NJ Transit likes to change the train schedule on random holidays– MLK Day used a standard schedule, Presidents’ Day used the holiday schedule.
Thus I found myself loitering at Newark Penn Station this past Monday, finding ways to kill fifty minutes before the arrival of my train home. While I sat on a bench and let my mind wander, I noticed what had once seemed to me a near-impossible site: a young family, parents maybe in their late thirties, with a small boy of about eight years old sitting quietly. Propped in his lap was a thick book with a colorful cover about twice the size of his head.
Literacy makes a comeback in the new generation!
A second thought, though: I also began my reading escapades with fantasy & scifi. Then in my college years, I suffered the traditional English major’s guilt that I hadn’t spent my prime reading years perusing, say, A Time to Kill instead of high fantasy. There’s a period of time in your life as a young adult when everything you read actively impacts your personality; books will never be as enthralling or surprising or instructive after that door in time closes. And I wonder now how different my mind could be if I had spent those years reading works that talked about the real world and our ways of dealing with it, instead of stories that are fun but the literary equivalent of cotton candy.
Granted, my father used to read Moby Dick to me as a bedtime story– but I wasn’t quite old enough to appreciate novels, much less the classics.
Question of the week: Should we use the children / YA fantasy literature trend as a doorway to encourage deeper reading?
As the mom of two adult children, I can only offer this opinion. I taught my kids to read before they began school and they both were very quick studies. I “suggested” books for both of them to read as they grew up, but never pushed. My daughter is an avid reader of everything from classics to fantasy to the back of cereal boxes. My son on the other hand reads motor sports magazines, and scientific books - does not like fiction. My take on this is that a kid’s interest in any kind of reading should be used as a doorway to deeper reading, and in the end, the kid will read exactly what they want to read.