The (book)worm turns

There’s a vibrant educational movement growing up around the idea that kids need more cajoling and more choices in order to turn into avid readers.

The New York Times tracks which stories get emailed the most, and a recent one headlined, “A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like,” has been zooming between readers. These educators say forcing a kid to read “Huckleberry Finn” is not necessarily going to make her beg for more. In fact, it may even sour her on People magazine.

Allowing youngsters to chose reading material can work much better, which doesn’t surprise those of us who spent eighth-grade with a dog-eared copy of “Valley of the Dolls” hidden inside a math book.

The NYT story got me wondering what books are being crammed down kids’ throats these days in those unenlightened schools that still do things the old-fashioned way. The summer-reading lists I found online surprised me. The dustiest classics I found are Rebecca by Daphne DuMarier and Agatha Christies’ Murder on the Orient Express–not easy reads, but still pretty juicy stuff. (And, let’s be honest, available in film versions, which makes it possible for the non-reader to fake it quite convincingly.) Most of the other titles are contemporary, ranging from sci fi to biography and narrative viewpoints from kid-with-two-mommies to brave war orphan.

Still, some kids resist those reading lists, which worries parents and teachers. I’m all for raising more bookworms, but I can see some flaws in the new approach.

The first is the persistent myth that a precocious reader is going to be a good student, or is automatically smarter than a non-reader. As a person who read Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea while still in elementary school, but could never memorize all the multiplication tables or stay awake during science class, I’m here to tell you that a bookworm does not an egghead make.

Another faulty assumption is that a group of kids reading and talking about a book is a socializing process that will help turn them into well-adjusted adults. I’d venture that some kids will be more likely to fall in love with reading if it is promoted as a solitary activity–far away from cliques, warring parents and other annoying adults. I learned early on that I could disappear into a book like a reverse magic trick in which the rabbit ducks into the hat. It remains my drug of choice. If a martini could put me in the same place that a good novel does, I’d be flat as a haddock most days.

It is also unwise to assume that faster reading is always better. Pushing a kid (or an adult) to hurry through a book is like rushing someone through a fine meal. Some of us gobble, some like to chew that meatball more thoroughly.

All of these things aside, it is a very good thing that educators are thinking outside the box about ways to introduce kids to the joy of reading, one of the few pastimes that is completely portable, legal, inexpensive, safe and fun at any age. And, when done in a certain fashion, need not be accompanied by custom-generated ads off to the side of the text.

Personally, I think any movement that gets educators focused on reading versus multiplication tables seems like a fine thing.