Jessa over at Bookslut has a post about how Tim Dowling tries to get his children interested in reading science books. It's an interesting issue. Most parents don't take an interest in getting their kids to read. My parents actively discouraged me from reading when I was growing up, because they though it unproductive and encouraged laziness. So the concept of a sub-set of parents trying to gatekeep the amount of fiction and non-fiction a child reads strikes me as something close to unfathomable.
A lot of kids view books as the enemy. I've seen it some of Calista's friends, and in kids in general. Their parents, too. In school, even I, a voracious reader, viewed any book listed on an assigned reading list as suspect at best. I hate Steinbeck with a passion to this day because of high school English. So Lisa and I decided as soon as we had children we'd do our best to foster a love of books and reading. But how to do this without making books the enemy?
Bribery, mostly. Manipulating our daughters' natural greed. If we go to a mall, we may refuse to by them something from KB Toys or flashing, noise-making shoes from one of the department stores, but they can always count on a book if there's a Waldenbooks or B.Dalton around. They've figured this out, and keep an eye peeled. And both Calista and Keela will grab half a dozen books they want, and we--usually--make them pare it down to one, or maybe two if it's a clearance book. Deciding which to keep and which to discard can be agonizing for the girls, but they certainly appreciate the book they walk away with. They're possessive, even. Granted, this approach isn't guaranteed to work for all children, or even most, but many parents strike me as akin to those of Ned Flanders': "We tried nothing, man, and we're all out of ideas!"
This doesn't address the fiction vs. non-fiction issues raised on Bookslut, though. But really, those issues don't exist in our house. The girls simply don't distinguish between the two. They are unaware of categories of books. There are simply books. Yes, Calista knows there are children's books and adult books. She can tell the difference between those with made-up stories (fiction) and facts (non-fiction). But there are no boundaries in place. She sees a book that interests her, she grabs it. Last week she brought home a book on fossils from the school library. She's keen right now on being a paleontologist when she grows up. Even found a rock with a fossilized seashell in it a couple of days ago. Several of the books she got from the book sale were on dinosaurs and the ice age. But she also chose one on the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, and a science fiction anthology that includes such genre classics as Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" and "The Large Ant" by Howard Fast. Interesting bedtime reading those will be!
For all that genre writers complain about the "Sci-Fi ghetto" and the division of bookstores into categories clearly segregating westerns from romances, mysteries from fantasies, their desire to see a category that blends all of these into a single vast section where genre and mainstream sit side-by-side on the shelves, they still leave one barrier erect: that between fiction and non-fiction. For my daughters, even that division is non-existant. Books are simply books. They all contain knowledge and excitement and entertainment, and those contents aren't mutually exclusive. As a reader, there is a purity in her view and selection of books that I admire greatly. I know I--and most other adult readers--lost that purity very, very long time ago. Sometimes I wish I could get it back, but I've got too much ghetto lit I haven't read yet as it is. Why add to the problem, you know?
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Hi. Jamye!
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