Neil Gaiman: Let children read the books they love

Author says physical books are here to stay during keynote speech on what he sees as future of books, reading and libraries

• Mark Brown, arts correspondent
• The Guardian, Monday 14 October 2013

Neil Gaiman believes well-meaning adults can destroy a child's love of reading by giving them 'worthy-but-dull books'. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

Children should be allowed to read whatever they enjoy, the author Neil Gaiman has said as he warned that well-meaning adults could destroy a child's love of reading for ever..

Gaiman was delivering a lecture on Monday night about the future of books, reading and libraries to an audience of arts and literary figures. In a wide-ranging speech he said the rise of ebooks did not mean the end for physical books and made an impassioned plea to stop library closures.

Gaiman, who has written books for children and adults, warned of the dangers of trying to dictate what children read at the second annual Reading Agency lecture, inaugurated last year by Jeanette Winterson.
He said: "I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children." Every now and again there was a fashion for saying that Enid Blyton or RL Stine was a bad author or that comics fostered illiteracy. "It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness."

He added: "Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading. Stop them reading what they enjoy or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like – the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian 'improving' literature – you'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and, worse, unpleasant."

Gaiman revealed that he too had been guilty, once telling his 11-year-old daughter that if she loved Stine's horror books, she would absolutely adore Stephen King's Carrie: "Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years and still glares at me when Stephen King's name is mentioned."

Gaiman said physical books were here to stay. He recalled a conversation with Douglas Adams more than 20 years ago in which Adams said a real book was like a shark. "Sharks are old, there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs and the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar operated, feel good in your hand – they are good at being books and there will always be a place for them.
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