As I've mentioned before Nathalie reads to me in the evenings, it's not only a father-daughter 'bonding' thing but it also gives me a chance to make sure she does actually do some reading. Anyway, at the moment she's reading an American book called "Small Step" by Louis Sachar, it's the follow-up to another of his books "Holes" and brings back two characters Armpit and X-Ray, who were originally inmates of the Camp Green Lake Detention Centre. The book is aimed fair and squarely at 12-16 year olds of either sex, the writing and cultural references are set in America, Texas at the moment but it is a superbly well written book and I can see why it is being recommended in the school by everybody who reads it.
It got me thinking how well today's generation of teenagers are catered for in the reading market compared to when I was 12-16. I grew up in a house of books, my Dad belonged to one of those classic book clubs, the books were classics not the book club, and we had Dickens, Shakespeare, Thackeray, Bronte - you name them if they were English (or Walter Scott) they were on our bookcase. The point was they were all for adults, even at school the closest I got to a children's book was reading about Scout and her younger brother in To Kill A Mockingbird or reading Dam Busters - actually when I started writing I met and got to know Fred Smith who wrote 633 Squadron but that's another story. And of course there was Kidnapped and Robinson Crusoe.
I'd read Famous Five and Secret Seven earlier in my childhood and comics by the lorry load but there seemed no alternatives to reading Goal! or Shoot! or even some magazines that didn't have excalmation marks in their title like New Musical Express or Sounds. It wasn't until I was about 14 and discovered the Skinhead series by Richard Allen that I felt I'd found a book that spoke to me about my age group and those around me when I went to football or into town - a bit like Morrissey's lyric for Panic about Radio One's output in the eighties: "The music says nothing to me about my life...hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ...."
Nathalie on the other hand has progressed from Potter and Blyton, through Roald Dahl, JK Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson, Louise Rennison and is now reading contemporary American fiction aimed specifically at her and her peers.
Still, I had the I-Spy books and the Ladybird series so it wasn't all bad in the 60's.
4 comments:
I think that children are lucky now in that there is a whole market of books specifically aimed at them. The flip side to that though is that they do not read all those books which you mention filled your house when you were young. As to whether that really is a bad thing or not, I don't know.
My home as a child was not filled with books. I think my mother got into reading when I was a teenager because she basically never had the time or was too tired to read prior to then and I suspect that my father has never read a book in his life. I used to go out and buy books for myself with my hard earned cash and was always an avid member of the library, as both my children are now. The upshot was that I didn't start to read the so called classics until I was about 14 or so and in a way I am glad it happened that way. I appreciated the classics far more because I chose to read them rather than because I was forced through school to read them.
School reading for me was Lord of the Flies (which put me off Golding for life) Robinson Crusoe (dreadful) Last of the Mohicans (ever more dreadful) and worse, the full range of Thomas Hardy...give me the films any day! There were one or two notable exceptions such as To Sir, with love, The L Shaped Room, Sense and Sensibility and Jane Eyre, all of which, I enjoyed.
I am pleased that both of my children are book worms and adore reading.
I think my Dad collected more books than he read to be honest, he saw it as aspirational for somebody from the east end to have books! I've never seen my Mum read to this day, even when I won a competition years ago she only glanced at my entry rather than actually reading it.
Janis is a voracious reader, she gets through one every couple of days, she can concentrate on a book whatever else is going on.
I never read To Sir With Love, if the book had come with a free Judy Geeson, as in the film, I probably would have!
Just thought I would let you know that I went out yesterday and bought those two books, Holes and the follow up for son as stocking fillers. I hope he enjoys them. I think he may have seen the film that was made from Holes.
I'm sure he'll enjoy them both Mags.
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