What are Kids Reading? Is it for Pleasure? by Savita Kalhan

World Book Day celebrates its twentieth year this year, so what are kids reading for pleasure, how is it monitored, and how much choice do they have?

 A new study has shown that when children are in primary education, they read more challenging books than when they are in secondary school. In secondary school their reading regresses as they choose far less complex and challenging books.

The study was conducted by Professor Keith Topping on behalf of Renaissance, the company which

provided all the data for the study from the schools who are signed up to their AR (Accelerated Reader) program across the UK. The report analysed the reading habits of 848,219 young people across almost 4,000 schools in the programme.

Renaissance UK managing director Dirk Foch said: "Most primary schools place a large emphasis on developing literacy skills. However, this is rarely transferred onto secondary school and, as a result, literacy standards at secondary level are a persistent challenge."

Clearly, all schools will place a huge emphasis on developing literacy skills - even secondary schools. This data is derived only from the schools participating in Renaissances' AR programme. There are over eight and a half million kids in primary and secondary school schools in the UK, and over twenty thousand state schools.

I know Cecilia Busby blogged about the pros and cons of the AR programme a couple of years ago, (which you can read HERE). It's a huge subject on its own, and not the focus of my blog today.

According to feedback from schools in the AR programme, the data shows that novels written by the blogger Zoella have become more popular than JRR Tolkien. When Charlie Higson was asked what he thought of this on The World at One, he said that we should be glad that children are engaging with books rather than looking at a screen. You can read the full Renaissance report HERE.

But I have noticed something very worrying, and I hope it is not a trend that is being repeated in other schools.

The use of eReaders, in some schools, has taken the place of paperback books almost completely. I know of one very large secondary school where every Year 7 and 8 pupil is given a kindle preloaded with books. Older years are given a nook. They are used for lessons as well as for reading for pleasure, apparently.

This is an example of a selection of books loaded on in September for Year 8s:

The Noughts and Crosses series, The Weight of Water, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, One, More Than this, The Fault in Our Stars, Into the Forest, Hold Your Breath, The Wall, Shadow, War Girls, Singing for Mrs Pettigrew, Maze Runner, The Company of Ghosts, The Child's Elephant. 

Classics are pre-loaded too -: Pride and Prejudice, Animal Farm, Around the World in 80 Days, Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights, Aesop's Fables...

The kids are NOT allowed to read anything else other than one of the books on the school kindles. If they are caught reading a paperback book, they are given a detention! It doesn't appear to matter whether they are reading a paperback book because they have already read most of the pre-loaded books a couple of times, or because they've read all the books they were interested in reading on their school kindle. Whatever the justification, threatening a child with detention for reading something they want to read is a harsh and unwarranted punishment.

There appears to be little choice, and no free will on the part of the children in having the ability to browse and choose a book to read (part of the pleasure of reading, surely). They are NOT allowed to read a paperback book - even during their reading session in the library! If they're lucky, they will derive some pleasure from some of the books on the kindle, and there are some good ones. One of the kids I spoke to had read all the books he had wanted to read on the school kindle - some of them twice, so he was now going to risk getting detention by bringing in a library book.

I've asked many school kids whether they prefer reading a paperback book to a kindle, and the majority prefer paperback books. Scholastic did a survey in the States and found that over 65% of school children preferred reading a paperback book than on an eReader.

Clearly the school wants to monitor the kids' reading habits, and justify the expense of buying the kindles for those two year groups, and nooks for the older year groups. Unlike in the States where Amazon has a block deal for schools, I believe that in the UK there is no such deal. So it cannot be cheap to load up so many eReaders with textbooks and reading books. I wonder how many other secondary schools have opted for what seems to be quite an expensive choice over a well-stocked school library.

There are, of course, pros and cons regarding the use of eReaders in schools. They can and do have a place in schools, but I don't think they should replace books. Chris Leslie blogs about eReaders in 5 Burning Questions about eReaders in schools for the Scottish Book Trust.

Reading should be for pleasure. But is a lot of the pleasure being knocked out of it in favour of over-monitoring in the interest of collating stats and ticking boxes? I think this is an important issue and one that needs looking at far more closely.

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Big Words or Little Words? Vocabulary in Children's Books by Emma Barnes

I was at the Headingley LitFest during a question-time on children's books. A children's writer in the audience asked the Sunday Times book critic Nicolette Jones whether it was OK to have long words in a children's book – or should he keep it simple?

I can't remember exactly what Nicolette said to this but it was something along the lines of “it depends”. Which is the only sensible answer to give, really. It depends on the book. It depends on what the writer is trying to do.

It's not actually something I've heard children's writers discuss much: vocabulary. Unless you are writing for a reading scheme, say, we write what we write, as the muse directs (or so we like to think)! But shortly afterwards I came across two different perspectives on the subject, from two of my favourite children's writers.

The first was Judith Kerr. In her memoir, Judith's Kerr's Creatures, she explained that, inspired by Dr Seuss of Green Eggs and Ham fame, she deliberately limited the words used in Mog the Forgetful Cat.

“I determined that, like Dr Seuss, I would use a vocabulary of no more than 250 words in the book about Mog, and I have done this with all my picture books since, with the exception of Mog in the Dark, which...has a vocabulary of only just over fifty. I also determined never, ever to put something in the text that the child could already tell from the pictures. Why should they struggle to read something they already knew?”

(Judith Kerr's Creatures, p86)

If Judith Kerr says it's so, it must be so – because Mog is one of the most brilliant picture books of our times. And the interesting thing about Mog is that it is not a book children typically use to learn to read. It is a picture book their parents read with them (my guess is that for many Mog fans, by the time they are learning to read themselves they will know Mog's story by heart.) So it's not just that Judith Kerr created a good “easy to read” book for beginner readers – it's rather that she created one of the most loved of all picture books, regardless of word count. She was able to create a great story which happened to use very simple language.

Another of my favourite writers took a different approach.  Eric Thompson created the Magic Roundabout (both books and TV scripts). His family recalled:

“Once a lady wrote to him complaining that he used too many long words in The Magic Roundabout and how were children meant to understand them? He got out the Oxford English Dictionary and wrote back using all the longest and most difficult words he could find, like 'palimpsest' and 'oxymoron' (which sounds rude but isn't). He also wrote a strongly worded letter to a mother who had smacked her little boy for calling his sister a 'mollusc'."

(Phyllida, Emma and Sophie Thompson, introduction to The Adventures of Dougal)

And he was right.  There is a huge joy for kids in the use of language, even if you don't actually understand the words. The elaborate names and spells that you get, say, in Harry Potter (the tradition of bizarre character names once seen in authors like Dickens now lives on mainly in children's books). Or in Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpe Saga, where the characters not only have daft names, but spout Shakespeare and came out with gloriously incomprehensible remarks like: “It is a sign of genius to reconcile the seemingly disparate”. (I used this remark as a child on my own parents, undeterred by the fact that 1) I didn't know what it meant and 2) I couldn't pronounce “disparate”.)

Intriguingly, both Judith Kerr and Eric Thompson seem to have been reacting against rather joyless adult views about what's suitable for children. In Kerr's case this was the "long and not particularly interesting stories with a lot of complicated words 'to enrich your child's vocabulary''' that she found at the local library (Judith Kerr's Creatures p68). In Thompson's case, it was the claim children could not enjoy anything they could not understand. Their responses, though in different directions, led to stories that have been loved by adults and children alike.

As a writer, I used to love big words. Maybe this is why Sam and the Griswalds – a madcap story of the adventures of five crazy kids, aimed at 8-12s – has a similar difficulty score on the Accelerated Reader scheme to The Lord of the Rings. (Making it the perfect book for the highly literate eleven year old who still wants to read about football or kids falling in rivers.)

More recently, though, I've changed tack, and my writing style has become simpler and more straightforward. It's true I have dropped the age range, but I think it's more to do with the fact that I've become interested in the story, first and foremost, and I haven't wanted big words and funny names to get in the way. I suspect I'm part of a wider trend – I think language in children's books, especially in the Young Adult section, is generally simpler in part because so many books are now written in the first person by a child/teenage protagonist.

I've sometimes found it awkward in schools, where children are encouraged to believe Big Words Are Better. “Why do you use “said” so much?” a group of primary school pupils asked me. “We're always told to find a more interesting word instead.”

I explained my choice of "said" was not because I didn't know any alternatives. And I read them a passage from my book, substituting different words – remarked, whispered, groaned etc. It soon started to sound daft. Furthermore (I said) a lot of the times people simply are “saying” and so it's by far the most accurate word to use. In addition, if I want people to focus on what's said, rather than being reminded that they are reading a book, then “said” is the nearest thing to invisible on the page.

They got it. But their teachers looked mournful. It wasn't that they disagreed (they said) but if they taught that way their pupils wouldn't pass their tests.  The official view was that long words were good, the more fancy adjectives the better, and always find something else to use instead of that  humble “said”.

Never mind. There are fashions in everything.

Besides there really is no right or wrong on this one.  (Or is there?  Do comment.)

It just depends....

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Emma's Wild Thing series for 8+ about the naughtiest little sister ever is published by Scholastic.
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