Why terrible books are good for kids
There have been some really terrible books written in the past few years. Dreadful books that have sold gazillions of copies, most recently Fifty Shades of Grey, before that Twilight. There are even authors who deliberately set out to write this kind of high volume popular palaver, such as the writers who teamed up under the pseudonym Pittacus Lore to pen the best-selling book I am Number Four.
As awful as these books may be, they actually do something pretty special that absolves them of all evil. They get people reading, and in the case of children, that’s a fantastic thing. Forget the expensive after school tutoring and private coaching. The one simple thing every parent can do which does more to ensure their child’s success at school than any other activity is to get them reading.
The power of reading in terms of academic performance is well-documented. Reading improves vocabulary, spelling, syntax, and overall literacy abilities. It promotes development of comprehension and critical literacy skills. In short, it improves all the tools a child needs to become a successful learner.
There are many ways to get your child reading (see my 10 tips called ‘The Reading Rules’ on my blog here), but the hardest part is often creating the desire to read in the first place. I call this igniting the spark and it’s all about finding the right book for your child. And whilst we may all want our children to read Dickens and Austen before moving on to beautifully written contemporary fiction, it rarely happens. More often than not it will be one of those terrible but exceedingly popular books that will ignite the spark and work its magic.
Twilight did this. At the height of the craze I was teaching a Year 9 girl with learning difficulties who had not finished reading a book since primary school. Yet Jessica was so caught up in the Twilight craze that she was determined to read that book. Read it she did. She then went on to finish the series and, as if she suddenly realised how easy it was, she went on to read a further eighty (yes, eighty) books by the end of Year 10.
These dreadful yet popular books can also work their magic outside the classroom. Take Matt, a Year 10 boy who was a regular in the library last year. Matt was pretty shy and would hang around the fringes of conversations I had with other students, clearly wanting to join in, but not knowing how. One day he told me quietly that he had not read a book since Year 7 and that he hated reading. When a kid says that to me I’m like that Barney Stinson guy on television: “Challenge Accepted!” I gave Matt a copy of I am Number Four which was one of the most popular book in the library last year and Matt was hooked – he started reading on a Friday and finished the book that weekend. And that one act of reading a book worked a small miracle on Matt giving him a new found confidence and sense of belonging.
It’s a pretty safe bet that as long as terrible books keep selling, publishers will keep on releasing them. And that’s fine by me because it doesn’t really matter what a child reads, as long as they read something. If your son only reads badly written thrillers or your teenage girl can’t get enough of the vampire genre there is no cause for alarm, because they are still reading. And as they mature and develop, your child will develop the confidence to move on to the stuff that you probably want them to read. And if they are not readers yet, don’t worry. All you have to do is buy a terrible book and ignite the spark.
Karen Powers is a teacher librarian by day and blogs about that aspect of her life here. At the end of the day she is a writer, wife, mother and breastcancer survivor who has just launched a new blog here. You can follow her on twitter @karen_powers
How do you encourage your children to read?
