What Should Children Read?

  

I have quoted Albert Einstein's remark about the importance of reading to young children, and when asked what else he would suggest, he replied, read   to them even more.  I have blogged about students in college who cannot read, as well as about efforts by teachers to help students that are falling behind because they cannot read and yet receive no time for special instruction and are passed on.  Recently, I have read that educators are trying to correct those inadequacies with special teachers to help students struggling to read.

I have written about banning books in the past, but because encouraging children to read is so important, I thought it was time for an update.  Perhaps covid caused more parents to be working from home, where they noticed the books their children were reading.  For whatever reason, there was a particular attention given by parents who chose not simply to speak with their child's teachers and librarians about concern for allowing access for certain books, but also demanding the removal of these books from all children. 

In the Wichita Eagle an article quoted a Superintendent justifying his screening process, declaring "We aren't banning books.  We just want to make sure that our parents trust us, that we're communicating information with them, and that we're being good stewards for their children."  The books at issue had already been approved by the School Board and individual teachers. but he felt more scrutiny was needed.  Whether he was pressured by parents to ban books, made the decision on his own, or reached an agreement with the staff, the parents, and is own judgement is unknown.    

The American Library Association reported a record-breaking number of attempts to ban books in 2022, up 38% from the previous year.  A Graduate School of Education professor comment that "Books can change outcomes for students themselves when they see people who look like them represented," an example of the harm of excluding books with black characters from libraries, harmful not only to black students but to all students.   

As for protecting young people from books parents regard as inappropriate, I recall a book from my early teens titled "Peyton Place."  Although it was banned in 1956, copies must have circulated, and young boys thought they were very clever to memorize page numbers of the most disapproved pages and call out the page numbers to embarrass girls, despite the fact that the girls had not read the book.  For those boys, banning only encouraged them to read that book, or at least pretend they had.  I am not suggesting that "Peyton Place" or other inappropriate books should have been in school libraries.  Rather, I am suggesting that banning something can sometimes be the most effective way to draw kids to an inappropriate book.  

More important, as a Columbia Professor in Education Leadership explained, "Book bans diminish the quality of education students have access to and restrict their exposure to important perspectives that form the fabric of a culturally pluralist society like the United States for all students."  She added, "It's about what we teach young people about our country, what we determine to be the truth, and what we believe should be included in the curriculum they are receiving." 

Parents may think no problems exist in their community, or that banning books has made it safer for their children.  Fortunately, book banning is not a problem everywhere.  However, in some areas, often with good but misguided intentions, book banning has silenced young people from important books.   The inability to discuss problems with adults, including parents, may result in seeking advice elsewhere, less appropriate.  School districts, administrators, librarians, and educators may feel at risk for their jobs by simply mentioning the harm of book banning. 

As I have researched for this blog, I found that some of the topics parents find unacceptable are easily found on television and other accessible sources.   When parents ban books in schools, they may be withdrawing an opportunity for teachers to help their children by having removed the very books that were banned.  Kids can be curious, sometimes rebellious, or insecure.  Instead of leaving students to find the wrong places for answers, books can often provide the right guidance, as well as offering the opportunity to ask teachers and other trained educators for the guidance they need.  Of course, parents want their children to come to them for guidance, but that is not always the decision that children make.  Retreating to private schools and home schooling, where the books they disapprove are not in the library, may sometimes take away the very information and professional guidance kids need.

     

 

What Happened?

 Do you remember these Library Cards?  I often buy old books, and this particular former library book looked like new.  When I opened it I understood why.  Apparently, it had never been checked out.  How sad.  The book was published by the Kansas State Historical Society, and Miss Louise Barry's thick book of a decade of research, with the author's goal to document a record of known activity in the pre-Kansas region from the appearance of the first Europeans in the mid-1500s to 1854, is not for everyone.  

It includes the early history of the displacement of  Indigenous  people, and of the surveyors running lines to determine reservation boundaries for of promises such as the following example in 1828; It guaranteed eleven millions of acres of land and a perpetual outlet to the west, a permanent home...which shall, under the most solemn guarantee of the United States, be and remain theirs forever--a home that shall never, in all future time, be embarrassed by having extended around it the line, or placed over it the jurisdiction of a territory or state, nor be pressed upon by the extension, in any way, of any of the limits of any existing territory or state...

 Of course, we now know that the promise, with all of its grand words, did not last.  The book is a valuable record, but not intended for most readers.  I do hope it can still be found in libraries for scholarly researchers, and I will try to get my copy to such a place.  

However, my blog was inspired by reading about a college student seeking help from a college counselor.  She had been a good student in high school, but she was struggling with the reading assignments she was being given in college.  The counselor asked whether there had been reading assignments given to her in high school, and she acknowledged that there had been.  However, she said that her high school assignments had only been a few pages.  She was overwhelmed by being asked to read an entire book.  That was just too much for her! 

I assume it was a novel or a biography that she was assigned to read over a period of a few days.  How sad it is that she had never been guided into the pleasure of vicariously traveling to a new place and immersing herself into the life of a fictional person or reading the Diary of Anne Frank to better understand war and hate, or reading about an actress or an athlete or a scientist that encouraged her to pursue a dream of her own.  

The joy of reading is best acquired by being read to by parents and seeing them read books of their own.  Children learn by watching, and if they see parents and older siblings reading, it is more likely that they will want to learn to read too.  Reading not only shares stories, it introduces children to the lives of children who are different, it allows them to travel to faraway places, it allows then to experience sad events so that if sadness really comes into their lives they can better understand how to face it.  Studies also show that meeting all kinds of people in books makes children   more empathetic.  

How sad that the college girl that sought help from the counselor had not been exposed to books from childhood.  Having scary fairy tales read to a child sitting safely in a parent's lap is the best way to confront evil witches for the first time.  Feeling sad for Black Beauty with its eventual reunion is a gentler way to prepare for the inevitable death of a pet.  Children who read, whether fiction or biography, benefit from experiencing what it was like to live in the 1800s, or in a different country, or to be of a different ethnicity, or even to experiencing the death of a fictional friend.  Learning these things vicariously, they are better prepared for actual events in their lives.  Think of all the things that coed had missed by restricting her experiences to her own immediate life or perhaps the few pages of her prior limited reading assignments.  How much empathy for those different from herself can she feel, if she had never cried while reading a book about someone different?  How can she ever learn from history if she only reads text books, which is much different from reading historic fiction and becoming fictional friends with a Jewish girl in Germany at the start of W.W. II, if she overlooked reading the Diary of Anne Frank?

To Librarians making room on the shelves for new books, why not guide young readers to classic books that their parents and grandparents read and loved years ago.  And parents, please read to your children, even when you may think they are too young to understand.  Read fairy tales, and buy them books of their own.  

I have been in waiting rooms and have seen parents give their small children their phones to play with.  I would much rather plant the seed for reading in a child's hands than the seed for living online.    Help them fall in love with reading when it still seems exciting to master that skill.

I don't expect many people to go in search of the book I introduced at the beginning of this blog, but I do hope I can plant a seed or two that encourages a few to read to babies very early, to buy them books of their own, to let them see you reading while they are young enough to emulate you.  And, get them a library card of their own early!  Our community has so many wonderful Libraries! 

A  P.S. to Librarians:  Please keep children's classics on the shelves.  Classics do not grow old.  The Illustrators from the 1980s and 1990s and a few more years are fantastic.  Please keep them on the shelves where kids (and parents) can find them.

  

Not Too Late for a Resolution

New Year's is past, but it is not too late for a resolution.  It probably will not surprise you that I am about to suggest that you resolve to set a reading goal.  In the past I have written about my Millennium Reading List.  I chose 100 great books published between 1900 and 1999 to read.  Have I read all of the books on my list?  No.  Is that a bad thing?  No, because the list became the source for discovering more and more books I wanted to read.  

The original list was intended to be fiction, but often fiction made me curious about the time period in which the novel was set, and I discovered history books I would not have otherwise read.  Then the history books led me to biographies.  I also discovered authors I admired, and in addition to reading a single book by that author, I sought other books that particular author had written.

The point is that by making a list of books to read it is likely that you will discover more and more books to enjoy reading.  At least, that is my experience.  

I have also written about the decline in reading.  From my perspective, that is a serious matter.  I know that many people now "read" audio books, especially if they have long commutes to work, or their jobs involve repetitive labor that allows listening to a book without hindering their work.  Audio books have their place, but the reader's interpretation inevitably alters the content with every decision about where to place emphasis, the tone of voice to be used to describe characters, or the character's voice used in dialogue.  All of those things and more can alter a listener's response to the book.  Listening to a book is not the same as reading a book, but it is better than not reading at all.

I am a slow reader.  A friend told me that she set her goal for the number of books she wants to read in a year at 50 books.  I could never accomplish that!  If you make a Resolution, do not set yourself up for failure by demanding more of yourself than is reasonable.

First, consider the kind of books you want to read.  For me, fiction is much quicker to read than nonfiction.  A friend of mine loved reading Romance Novels.  I asked her why she enjoyed them, and she said because they are all alike.  For her, they were just a way to relax and escape into an imaginary world.  Those are not really the kind of books for which you need a New Year's Resolution or a book list.  Another friend told me she reads to relax at bedtime.  She might not select books that stimulated her mind with new ideas for her bedtime reading.

If you decide you want to make a reading list of books, here is my advice:  Don't set yourself up for failure by making an impossibly long list or selecting especially long books.  To start, set a reasonable goal, maybe one book a month, or ten books for 2022.  If there is a particular book you know you want to read, start reading it now.  

If you don't have a particular book in mind, visit your local library and ask the librarian for a suggestion.  Before you go, decide the type of book you want to read--fiction or nonfiction, history or biography, a classic you remember from high school or college that you want to read again with a more mature perspective, a book by a particular author you have liked in the past or that you have heard about.  If you have a particular type of book in mind, the librarian will be better able to direct you to something you will enjoy, or at least to direct you to the shelf when those books are housed. If you are fortunate enough to live in a town with a bookstore, ask a knowledgeable clerk for suggestions, but be prepared with the same thought about the type of book you are interested in reading in order to give the clerk some guidance.

Finally, read the first two pages before you buy or check the book out.  Don't force yourself to start off your New Year's Resolution with a book that feels like an assignment.  If you want to be generous to the author, read five pages before you decide, but don't begin your Resolution with a book you are not enjoying.  Maybe later you will want to give a challenging book another chance, but at least start off the year's reading with a book that interests you from the early pages!

Good Luck!  I'll see you next week with some fresh ideas for why we should Resolve to Read!! 
     

Battling Abuses in the 1800s, A Series, #1

One of Isaac's favorite authors

Among the first things that appealed to me about Isaac was his love for books.  I have written about that in this blog before, but this series goes beyond prior posts.  A good place to start is to understand Isaac's (and the populist movement's) belief that education was essential.  

As a young druggist Isaac had read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, but when he read the book as a homesteader trying to make a living breaking sod for farming, he realized that what he had learned from reading Smith as a merchant had been interpreted differently from his reading as a struggling farmer. 

I have discovered from observing quotes posted online that words I interpreted to mean one thing are sometimes construed to mean just the opposite by someone else.  We all respond to information based on our own experience and the bias we have.  As  Carlow Ruiz Zafon wrote in The Shadows of the Wind, "Books are mirrors:  You only see in them what you already have inside you."

Isaac was a serious scholar and own this title

Another book that Isaac read was Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, the story of a wealthy young man struggling with insomnia, who is hypnotized to help him sleep, but like Rip VanWinkle, the young man awakens years later to a completely different world.  I had read the book years ago because it remains on many reading lists as a classic.  At that time, I read superficially, seeing it simply as an interesting tale about awakening in a changed society.  However, when it was originally published, people struggling to survive economically read it as a sort of guide to what could be a more equitable society if social changes were made.  The book was so popular during Isaac's time that Bellamy Clubs were formed around the world to encourage the sort of changes represented in the novel.

Edward Bellamy, author

Isaac also read Henry George, most famous for writing Progress and Poverty, which advocated Land Rents rather than taxes on land.  It would have eliminated owning land for speculation or investment, prohibiting the wealthy from acquiring and holding land to manipulate prices.  Collecting the land rents would, according to George, have been simpler than collecting taxes on production from the land, and would not have penalize successful farmers.

Farmers believed in the importance of learning, and they pooled their money to buy books.  Isaac gifted many of his books to their common library and built a cupboard at the school house where their books were stored.  I agree with Zafon that we see in books what we have inside us, but I also believe reading lets new light into our minds.  If we only read books and other material that reinforce what we already believe, we shut out the illumination of new perspectives.

Next week's blog will look at other books of that period with a different focus more aligned with urban issues.

The Books in Our Lives

Jefferson:  "I cannot live without books."

When I did the series on favorite children's books and ask readers of the blog to share the favorites from their childhoods, I was inundated with so many replies that it took several blogs to share all of your favorites.  Last week, I invited readers to share their favorite adult book titles, and only a few of you replied.  Since I know that so many of you were eager readers as children, and because educators believe forming the habit of reading in childhood will develop active adult readers, I expected to be inundated with adult book titles.  I'm disappointed, but I did receive some great replies!  

One of my foreign followers  loves reading history, so he began by admitting that he doesn't read much fiction.  However, he does like John le Carre (1931-    ) spy novels and named The Night Manager as his favorite.  He also enjoys Westerns, naming Ernest Haycox  (1899-1950) and, especially, Jack Schaefer (1907-1991) as favorites.  He warned against trying to take the easy way out by seeing movies based their books--pale imitations, in his opinion!

Edward Bellamy

I have another friend who enjoys mysteries and travel books, neither of which appeal to me.  She has shared some wonderful suggestions outside those genres that I have loved.   Our friendship really took root when we discovered we both had read The House by Otowi Bridge by Peggy Pond Church (1903-1987).

Two people responded to my call for favorite adult books by telling me we share a favorite.  LS chose To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1926-2016), which I think every aspiring lawyer should read.

SGR agrees with me about East of Eden being our favorite among John Steinbeck's novels.  She is a voracious reader and declined naming a specific favorite among all the books she loves.  However, she did share a favorite from  among books recently read, and her recommendation came with three reviews and an interview of the author as attachments.  Yes, she has tempted me to read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (1964-    ).

Life is too short to read all of the books I'd like to read, so I enjoy recommendations from friends who are readers.  Recently, JD recommended The Sympathizer, which I mentioned in last week's blog.  I would never have read it without his recommendation, and I'm so glad that I did.  In turn, I recommended All the Light We Cannot See, and he tells me he enjoyed it.

I do believe what we read shapes who we are, and for that reason I find no pleasure reading books that are no more than a way to pass the time.  Researching my manuscript about Isaac Werner, I felt that I came to know him from the books he chose to read.  He also led me to books being read during the populist movement, so that I came to understand what inspired and shaped working class people of that time.  Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1850-1898) was so popular that Bellamy Clubs, whose members sought to implement some of his futuristic ideas, were formed around the world.  Mark Twain (1835-1910) is still popular today.  Other books that he owned are no longer read, but I appreciated the immersion into that era that reading those books gave me.

Thanks to those of you who shared "the books in your lives!"

Visit to Wernersville

Our spontaneous road trip to the Willa Cather Seminar at Smith College that led to the unplanned side trips to Rossville and Hoopeston (See my January 20 & 27, 2012 posts) resulted in other impromptu visits to authors' homes and historical sites, and when we wandered off the planned route as far as Gettysburg, I just had to go to Wernersville. Having made none of the research preparations I should have, I convinced my husband that it was nevertheless an opportunity we should not miss. As it turned out, we crowded more into our brief visit to Wernersville than I could have imagined if I had planned the visit for weeks.

Initially, I just wanted to see the land, to experience the mountain ranges that embrace the Lebanon Valley--the Blue Mountains to the north, the South Mountains to the South, and Mount Penn and Neversink in the distance to the east. I wanted to see the hillside farms of Isaac's youth, so different from the flat, sandy loam prairie where he did his farming. As I stepped out of the car to take a photograph of one of those Berks County, Pennsylvania farms, I experienced a moment when I almost felt that Isaac was arranging the experience, for the air was filled with more bird songs than I ever remember hearing at once. It was a twirping, twilling, whistling cacophony. Isaac loved birds, noting in his journal when favorite birds arrived back after winter, scattering grain for what he called his "pet flock of quail," posting his farm to protect the prairie chickens and quail from hunters before there were protective laws, pausing to watch the seasonal passage of geese over head. I stood there, listening to the chorus of bird songs and understood how quiet the prairie must have seemed to Isaac in comparison.

We had arrived in Reading, east of Wernersville, in late afternoon, and after checking into the hotel we had driven the few miles to Wernersville. About all we had time to do that evening was make sure we knew the way to Wernersville and how to find the cemetery at Hain's Church. That evening, as the sun went down, we found Isaac's twin brother's family gravesite in the "new" cemetery across the road from the church, with Henry, his wife, Eva, and their son, Charles, buried there, and Eva's parents buried nearby.

The next morning we had breakfast at the Red Plate Diner and met Reading Principal Joe Torchia, who was having breakfast with his daughter in the booth next to ours. When he overheard us discussing whether to order scrapple, he introduced himself and praised the local pork specialty so enthusiastically that we had to try it. I fear scrapple may be an acquired taste, but meeting him and his daughter in the pleasant surroundings of the diner was a great start to our day.

Despite a light rainfall, we wandered the old cemetery, located at St. John's (Hain's) Church, finding William Werner's grave and many other Werner aunts, uncles, and cousins buried there. The history of this church is too rich and wonderful for me to share in this post, but next week I will tell you about our unexpected discoveries when we stepped inside the church.

Part of my eagerness to visit Wernersville was to see the town William Werner had founded, although I realized that little would remain from that long ago. The Heidelburg Historical Society is housed in one of the oldest buildings remaining in Wernersville, originally a tavern, but the Society building was closed. We drove the streets that William had named with family names--William, Rebecca, Werner, Beckley and Reber. The old depot is in the process of being restored, but it was built after the original depot upon which the name "Wernersville" first appeared, negotiated by William as part of his consideration for allowing the railroad tracks to cross his farm. (To see pictures of the 1855 survey map and William Werner's grave, click on the 2011 blog archives for my November 4, 2011 post, "Isaac's Birth & Childhood.")

Having seen the popularity of the local Twisty Freeze, crowded with people of all ages enjoying the summer evening as we drove through town the previous night, we were tempted into taking a late afternoon break to sample their ice cream before ending our visit to Wernersville. We sat at one of their outdoor tables and reflected on how much we had learned during the past few hours. As former Michigan governor John Engler said when he entered the 2008 presidential race: "Sometimes it is better to begin the journey, to get underway, than it is to sit back and wait until such time that you're convinced that all conditions are perfect and that there'll be no surprises along the route." Our decision to visit Wernersville seems to have worked out better for me than his presidential race did, but I like his encouragement of daring the impromptu. In next week's post I will tell you just how wonderful the surprises that we found at St. John's (Hain's) Church turned out to be.