Recently I have been telling parents (here in the migrant camps and also in the wilds of Brooklyn) that whether or not a child reads well depends on life style choices by parents, not method or even quality of instruction, and I am increasingly sure this is true. In the last two weeks I watched my 8 year old neice make that mysterious jump from almost reader to reading fanatic. This happened in English, her second language. She arrived reading those little "chapter books" that are labeled by Levels and grades. The ones I have around here are slightly below what she was reading, (Level 2 for grades 1- 3) and they average about 30 - 50 words a page. After a week with time on her hands, my neice was reading Pipi Longstocking and other novels obsessively. This is not a TV watching or computer using child, so the transition was easier than usual I suspect. By the end of her visit, we had to tell her to put down the book at the dinner table, to stop reading and go to sleep, to speak to us once in a while. She left carrying four books onto the plane.
So I was thinking about this the other day when I arrived at the Middle School library where we meet and plan before going out into the orchards to play math games in the late afternoon. I found a young girl who had made a bed for herself out of chairs and was deep in a book. An unusual sight these days. She was the first and only child here who told me she liked to read, especially "thick books." and we went out to the book table to share book recommendations. She sent me off with one she liked, and I, after much searching, sent her off with "Little Women," and an animal story, I think. I do not really expect her to like either, but that was all that was there.
The other night when I couldn't sleep I finally got to her recommendation, and also a copy of Lousia May Alcott's "Old Fashioned Girl" which I had picked up in the school. The contemporary book which is described on the back cover as a "tough, tender, and darkly funny story of a teenage outcast" and has won many awards. It is about a 14 year old girl who was raped at a party when she got drunk. In a panic she calls the police, and so spends the next year ostracized in school, and essentially mute from the trauma of the experience. She tells no one, and no wonder, since all the adults in the book are portrayed as clueless self centered idiots. The Alcott book is about a poor country girl who goes to visit her rich city cousins, and over the years teaches them all the old fashioned virtues and how to be happy in life through being good. It is full of little moral asides by the author and characters go back and forth between living up to her moral standards, and falling apart. It was in its time a best seller.
As I lay in bed, going back and forth between the two books, I was struck not only by the difference in message, but also by something else that I had not noticed at first. The look of the page and the difference in the use of language. The modern book is 198 pages long, written completely in the present tense, and averages a little over 200 words per page. There are big white spaces on every page; dialog is written double spaced in short half finished sentences, almost as if people were texting rather than talking. The Alcot book is 305 pages long, averaging about 375 words per page, long dense paragraphs and complex dialog. So two totally different kinds of thinking and sets of reading skills are required to read these two books.
I began to think about how to help children make the transition from this kind of abbreviated, simplified reading to more complex material. I suspect this is a matter of conversation and exposure, and perhaps some scanning skills - a collaboration between school and home. I do know that any parent can fill his (or her) home with all different kinds of reading matter (new books, old books, magazines, picture books) and insist on empty time in the child's life and that this will lead to reading for pleasure. I have seen parents who do not speak English and barely read themselves do this. After 6 months, they find themselves having to go in and yell at a child who is secretly reading under the blanket instead of going to sleep, and hogging the bathroom to finish a chapter. It is sure fire. What she reads is another story.
Hello there,
I sure do love this blog!!
I have a whole series of Campfire Girls books (or something similar) written in the 1920's. On the one hand, the dialogues are somewhat stilted and may sound unnatural to our modern ears used to fastspeak. But, the level of vocabulary is incomparable to anything written today. And it is fun reading for all.
I have become a lot less concerned about finding books that are "easy enough" for my up-to-now beginner reader books. I still read aloud a lot to her (8 years old) and if the book is difficult, she'll bring it to me, I'll read her a part of it out loud and then she'll continue trying.
As I move to a new level of books for my daughter, I too have found subjects that make me shake my head and make me wonder what they on Earth they are thinking!! Raped while drunk at a party at 14 years???? Yes, these things happen and yes, it would be great if the child felt comfortable enough to confide in an adult if he or she were in such a situation, but is this the way to do this?
Anyway, this comment could get too long so I will stop now and respond again as needed!
Love,
Karen
Posted by: Karen Reimann | August 15, 2011 at 11:54 AM