Forget book snobbery - let's just encourage our kids to read, comics and all
World Book Day is almost upon us, that day in the school calendar when teachers and parents everywhere wished their children read the books that they ought to be reading, instead of the ones they actually are. Usually, that means novels by approved “good” writers such as Nina Bawden and Michael Morpurgo. So not comics or graphic novels, then. Certainly not film novelisations. Definitely not David Walliams.
But for Alice Whitaker, mother-of-two from Bishop’s Stortford, Essex, whatever schools, teachers and – that pushiest lot of all – other parents might say, there is no such thing as good and bad reading.
“I’m a committed reader myself,” says Alice, “and it’s hugely important to me that my boys – Alex, 8, and Riley, 10 – read a lot. They’re both fluent readers. But for us, all reading is good reading. So we allow them to choose exactly what they like.”
For Alex, controversially, that usually means comics. “He loves them,” says his mother. “He will sit with the Beano for ages. He keeps back copies and re-reads them. He likes the annuals, too. He’s much less interested in the novels he brings home from school.”
Riley reads a lot of books but given a choice, like many boys, will not go for fiction. “He loves facts and gobbles up the Guinness World Records and anything relating to football.” Yes, it makes her a bit sad not to be able to discuss with her eldest the themes explored in the novels like The Railway Children by EE Nesbit and Skellig by David Almond, which she devoured as a child. But she encourages him to pick up anything he fancies. “Interest is key if you want them to read and be readers,” she says.
All this, of course, is a long way from lists of “worthwhile” books prescribed by well-meaning but judgmental teachers. “In the boys’s primary school, they do a reading challenge project, which means the children have to finish a fiction book and then do an activity related to it, such as make a poster,” Alice says. “For my two, there’s no pleasure in this. It’s just a chore – an extra piece of homework.”
And then there’s the dressing-up. This Thursday, from Aberdeen to Penzance, miniature Harry Potters and superheroes will arrive at school in literary fancy dress. Cue for a lot of Kate Reddy-style competitive parental angst and much last-minute sewing or dashing out to buy something as schools try to show that they really are committed to “good” books. But suppose the kids aren’t really reading those books because they prefer comics?
There’s much less literary snobbery about graphic novels and characters across the channel where, for instance, Rene Giscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Astérix series and Hergé’s Tin-Tin adventures are a respected part of the reading canon.
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“On the continent, they have a different kind of comic. There is a real cultural dimension to Astérix, for example – it draws parallels with the French resistance – that I’ve never seen in UK comics,” says John Bald, an education consultant. “And while Tin-Tin has something of Biggles or Harry Potter about him, it’s a very long way from violent, American-style violent ‘wham!’ comics, which I loathe.”
“We all read at different levels at different times,” says Bev Humphrey, a former school librarian who is now a self-employed literacy consultant and an ambassador for Renaissance Reading.
“As a girl, I was never into the ‘right’ kind of things. I started reading early, and loved Twinkle and Bunty. By the time I was ten, I was already into James Herbert and Stephen King. A sympathetic librarian let me have them once she’d checked with my parents.”
“It doesn’t matter what you give them or what they find – children will self-censor if you give them a free hand,” she says.
As librarian of a boys’ school, Humphrey got the occasional calls from parents objecting to a book she’d recommended, because they didn’t like the subject matter, or it contained the odd swearword. “These same parents, of course, don’t bat an eyelid when their children play 18+ computer games,” she says.
There is another issue here, too, in Humphrey’s view. A widely recommended and admired novel, Michelle Magorian’s Good Night Mr Tom, is heavily promoted in schools but some children find it emotionally challenging, even disturbing. “I cried a lot when I read it, and so did my son,” she says. “Parents and teachers need to be as aware of that – and ready to support – as much as they are of what they see as the ‘dangers’ of comic-style books.”
So this Thursday, what literary characters will Alice be packing her boys off to school as? “Well,” she says, “last year, they both picked characters from the Beast Quest books, because it meant they could look fairly ordinary. Alex would love to go as Spiderman, but his school frowns upon superheroes.”
A couple of Harry Potters coming up, then!
