| Thursday, April 30, 2009 10:09AM | | | | Hey, Reading Should Actually Be Fun | Posted By: Peter H. Fogtdal
|
| Tags: Children's Books to Create a Lifeloving Love of Reading, Mary Ann Hoberman, Francine Prose, Vera B. Williams, Meir Shalev | Using Children's Books to Create a Lifeloving Love of Reading was a great event. Why it attracted the oldest crowd in the history of World Voices, I have no idea, but maybe it's because we're all stuck in our youth. We can't get out but we can't go back either, so we have to turn to literature to save ourselves from the horror of being adults.
"I still live in my pre-school years," Mary Ann Hoberman said.
"I have total recall of my childhood." Vera B. Williams agreed. "But what I'm most concerned with is how we connect our stories with love ... how we make the words get up and dance."
The words did get up and dance this afternoon. Meir Shalev, visiting from Israel, told the audience how important it is to scare kids. They actually want to be frightened but under supervision. He also told us that he was brought up on Lolita.
"What a great book. I could total connect to it when I was fourteen. The protagonist falls in love with a 14 year old, so I'll recommend it to any teenager."
Mary Ann Hoberman and Francine Prose were brought up on my countryman, Hans Christian Andersen, and everybody agreed that it's important that kids read quality. But Francine Prose had a great point: "Too many teachers teach books they don't like because they haven't chosen them themselves. Kids are not stupid, they can sense that, and that's not good for their reading experience."
"Reading should be fun," Mary Ann Hoberman said. "When I was a kid, rerading was a secret pleasure. It was something that took place in bed. With a flashlight. Without any one noticing."
The panel also discussed whether we should worry about the future of the book. Is Kindle a good thing? Are computer games "bad"? Has the Internet swallowed our kids?
"I don't worry," Francine Prose said. "The form is unimportant."
"Mankind started by writing their stories on rocks," Shalev argued. "When they stopped doing that, they wrote on leather, stones, paper, computer screens.
Literature will survive no matter what."
Indeed it will if reading is allowed to be fun. "It shouldn't be home work, it should be a joy," Mary Ann Hoberman said.
Amen to that.
I left the event in high spirits. It's strange but I always do when people agree with me (!) - because hey, I think that reading should be fun as well. I don't believe in analyzing books to death. Good literature shouldn't necessarily give you migraine.
I watched the oldest crowd in the history of World Voices leave. Some of them didn't walk well, others stopped for a breather. But I didn't notice their age any more. What I saw was a bunch of kids looking for a good story. | | | |
| | |
|
|
THE TSAR'S DWARF
Read a review of my tragicomical novel here:
DANISH ACCENT
My silly blog about literature, book tours, and raccoons in compromising positions.
|
