As an elementary school aged child, I was taught two things: if you read books you were smart, if you didn’t read books/didn’t like to read books, you were stupid. This wasn’t a direct lesson, it was more or less taught by people saying “books make you smart.” And since I thought I didn’t like to read, I must have been stupid. And, I later understood that the lessons they taught us were very harmful ones:
Instead of teaching us that reading something you love is important, teachers shamed me and permitted me from reading books below my “grade’s reading level.” But I fell in love with books below my reading level. When I was forced to stop reading them, I stopped reading.
Every spring would be reading season where you had to, I’m not kidding, read 25 books in a few months. I read mostly picture books for this but they didn’t count. I was punished for reading slow. Instead of being able to go on a field trip to a baseball game, me and one other kid were labeled “lazy” and had to sit in the same science lecture the whole day.
I could keep going on and on. There were reading comprehension tests we had to take where we read a short story and had to sit in the hallway with a teacher who asked us questions about it. But instead of asking us about the meaning of the story or deeper questions, we would be asked “how many apples did John pick?” and when I couldn’t remember these hyper specific things, I would break down crying and I was told my reading level was far below the rest of my class’s reading level.
No wonder people quit reading later in life. No wonder I talk to people about a great book I’ve read and they say “I don’t read, I’m not smart.”
It’s sad, it’s traumatic, it’s toxic. How do we fix this so kids never have to feel ashamed to read? How do we teach adults to love to read after this childhood trauma?
My parents approach seemed to work. We went to the library weekly and got however many books I wanted (usually more than I’d realistically finish in a week) and the deal was I had to read one book each week that was the librarian’s recommendation. We had great librarians. I got so much good stuff from them.
That morphed into my parents bookshelves always being accessible, though when I was younger the stuff I shouldn’t read was sorted to top shelves (naturally, this meant I dragged chairs over to reach the top shelves but such has always been the case with prohibited literature).
My parents simply normalizing that taking a book out of the bookshelf or off the coffee table it had been left on made it normal for me too. ‘Oh, dad got his book, sat down on the couch and is quietly reading? Dad’s pretty cool, maybe I should do that too. Where’s my book so I can read like Dad does?’
As an adult, I also find that just talking to kids (nieces/nephews for me) about what they like re: books in an inquisitive, non-judgemental way is helpful. I don’t really give two flying effs if they’re reading Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, the Chronicles of Narnia, or being the stupid 12yo overfaced by trying to read Moby Dick cause they love going to the aquarium. The magic of ingesting a story and then being able to recount it to others is pretty powerful. Then reading gives a kid something to say if someone is willing to ask. My nieces and nephews know I’ll always ask what the best thing they’ve read lately is, and for them to tell me about it. We’ll eat ice cream while we do it on a special outing, but they know their uncle asks about books so there’s always one in the hopper to talk about.
When they get old enough to have their own preferences I’ve loved the Barnes and Noble outing idea. Starbucks is there usually, so turn a kid loose (assuming they’re well behaved) in their age appropriate section and just let them be while you sip a latte and let them wander the aisles. Set a limit (‘you can pick only two’, but they can pick any two books they want) and suddenly they’re considering carefully exactly which two they want to bring home and the selection is valuable and ownable instead of foisted on them. Make books valuable and kids treasure them.