Reading for the Joy of Reading

When I was a child, I was a voracious reader.  I read everything I could get my hands on.  If there wasn't a book around, I'd read a cereal box.  I didn't care; I just loved reading.  I stopped reading Sweet Valley High books somewhere around #118.  Books that were assigned at school were great.  Books I chose myself were better.  I recognized the value of books I ended up hating, like Great Expectations and Lord of the Flies, because there is a difference between appreciating and enjoying.

What makes a child love to read?  As with all things, there are multitudes of nature and nurture theories.  Most of those can be debunked as sole explanations when looking at siblings.  I think it is probably, like most things, a combination of multiple things in a child's life - parents, home, siblings, school, friends, and personality. 

I do believe the research backs up one thing, however, that could break a child's love of reading.  If you want your child to remain a reader, don't tell them not to read the things they love.  You can give them additional worthy choices without taking other choices away.  As I said earlier, I read 118 Sweet Valley High books.  Am I little embarrassed by this as a 41-year-old woman?  Sure.  They are formulaic and silly, and it took me way too long to figure that out.  However, if somewhere along the way, someone had said to me, "Don't read that silly nonsense," it likely would not have been replaced by literature.  It likely would not have been replaced at all.  Instead, I had some wonderful teachers who said, "You like to read?  That's great.  Have you tried reading this?"  Then, they recommended some wonderful books.  While I was reading Sweet Valley High, I was also reading CS Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and a crazy long book called Nicholas and Alexandra, all in the 7th and 8th grades and all at the recommendation of teachers who inspired more reading rather than less.

If your child likes comic books and graphic novels, that is awesome.  Google which ones are the best.  You may not know that there are graphic versions of everything from The Metamorphosis to Sense and Sensibility (see this list from Goodreads).  If the story captures them, one day, your child may reach out and read the literary versions, but even if they don't, they now have absorbed a classic story they wouldn't have if someone had told them not to read it.  If you want to expand their reading to higher levels, look for a book on Amazon, and then see what recommendations it has.  Your local librarian, whether at school or in a public library, lives to recommend books.  Go in and say, "My child likes X-Men.  I'd like him to read something at a higher level.  Can you recommend?"  That librarian will be thrilled to give you a dozen recommendations of books with similar themes across a wide variety of levels.  As I tell my students, they have a Master's degree in recommending stuff.  The way to get them reading better things is to expand their options, not decrease them.  Please expand and raise your child's awareness of better books by providing them with more options.  Please do not tell a child that their tastes are wrong just because they are young.

I write this because I have spent the past three days sitting in a classroom with students who are finishing their midterms at different times.   In each class, about 75% of my students have a book under their chair.  As soon as they turn in their exam, they pick up where they left off in the books they chose to bring with them.  From Harry Potter to Wonder to the latest John Green novel, my kids are reading, not books they have been assigned, but books they have chosen.  I even saw someone reading the Collected Works of HP Lovecraft a few days ago.  Lovecraft, for heaven's sake.  I didn't even know he existed until I was an adult.  GRACE students are readers, and I believe it is because most of their teachers are readers.  I try to remember that much of my middle school reading was because a teacher I liked told me about a book they liked.  I tell them what I read over the summer.  When I see them reading a school book that I also read, I tell them my memories of reading it.  When they have a Shakespear play in hand, I tell them about my favorites, which are Julius Ceasar and Othello.  When we, as teachers, tell them about our favorite books, they see that reading isn't just something to do for assignments.  They see that we speak of reading with joy, not dread.  Hopefully, they see that we are never too old to read for the joy of it. 

Stop unrecommending books (I'm pretty certain that isn't a word, but Grammarly is letting me get away with it).  Recommend them.