The reading habit forms in childhood

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail, Toronto - September 2, 2008

We love books best when we're young.

In the land of Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Dahl's Chickens -- sorry, Charles Dickens -- the three best-loved authors are children's writers: Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling, according to a recent poll in Britain. Austen was fourth, Shakespeare fifth and Dickens sixth. J.R.R. Tolkien (7th), Beatrix Potter (10th), C.S. Lewis (11th), Judy Blume (33rd) and Dr. Seuss (39th) also made the list.

This abiding love for children's authors is a stirring reminder of what adults always seem on the verge of forgetting: Children need to read. They need to read not merely because it will Help Them In Life (as A.A. Milne might have put it) but because it helps them to become who they are, or might be. It is as fundamental to them as play, a way of making sense of the world around them and their place in it. Children's love of reading is commensurate with their need for stories.
And yet everything conspires against children learning to love books.

Ubiquitous electronic devices, whether desk-bound or small enough to fit in their pockets, occupy an alarming proportion of children's days, and seem to shorten attention spans. Organized sports and music take up much of the remaining time. Homework - often mindless rote activities done by one tiny segment of a brain otherwise occupied by television - uses up time better used for reading. School literature courses often seem designed to expunge any traces of love for books. Parents may hector their children to read but tend not to read much in front of their children; children are quick to ignore such lip service.

In spite of everything, though, children still read.

This generation of computer-literate children and teens is reading Dickens-thick novels. Ms. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is 870 pages, a length that among today's children's books is hardly rare. Some elementary schoolchildren devoured it in two days. (The rapid stimulation of the video-gaming world hasn't destroyed attention spans, yet.)

Is it tragic that Shakespeare, the greatest writer in English-language history, should be less loved than Blyton, Dahl or Rowling? Not really. It is simply more evidence that even the greatest writer for adults cannot reach readers the way children's writers do.

Read the rest of this wonderful essay at globeandmail.com