To Do Well In Life, You Have To 'Read Well'

January 10, 2012 - NPR - Ambassador for Young People's Literature Sworn in.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. 

Author Walter Dean Myers is the nation's latest ambassador for young people's literature. The two-year post is something like a youth version of poet laureate. As a young man in Harlem, Myers hid his books so no one would know he liked to read. David Greene talks to Myers about his appointment and what he wants to accomplish.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Today, author Walter Dean Myers is being sworn-in at the Library of Congress as the nation's third ambassador for Young People's Literature. The two-year post is something like a youth version of the poet laureate. Myers wrote the bestseller "Monster." He's won numerous book awards in a career that's spanned more than 30 years and a hundred titles. He mostly writes about African-American teenagers grappling with tough issues, like drug addiction, gangs and war; topics influenced by his own childhood as a high school dropout growing up in Harlem.
I asked Walter Dean Myers about the theme of his upcoming ambassadorship, which he said is going to be: Reading Is Not Optional.
That's a pretty tough slogan to adopt as an ambassador trying to convince young people to read. Well, why did you choose it?
WALTER DEAN MYERS: Well, the problem is very often books are looked upon as a wonderful adjunct to our lives. It's so nice. Books can take you to faraway places and this sort of thing. But then it all sounds as if it's something nice but not really necessary. And during my lifetime things have changed so drastically. You can't do well in life if you don't read well.
GREENE: You're saying that it's become even more important to read than when you were growing up. Well, why is that? What's changed in society?
MYERS: Well, what's changed in society, you had more industrial jobs than when I was coming up. My dad was a janitor for U.S. Radium Corporation, and he stayed there for 37 years. So he didn't read. The average working person could work in a factory but now you don't have those anymore. And not only that, but the jobs that you do have may not be around in five years.
GREENE: You know, I'm struck by this image of you as a young man walking through the streets of Harlem, hiding your books because you didn't want anyone to know that you enjoyed reading so much. And I wonder if your story was exceptional. What? Is there a secret to having a young man or a young woman growing up on the tough streets, you know, getting interested in reading?
MYERS: I think it's difficult for young people to acknowledge being smart, to knowledge being a reader. I see kids who are embarrassed to read books. They're embarrassed to have people see them doing it.
One of the problems is that kids who don't read - who are not doing well in school - they know they're not doing well. And they want everyone to be in that same category.
GREENE: And so, what is your message to a kid who sort of things that reading might be something good, who knows that it could make their life better but they're just not feeling it?
MYERS: Well, one of the things that I want to do is to get very, very young kids being read to; kids 3 months, 4 months. If I can get every kid over the next two years, who's born, have their parents read to them or a grandparent or an uncle, or whoever read with them, it'll make a difference in the country. And what needs to happen is that the parent interacts with the child. And it doesn't have to be a long drawn-out process.
Now, my mom did not read well and she read True Romance magazines, but she read with me. And she would spend 30 minutes a day, her finger going along the page, and I learned to read. Eventually, by the time I was four and a half, she could iron and I could sit there and read the True Romance. And that was wonderful.
Full interview text here.
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