be right, as if it is Phoebesmum and I have half the books in Bicester!

Little Ted, incidentally, is reading Hamlet. He has read this a number of times (it's the only book I have his size) and still seems to enjoy it.

In recent years I've taken to reading more and more blogs and less and less newspapers. If I do read newspapers it tends to be for entertainment -- some people read Heat for a laugh, I read The Times. Blogs have their own problems of course, but I feel if you're reading some police inspector's account of the impact of government bureaucracy on police effectiveness, you at least discover one small patch of reality, especially if it's then followed by 50 comments from other serving police officers. Much like I value your blog for insight from the point of view of a children's librarian, on, say, the value of the national curriculum. Newspapers are more ambitious in scope, but the content is TOTAL bollocks! And yes, as you say, many people haven't twigged that. I didn't really until I became an expert in science, and noticed that whenever science was reported in a newspaper, it was (almost always) utter bollocks. Even then I initially thought this was because most journalists are arts grads, and assumed their coverage of politics, economics etc could not, surely, be at the same level of utter codswallop. And indeed even now I catch myself falling into the trap of placing any level of reliability on something I read in a newspaper! (just naturally credulous, me.) Maybe if you are not expert in anything, or if your area of expertise happens not to feature in newspapers, you don't go through this process?

Neuromancer

I'm no scientist, but I can see what you're talking about as regards science coverage in newspapers. I suppose my areas of expertise would be politics, economics and accountancy, and I think newspaper coverage of these areas is rather better. Politics gets done to death of course. Economics coverage depends on which newspaper you read, but a lot are pretty good and entirely sensible and knowledgeable in their coverage. In a way, I'm not that surprised by this. I'm more surprised by the high quality of coverage of accountancy issues. For example, newspaper coverage of pension scheme deficits did a good job of explaining in layman's terms the effects of FRS 17. I think what must be happening is that journalists are talking to people in the City who know these things.

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.

Hurrah, I say, for the Du Maurierite. (Not that I've read any, but the Dickens and Hardy are so predictable...)

My dissent sought to be more collective, in that I berated the choice of books and was uncomfortable with joining the dissenters who read ahead (though I did); I never went as far as reading other books, though.

'Official channels' I too learned partly through trial and error, largely when editing my school newspaper or soliciting for advertising in my brief and dispiriting career in student journalism.

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.

It's sad to think then that there are so many people who don't have expertise enough to detect the bollocks in *anything* - not their hobbies or their interests, or news stories in which they have an interest.

Or perhaps again it is the problem of generalisation. I understand that The Sun is still not much read in Liverpool after its Hillsborough coverage, but I wonder how far that prejudice is specific to the one paper, and how many people are able to generalise from that one misreporting to distrusting the content of all newspapers. The Liverpool Echo has a fine line in irresponsible tripe, yet sells well in its local area...

I was hugely arrogant when it came to Eng Lit, but I think with some justification: the progress of the class was so painfully slow, with information spelled out in such moronic detail that I really don't think I could have stuck with it.

Our teachers were uninspired and had a tendency to teach by dictating notes which the class transcribed. I perfected the art of writing with one half of my brain while reading a book with the other half. (thinks: I wonder if this is why I can't do sums? I think the sums half of my brain was the one I made write notes while the rest was off having fun.)

Oh, how my teachers must have hated me. :-D

We apparently had a choice too, but the teacher always made it for us. She always claimed the books she chose were her favorites, but she had a way of making any book, even ones she loved, so dull I wanted to cry.

A friend's 7yo daughter had a really nasty flare-up of eczema, which after a lot of seeing doctors, dermatologists etc, was eventually established to be due to the stress of those tests. When we are giving our first school pupils stress-related illnesses things have Gone Too Far.

Grr, I know! We took down several bookcases before putting our house on the market and stored the boxes of books in our loft/with my parents, and still one of the most common comments we got was "gosh, you have an awful lot of books!" The packing-and-removals guys were a bit taken-aback too.

Of course, now we're in a significantly larger house we *still* don't have enough places to put bookcases, and have several boxes of books still to place. I don't know how that happened. I think books must be like a gas.

I was actually surprised by Themis' comment about having read all the books in the house by age 12. My immediate response was that the house couldn't have had enough books, then! I certainly haven't read all the books in our house by a long way - it's only just occurred to me now that possibly this is odd, to want the house to be a bit more like a library (of the old-fashioned private variety more than the modern public type perhaps) containing not just the books one *does* want to read, but all the books one *conceivably might* want to read. Hmmn, perhaps I should approach Skordh's attempts to cut down some of our Stuff - including books, sob - with this new perspective.

Books I read before they were set in school I generally loved, saw the point of, and have gone back to. Books that school got to first, I utterly loathed. Have since then discovered that Dickens can actually be worth reading, as long as no-one's attempting to Teach Him - still haven't overcome my aversion to George Elliot or DH Lawrence.

But fortunately for me, most of the rest of the usual suspects I got to first. And my mother made sure I'd seen Shakespeare on stage years before we were expected to read them in class.

- Creatrix

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

When I read that list (the early teens section particularly) I must admit I thought "they're recommending this for teenagers? But I read it when I was 8 / 9 / whatever" quite a bit!

- Creatrix

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.

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!

Books expand to fill the space available (and then some.) I think this is a Scientific Law.

Before we converted our garage, and all bookcases were full, I thought long and hard before buying any new books. As soon as he moved them into the garage, and had lots of half empty shelves, I started hitting second-hand bookshops with gay abandon. Those empty shelves got eaten up alarmingly fast...

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.

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!

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.

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.

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On reading for pleasure

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At a slight tangent

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