Take that, book snobs
I’ve written posts before on how much I hate book snobs–especially when it comes to children’s and teens’ reading choices. Reading is reading. I don’t care if it’s comic books, the newspaper, science fiction, romance novels, chemistry textbooks, sports magazines–whatever. If someone loves to read anything, then that’s the beginning of a love a reading, period.
I was out of town when this New York Times article broke, but I really enjoyed reading Meg Cabot’s take on it. I enjoy reading her take on just about anything.
For the record, the books I read and reread were anything that had a girl and a dog on the cover. Or a girl and a horse. In fact, I recently reread one of my favorites, Island of the Blue Dolphins just a few months ago. And it’s still as awesome as I remembered it. I read my own copy from childhood, with the original cover showing a girl and a dog and a whalebone fence, but I noticed even the new reissue still has a girl and a dog on the cover. It better.
Anyway, go read Meg. Then feel free to come back here and confess which books you checked out of the library a hundred and thirty times.
My first chapter book was Judy Blume’s Superfudge, and I read it so many times that it literally fell apart and my parents threw my beat-up copy away while I was sleeping. A year or so ago, circa 22 years after reading that book for the first time, I got a new copy and was heartsick to find that the text had been updated to include technology that wasn’t available when I first read it, like mp3 players and laptops.
I also remember that when I was 14, my aunt made my mom take the “Little House on the Prairie” series away from me because I’d read them so many times and my aunt thought I should be reading stuff that was more on my level (I’m a big geek and read at college level in 5th grade). Instead, my aunt gave me Forrest Gump, A Little Princess, and A Girl of the Limberlost. With the exception of really liking A Little Princess I detested most every “good” book that my aunt gave me. And after that I didn’t read ANYTHING that wasn’t assigned for school for about four years (until I started working at the public library when I was a senior in high school.) But then, I read mostly adult fiction.
I think somehow becoming a YA librarian was an act of pure rebellion…you tell me these books are going to ruin me? I’ll find a way to make them a part of my life. Even better, I’ll find someone to pay me to read them. Take that, book snobs.
Major thumbs up for this blog. It’s about time people acknowledge this problem!
As a kid, I used to get in trouble for sneaking out of bed to read by my nightlight because I couldn’t bear to put the book down. My particular favorites were the Ramona Quimby series, The Indian in the Cupboard Series, and Mr. Popper’s Penguins. But I read anything fun and silly. I like happy endings.
But things started going south in seventh grade. My English teacher was a pain, and had all these rules (like no book reports on books you’d read before, even if you reread them, and page length restrictions, etc.) She even forbid me to read Nancy Drew. Eighth grade was even worse, because we had to choose our books from a list, and they were all long and boring. And don’t even get me started on High School (I still cringe when I hear the titles of the books I had to read). So by the time I got to college I never read anything unless it was required reading.
I think of those years as my personal dark ages.and after I graduated I can honestly say I didn’t read at all for at least a year. It was only when I allowed myself to read something fun again that I rediscovered my love of reading. And now I’m back to reading 3-5 books a week. Most of them aren’t the kind of books that Scholars would value but I don’t care. I think the Scholars have bad taste. So there!
Elizabeth, love this! I think somehow becoming a YA librarian was an act of pure rebellion…you tell me these books are going to ruin me? I’ll find a way to make them a part of my life. Even better, I’ll find someone to pay me to read them.
Very powerful. Love it.
Shannon, what’s with the forbidding to read Nancy Drew? When that’s what our newest Supreme Court justice cites as the reason why she became a lawyer? (That, and Perry Mason, of course.) Stoopid.
This says it all: It was only when I allowed myself to read something fun again that I rediscovered my love of reading. WORD.
Shannon: WORD on your choices too…Indian in the Cupboard, Ramona, Mr. Popper’s Penguins…all childhood favorites. This discussion is taking me back.
to avoid the stigma of getting caught checking out the same books over and over i read them in the library. i was fond of arnold roth’s “pick a peck of puzzles” and martin gardner’s “perplexing puzzlers and tantalizing teasers” and prety much everything by wm. pene du bois like “the three policemen” and “the twenty-one balloons.” oh, and jerome beatty’s “matthew looney” series.
this was the tonic for being forced to read stories by brett hart and mark twain which just weren’t doing it for me. (i’ve since come around on SOME twain…)
then in seventh grade i was allowed to walk across town to the main branch of the library and became fixated with buckminster fuller’s “i seem to be a verb” and vonnegut and collected volumes of windsor mckay’s “little nemo” comic strips. meanwhile in school i was being force-fed saroyan’s “my name is aram” and “old man and the sea” and wondering why, with a world so full of other really great things in it, these were the ones deemed more important.
these past few years we’ve seen increasing struggles with our girls and their required summer reading. voracious readers, they’ve already read most of what is on the list and i resent forcing them to read something they don’t want to read.
worse is the case of summer homework, which as a former teacher i am opposed to for a variety of reasons. i think next june i’m going to put my foot down and intervene – no more summer homework or required reading lists for my girls, and i’ll duke it out with the district if necessary.
don’t we give kids enough reasons to hate school? why kill reading for them in the process?
I still don’t understand the Nancy Drew thing. Apparently it was “beneath me.” Even when I offered to read more than one for a book report (in case size was an issue) I was still denied.
And you know, this is still happening today. Just the other day I was talking to a ten-year-old-boy who hates to read (*cringes*). I pressed–surely there must be SOME book he likes. He smiled and admitted he loved the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. But then he said his teacher (third grade, mind you) forbid those books for book reports because they’re “too popular” so he’s not reading them anymore.
*Sighs*
What is this world coming to?
Oh, this just makes me sick! I applaud my fellow Georgian, teacher Lorrie McNeill, for bucking the system and allowing her students to find a passion for reading, which I believe most people would have if schools didn’t stifle us so efficiently. I actually got weepy reading some of the NY Times article–McNeill’s obvious concern for her students, her adoration of books that are simply good (no explanation required), and her interest in the kids’ opinions about what they read are truly heroic in today’s school system.
Meg Cabot is spot-on in her reaction to the issue. I’m a lifelong avid reader, and it feels so good to be able to say that I read the classics in high school and college and, for the most part, I DIDN’T LIKE THEM EITHER! Whew. Did I appreciate them for the ground they broke? Yes. Respect them for the momentous pieces that they were (are)? Yes. Desire to snuggle down in my covers and hungrily read them until my eyes wouldn’t stay open? Absolutely not. That honor belongs to the likes of Harry Potter.
Now those “classics” sit on my bookshelf looking all proud and dusty, while the ones I take down and read time and again are written by Jo Rowling, Katherine Paterson, Lois Lowry, Cynthia Voigt, Richard Peck, or Beverly Cleary.
The closest I came to being forbidden to read a book was in Catholic school,where the teacher confiscated my copy of Rich Kids(a movie novelization,btw-I loved reading those as a kid)and when my mother came to get it back,the teacher asked her “if you know what your daughter is reading.”
She said,”Yeah,I’M the one who bought it for her!” So there you go:)
I do think that kids should be introduced to the classics in school and get credit/encouragement for outside reading,the best of both worlds.
Unfortunately,that may be easier to say than do. Check out this google map of banned book sites around the country and marvel at those who can’t let freedom of thought thrive:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=112317617303679724608.00047051ed493efec0bb8
Did I appreciate them for the ground they broke? Yes. Respect them for the momentous pieces that they were (are)? Yes. Desire to snuggle down in my covers and hungrily read them until my eyes wouldn’t stay open? Absolutely not. That honor belongs to the likes of Harry Potter.
Right on. That’s the way so many of us feel. Face it, we like what we like. If we could only read what someone else thinks is “important,” reading would be like so many other chores in our lives. No, thank you. Yes to loving a book so much we stay up too late reading it!
Lady T, your mother is awesome. It must have been hard not to stick your tongue out at your teacher when your mom said that.
Bottom line: No one is the boss of our reading but us. Butt out.
And David, I really applaud your stance on summer homework–kids need the down time!
Thanks for your whole story. I’m sure a lot of people–including me–share your feelings about the assigned work vs. work of your own choosing. Your students are fortunate that you’ve had that experience–you understand how many of them must feel.
Shannon, that story about the third grade boy is so sad! Didn’t that just break your heart?
It did. It made me want to go buy him the whole series and beg him to not give up on reading. And maybe give him Percy Jackson and The 39 Clues too and hope he gives them a chance.
Anyway, I’ll stop overloading your blog with responses now, but thanks again for the great post.
You were supposed to read the books the teacher gave you in English class? I thought you just had to be prepared to answer the test questions.
Shannon, you cannot overload Robin’s blog with comments. I have tried.
Lady T, thanks so much for the google map. I am going to download it, enlarge it and display it at my banned books program this month.
Every reading teacher (and, in my humble opinion, every librarian and every parent) should read Mary Leonhardt’s super-skinny, wonderfully breezy “How to Teach a Love of Reading Without Getting Fired.” It gave me the courage and the vocabulary to spearhead a new kind of reading program at my school, one based on encouraging students to do a LOT of independent, self-selected reading of whatever they want to read. I’ve lent my copy of the book out to so many people and re-read it so many times that the pages are coming unglued.
Oh, and my guilty pleasure reading when I was young ranged from Archie comics (middle school) to Illustrated Classics of whatever (junior high — as long as the teachers didn’t actually see the one-picture-per-page-of-text, they were impressed by the fact that I was reading classics) to Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, and true crime books in high school.
Patty, thanks for recommending that reading book! I’m sure a lot of people will be interested in that.
And high five on Archie! I forgot about those. What fun they were to dive into. Yes to Sidney Sheldon, too, but please don’t tell my mother.
Warning: This is long.
It’s always complicated. I am a big fan of reading for pleasure and have always been. I think the current modes of teaching assigned reading in high school are often frustrating, alienate potential readers of those books later on, and are geared for test scores more than actual comprehension. The literary canon has to be broken wide-open, too, to account for more than a token amount of great books by non-Western writers.
However, I think that assigned reading, when done right, helps introduce readers to books that aren’t easy but are worth reading. When is the right time for critical thinking of the books one reads? Is it just for English majors, and if so, what’s the point? I read an essay once in my AP English class that I wish I could get my hands on again. It talked about being able to recognize Raskolnikov (from Crime and Punishment) and Regan and Goneril (from King Lear) in one’s own life.
When I was in 9th grade, I wasn’t ready for The Odyssey. However, I realized later that I wasn’t ready for the Odyssey before I had already read it through once. The Odyssey also got me ready for Ulysses, which I read later as a literary game/challenge because it was supposed to be difficult but good and I wanted to find out its secrets.
In seventh grade, A Wizard of Earthsea was taught. Another boy in the class and I were the only ones who had read it, and consequently, we were the only ones who loved it. The curriculum managed to ruin LeGuin for the majority of the class. How was that possible? And if the curriculum could ruin LeGuin, is it possible that it’s the teaching methods and the bloody test score requirements that are ruining the enjoyment of the stories, and not the stories themselves?
End rant–for now!
Thank you.
–Farida
Farida, I welcome your take on this. I agree with you that “assigned reading, when done right, helps introduce readers to books aren’t easy but are worth reading.” I’ve had teachers–I’m sure we all have–who made the hard subjects, including hard books, so exciting and accessible, and I’ll forever be grateful to them for that. But a hard book just thrown onto the syllabus–it’s throwing an anvil to a sinking swimmer.
So my hat is off to teachers and librarians who bring great literature to students in a way that makes the students want to read and enjoy. But don’t just assign a classic because it seems right to do it. Please help us love more books!
Hey, my security word was “ikea”–how funny is that?
I’m tuning in late here, but I just wanted to tell you how much I adored Island of the Blue Dolphins as a kid. I had sort of a dolphin thing, so I also loved Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light, and most of her other books, too.
And, yes, I also read Nancy Drew, and I agree with the commenter who talked about being able to appreciate the classics, yes, but devour them? Not necessarily.
Sorry, I realize that was ambiguous–I *used* to read Nancy Drew (in the past tense)–not so much now.
Aquafortis, yay for Island of the Blue Dolphins–if you feel like a treat, read it again as an adult. It really holds up. I used to read a lot of Nancy Drew, too. Wonder how that would hold up?