Farewell to Didacticism: Adventure Stories for Junior Readers

How to Communicate the Pleasure of Reading to Students?

[Urban Cohort Perspective]

I am a bit of an obsessive reader. At the same time, I am a very picky reader and I often have a hard time getting into a book. Often, instead of picking up a new book, I end up choosing to re-read a book that I know is fabulous. My Harry Potter books and His Dark Materials books are all tattered and I must confess that I have dropped a few books into a tab and tried (and failed) to resuscitate them using a hair dyer. I look at a kid who is carrying one of the Harry Potter books as if he is carrying a precious cargo or a cute puppy and I nod with approval – it is the way it should be.

 

 

So here is my dilemma. I am a self-proclaimed book nerd and I still cannot pick up a new book without some kind of an internal struggle. There are so many amazing books that I would not have read on my own if not for the fact that there were assigned as reading materials for my university courses. Here are some examples: Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, Lawrence Hill’s Book of Negroes, Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen, and the list goes on. To be completely honest, I had never read any of Jane Austen’s books until I watched the BBC TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Until then, I had no idea that Jane Austen had such a biting wit.

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My point here is that even for someone who used to hide a book or a comic book behind a textbook so that I could read during “boring” classes, reading is not an easy business. Then, in a class where there is a mix of avid readers, persnickety readers, and developing readers, how should I balance (1) bringing joy of reading to students, (2) not shoving down books down their throat, and (3) exposing them to new materials so that they can learn to be adventurous when choosing something new?

 

Also, most classrooms are horribly set up to create a comfortable reading environment for each student. Where are my nooks or my cushy couches, fluffy pillows, and my munchies?

 

In addition to teaching, my passion lies with the study of literature – children’s literature in particular – and how reading (not only books but all kinds of texts such as films, digital texts, lyrics etc.), writing, and communicating with other human beings as a whole lead to the development of a person. I am also a student of Reader Response Theory and I believe that manipulation of the canon text – for example through fan-fiction writing – is an effective way to grapple with the text and situate “I” within the text. If I had unlimited sources of funds, I would love to fund a study to analyse how imagination cultivated by reading fiction or writing fiction affect human (especially children’s) brains. In the absence of a brain scanner, neuroscientists, and unlimited sources of funds to acquire the items listed above, I rely on my own experiences to introduce and recommend the following four books to be used in a classroom for junior readers.