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What can I do? What can I be?
This lecture was recently presented by Wendy at the Children's Book Council of
Australia 6th National Conference in Perth. She was invited to speak on the subject "Keeping them Reading in Upper
Primary". (Note: Some links are not yet functioning but will be very soon.)
Part One: Exploring the World Through Books
The problem with asking someone like me about how to keep kids reading is that it suggests I write with this sort of
worthy purpose in mind. In fact, for me, the protagonist and the target audience tend to be blurred: I write for the kid
in the story, who in one way or another is always me. I'm also never completely sure what age a book is supposed to be for.
I write the story as I see it, and usually leave it for other people to decide what reading level it's ended up.
My thoughts are therefore based on the letters and comments I get from readers and their parents, on experiencing
dyslexia in my own family as well as in my former occupational therapy practice — but most of all, on the
memories of the reader I was at 10 or 12. That child read for the same reasons I read and write now: to explore; to
discover what happens; to try and understand what life means.
At all ages we read for variety of reasons: entertainment and escapism, information and peer conformity; to broaden our
horizons or reinforce our own identity. To keep kids reading in upper primary, we also need to acknowledge the special
needs of this age. Perched between young childhood and early adolescence, their literary needs are also often transitional
between the teenage search for identity and the younger child's enjoyment of craziness, grossness and word play. All of
those can still be relevant, and there's a lot to be said for the theory that as long as they're reading something, let's
not worry about its quality — but it's my belief that when we're hoping to inculcate a life-long habit of
reading, strong narrative and strong characters are more often the key.
They are, after all, the essence of story. If you want to find out what happens, and care who it happens to, you simply
have to keep turning those pages. So it's not just action — characters need to be real enough that the
child can identify with them. There's no formula, but at some point the reader needs to recognise something, not so
much in the characters' lives as in their minds or hearts. Only if, for however briefly, you can think, 'Yes, that's me!'
will you experience what the character experiences, learn what he learns. Which is surely at the very core of why we all
read.
This is an age of great dreaming, when children's feet are on the ground but their heads in the skies — a state
that we could all be encouraged to return to from time to time! Their own potentialities and the world's possibilities have
been opened wide by their increasing knowledge and skills, and not yet crushed by realities. Life's big
questions — Who will I be? What will I do? — are wide open to be explored.
However, although reality usually hasn't impinged on their own dreaming, they are becoming increasingly aware of the
reality of the world around them. They want to explore it in the books they read, and they want that exploration to be
treated with respect. In a Sydney bookshop recently, I met a mother bewailing the fact that her year 7 daughter was not
yet reading adult books. The culture that demeans age-appropriate literature for kids, is treading a fine line with
demeaning kids themselves. Let them explore the subjects that set them on fire, that are relevant to their own lives now;
let them explore relationships and broaden their horizons at a level they're comfortable with. Read books that they enjoy
now and they'll have the rest of their lives to explore the classics of adult literature. Force feed Patrick White at 12
and they may never read for pleasure again. You notice I said force feed: if they get a kick out of reading something
difficult, even if they miss much of the meaning, it's not such a bad thing to add to their compendium of self knowledge:
'I am someone who reads books that adults find difficult.' Or, 'I am so cool I read Dolly fiction.' But we can always offer
the books that are likely to be more meaningful for them, as well as offering permission for something I still find very
difficult to do: not to finish a book they're not enjoying. There are so many books in the world, and it's frustrating
enough to realise we'll never read them all. No need to make it worse by finishing the ones that haven't been written for
us.
Part of the 'us' that develops with the wider interest in the world around them, is a sense of compassion. Kids at this
age often experience an early sense of idealism that may be lost with the self-interest of puberty but returned to in later
adolescence or early adulthood.
Think back to the self that was you at ten or twelve. You might still remember some jolt of realisation or understanding
about the lives of people outside your own world; some desire to do good or right wrongs, with a glorious innocence of your
own puniness against the world. I suspect that only those who keep this innocence — ignorance or arrogance, a
cynic would say — will ever go on to change the world. There may be ten-year-olds who dream of greatness that
they don't achieve, but I doubt there are many great adults who didn't start as ten-year-old dreamers. Every child deserves
the right of dreaming, and the books they read can be the source. If they find that source, they are likely to go on
reading.
How many of you remember Anne of Green Gables dying her hair green, or the thrill of her defiant apology — but
were also left with her earlier desolation of being orphaned and living in an institution? I know that the summer after I
read it, I wrote a play, bullied my friends and siblings into their parts, and produced it on a stage in our back yard. We
sold tickets, popcorn and Kool-Aid — and made $3.57, with which we bought a doll, a popgun, a colouring book
and crayons to send to the Alberta children's home. The others weren't quite as keen as I was on this decision —
but then they hadn't read Anne of Green Gables.
I was probably a kid who would have gone on reading even without meeting Anne, but for many children, there'll be one
particular book which provides the key. But how do we find it?
By presenting a range, with enthusiasm for the books and respect for the child's opinions. They need stories that portray a
range of emotions — humour, obviously, and the thrill of fear, but also sadness and compassion, because these do
enter kids' lives. Whatever the emotion is, no matter how lightly it is touched, and no matter how crazy the situation that
inspired it, the character's emotion should be honest and something that the reader can identify with.
That identification may be the wishful-thinking admiration of a resourceful character like my Nim, or recognition of the
sort of muddler many of us feel ourselves to be, being pushed by extraordinary situations into a courage they didn't know
they had. Andrew of Mindblowing!, is neither braver nor more confident than his
creator, but his relationship with a Machiavellian space jellyfish leads him to not only growth, but a type of greatness.
Real life keeps on showing us that heroes are often unlikely and invariably created by chance; kids are inspired to think
that they might be able to achieve the same thing in those circumstances.
That's why my own preferences are for adventure that can be identified with, or fantasy that touches the bounds of
reality, vicariously empowering the reader as they grow and learn with the characters. Boundaries should be stretched,
giving the feeling of a wider world and wider possibilities, whether it's in their immediate environment or through more
distant and unlikely scenarios. In Leaving it to You I used an entirely
realistic environment and situation (in fact once I'd invented it, I found a local school that was doing exactly what I
envisaged) — a Community Visiting Project in which a school sent kids out to visit elderly people. Linda's
boundaries are stretched both by the understanding she gains of Mrs Pugh's life, past and present, and by the actual
relationship with the old lady, which pushes her into courage and compassion. Nothing that she does could not have been
done by any other fourteen year old in the same circumstances.
That's not to say that I think kids can only identify with realistic situations — as I said before, and as
anyone who is familiar with Mindblowing! or Nim's Island
would realise, for me the interest is in the realism of the characters' reaction to situation, not in the likelihood of
the situation itself. Once again there's nothing that Andrew or Nim do that any other ten to twelve year old
couldn't — if they happened to have been given thought transference powers with an alien, or have learned to
ride a sea lion and climb coconut palms.
And just as I write by vicarious adventure and living in my characters — an author's term for imaginary
friends — I think kids at this age still identify very intensely with a book's protagonist, believing that
they could also be resourceful enough to throw a rotting shark on a hot springs geyser to make a tourist-repelling stink,
or brave enough, like my Linda with Mrs Pugh, to break into an empty house to rescue an old lady's cat. This search for
who they will be, what they can do, is part of the drive to go on reading.
I'm particularly fascinated by the kids in transition between primary and secondary school. There they are in grade 6,
lords of the schools in the way that even year 12 can never quite equal — and yet all too aware of year 7
looming over them with its threats and promises of adolescence, secondary school, and being at the bottom of the pecking
order again. When I wrote Dirtbikes, with five kids in turn telling the tale
of building a dirtbike track, and sorting out some of their friendships and family problems along the way, I set it in
that summer because it seemed to me an unparalleled time for challenges and possibilities.
I'd like to say a word too for the children who don't learn to read at the appropriate time, kids with a print deficit.
I don't see how anyone can start reading for pleasure while the physical act of reading remains stressful. Something I
feel passionate about is the need to keep them reading for when it does start to make sense; to help them see the joy of
the printed word, and perhaps one of the best ways we can do that is to keep on reading to them. Parent or teacher, one of
the greatest gifts we can give our children is to read aloud, sharing the book that may be just beyond their reading level,
or simply for the joy of sharing a story. And shared is the word, because reading aloud shares a story in quite a different
way from sitting in the same room and watching the same TV program. We can't ensure that every child in Australia will have
a parent sit by their bedside and read to them, and by upper primary, probably only a few will have that privilege. But
every child can have a teacher who reads them a chapter a day, and those books will remain with them all their lives. The
avid reader will enjoy it — sounds and images of The Yearling remain inextricably linked in my mind with
the contentment of a sunwarmed wooden desk — but for the child with a print deficit it can be a catalyst. My
husband, a late reader from a bookless household, has never forgotten the wonder of hearing Winnie the Pooh from
his grade five teacher. As an adult he can recognise the teacher's trepidation: was the book too young, too British, too
soppy for these Australian country kids? But what he remembers most is his class' and his own delight. A few years later,
when the written word suddenly began to make sense, he was not only able but willing to read. What greater legacy could a
teacher leave than to introduce a child to the book that says: If this is what stories can be, they're worth the struggle
with the written word.
Because no matter what their reading level or individual interests, children need to find a reflection of their enthusiasm
and potential, need to dream of what they could do and who they might be, in the books they read. As an author, I can think
of no greater tribute than when a parent says to me, 'Your book got my child back into reading.' My wish for every child
is that they will find the story that speaks to them, and transforms them into a reader. |