I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three years old, in late toddlerhood. 25th of July 2020. I was doing the dishes. Maud came in. “I have looked a little in books,” she said.
Children's books are great for children doing independent reading. But when you're reading as an adult, it's all about reading great writing and great stories. There are great children's books -- Narnia, The Hobbit, Roald Dahl -- but the way I approach reading time is that I can expose them to stories they aren't ready to tackle on their own.
It's a wonderful bonding time, and like you say, it becomes a conversation. Some of my favorite moments are when we're not reading, but instead going off on different tangents.
Maybe safe "children's books" are a bit like going to the playground - an experience tailored to them. Reading literature is more like going for a hike. Both have their place, but when we do the latter, I get to share my own love of the art. (And they get to participate.)
This reminds me of something that used to happen when my older daughter was 2 or 3. I’d read a book with compelling pictures and an insipid story, and then when we got to the end, she’d just say no. The story hadn’t done justice to the pictures, so we’d go back and tell a different story about them, and whatever stories we came up with were dark and epic. For example, we had a pop-up book about a little owl who wanted to go sledding, except there was no snow locally. My daughter kept asking where the owl’s parents were and why the little owl was living by himself. I tried to explain it away, but she insisted the parents were dead. And so it became the cheerful pop-up book about the little owl with dead parents and his search for a family, and we told the new story many times. Stories that inflated my daughter’s scary feelings seemed to be more helpful to her than stories that tuned down the emotions, and meanwhile I enjoyed defacing the stories’ pastel constructions of childhood. Other times when I got bored reading stories my daughter liked, I used to spice things up by reading the book alongside finger puppets. Considering the story through multiple viewpoints at the same time made it fun for both of us, plus one of the regular characters was a bear who was really only interested in stories with bears in them, and that let me both vent my boredom and start conversations about reading preferences and identifying with characters in the book. Win!
As we got deeper into her preschool years, we tried reading some of the popular books for early readers out loud, but we didn’t like them much better than you and Maud did. We ultimately landed on stuff like Tolkien and Greek myths—though having read your post, I’m wondering what would’ve happened if we’d gone deeper into literature. On the other hand, I do think there’s a skill to making anything you’re reading interesting by treating it as a cultural artifact: trying to figure out what kids like about it and what concerns or desires might be responsible for its popularity, critiquing cultural assumptions that have been made more obvious by sheer bad writing, noting similarities between its formulaic structure and other media the kids are familiar with, identifying what’s been left out of the story formula and what else would need to change if some of the omitted things were added back in, etc.
Related to cognitive apprenticeship: Back when I was hanging out with people who knew more about early literacy than I do, they emphasized oral storytelling as an important step to building reading comprehension later, because it helps kids with the skill of picturing what’s going on as they read. Apparently picturing things is one of the hidden components of reading comprehension that a lot of kids don’t pick up. Hearing the emotion and intonation of grown-ups voices and seeing body language helps kids jump into the words and start picturing things more than decoding words on a page does.
I got sick of The Boxcar Children and read The Lincoln Highway to my kids. There were enough cars and trains to keep my 5-year-old son entertained, along with a lot more questions like you talked about. I also noticed my reading voice is less flat when I'm reading a non-flat book. I get into the characters, give them different accents. My heart starts pumping, and I stay awake reading longer. At least maybe my 3-year-old daughter picks up on the excitement in my voice.
Wonderful reflections! Last week I listened to The Count of Monte Cristo while knitting with my youngest son, and even though I thought that the character and plot lines might be confusing, he not only comprehended what was going on but greatly enjoyed it. Most modern children's books are dreadful 'twaddle' and the complex plot, characters, and language of classic books provide rich soil for 'cognitive apprenticeships'. My husband Peco and I just wrote a post on "booklegging", which contains excellent book lists (for both young and old) https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-booklegging-how-and-why. Will save your post to share with my readers :)
I always figured the best non-children's children's books would be the Classics classics: the pre-Christian myths, the epic poems, the fables and fairy tales as originally written, start them where oral and written culture started.
There are very few (if any) contemporary children's books that are worth reading. Kate Seredy is an author that I have discovered in the last few years and her books for children are excellent.
Great essay. I devoured Madeline L'engle's books when I was a child. They are written to challenge and inspire young readers and do so quite well (from memory). A Wrinkle in Time, A Ring of Endless Light, The Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, etc. I also devoured the Tomorrow When the War Began series as a teen.
This sounds amazing! I don't think I ever tried anything as ambitious as those books with my children. It's worth thinking about. Oh, I did a little Dickens when they were small. A Christmas Carol goes down fine.
That said, I made it a mission to find picture books that were genuinely rewarding for both of us, and I feel like that's actually pretty easy to do these days. This seems like a golden age for picture books in the UK, with Julia Donaldson and Emily Gravett. And there's Anthony Browne from a little earlier, and many more. But yeah, kids can absorb much more complex material than most books give them credit for.
I like this approach for teaching kids about complex topics and how one processes what they are reading. That said, I still think there are benefits to kids reading their own books as that allows them to use their own imagination. What intelligent adults may consider flat, children may still be able to find some creative angles in and forces them to unpack a book without an adult explaining the concepts to them. A mix of the two approaches likely ideal.
Children's books are great for children doing independent reading. But when you're reading as an adult, it's all about reading great writing and great stories. There are great children's books -- Narnia, The Hobbit, Roald Dahl -- but the way I approach reading time is that I can expose them to stories they aren't ready to tackle on their own.
It's a wonderful bonding time, and like you say, it becomes a conversation. Some of my favorite moments are when we're not reading, but instead going off on different tangents.
Maybe safe "children's books" are a bit like going to the playground - an experience tailored to them. Reading literature is more like going for a hike. Both have their place, but when we do the latter, I get to share my own love of the art. (And they get to participate.)
This reminds me of something that used to happen when my older daughter was 2 or 3. I’d read a book with compelling pictures and an insipid story, and then when we got to the end, she’d just say no. The story hadn’t done justice to the pictures, so we’d go back and tell a different story about them, and whatever stories we came up with were dark and epic. For example, we had a pop-up book about a little owl who wanted to go sledding, except there was no snow locally. My daughter kept asking where the owl’s parents were and why the little owl was living by himself. I tried to explain it away, but she insisted the parents were dead. And so it became the cheerful pop-up book about the little owl with dead parents and his search for a family, and we told the new story many times. Stories that inflated my daughter’s scary feelings seemed to be more helpful to her than stories that tuned down the emotions, and meanwhile I enjoyed defacing the stories’ pastel constructions of childhood. Other times when I got bored reading stories my daughter liked, I used to spice things up by reading the book alongside finger puppets. Considering the story through multiple viewpoints at the same time made it fun for both of us, plus one of the regular characters was a bear who was really only interested in stories with bears in them, and that let me both vent my boredom and start conversations about reading preferences and identifying with characters in the book. Win!
As we got deeper into her preschool years, we tried reading some of the popular books for early readers out loud, but we didn’t like them much better than you and Maud did. We ultimately landed on stuff like Tolkien and Greek myths—though having read your post, I’m wondering what would’ve happened if we’d gone deeper into literature. On the other hand, I do think there’s a skill to making anything you’re reading interesting by treating it as a cultural artifact: trying to figure out what kids like about it and what concerns or desires might be responsible for its popularity, critiquing cultural assumptions that have been made more obvious by sheer bad writing, noting similarities between its formulaic structure and other media the kids are familiar with, identifying what’s been left out of the story formula and what else would need to change if some of the omitted things were added back in, etc.
Related to cognitive apprenticeship: Back when I was hanging out with people who knew more about early literacy than I do, they emphasized oral storytelling as an important step to building reading comprehension later, because it helps kids with the skill of picturing what’s going on as they read. Apparently picturing things is one of the hidden components of reading comprehension that a lot of kids don’t pick up. Hearing the emotion and intonation of grown-ups voices and seeing body language helps kids jump into the words and start picturing things more than decoding words on a page does.
I got sick of The Boxcar Children and read The Lincoln Highway to my kids. There were enough cars and trains to keep my 5-year-old son entertained, along with a lot more questions like you talked about. I also noticed my reading voice is less flat when I'm reading a non-flat book. I get into the characters, give them different accents. My heart starts pumping, and I stay awake reading longer. At least maybe my 3-year-old daughter picks up on the excitement in my voice.
Wonderful reflections! Last week I listened to The Count of Monte Cristo while knitting with my youngest son, and even though I thought that the character and plot lines might be confusing, he not only comprehended what was going on but greatly enjoyed it. Most modern children's books are dreadful 'twaddle' and the complex plot, characters, and language of classic books provide rich soil for 'cognitive apprenticeships'. My husband Peco and I just wrote a post on "booklegging", which contains excellent book lists (for both young and old) https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-booklegging-how-and-why. Will save your post to share with my readers :)
I always figured the best non-children's children's books would be the Classics classics: the pre-Christian myths, the epic poems, the fables and fairy tales as originally written, start them where oral and written culture started.
I want an apprenticeship like this to reintroduce me to great literature. I want the basics all over again. What a treat that would be.
There are very few (if any) contemporary children's books that are worth reading. Kate Seredy is an author that I have discovered in the last few years and her books for children are excellent.
Great essay. I devoured Madeline L'engle's books when I was a child. They are written to challenge and inspire young readers and do so quite well (from memory). A Wrinkle in Time, A Ring of Endless Light, The Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, etc. I also devoured the Tomorrow When the War Began series as a teen.
This sounds amazing! I don't think I ever tried anything as ambitious as those books with my children. It's worth thinking about. Oh, I did a little Dickens when they were small. A Christmas Carol goes down fine.
That said, I made it a mission to find picture books that were genuinely rewarding for both of us, and I feel like that's actually pretty easy to do these days. This seems like a golden age for picture books in the UK, with Julia Donaldson and Emily Gravett. And there's Anthony Browne from a little earlier, and many more. But yeah, kids can absorb much more complex material than most books give them credit for.
A very joyful post!
I like this approach for teaching kids about complex topics and how one processes what they are reading. That said, I still think there are benefits to kids reading their own books as that allows them to use their own imagination. What intelligent adults may consider flat, children may still be able to find some creative angles in and forces them to unpack a book without an adult explaining the concepts to them. A mix of the two approaches likely ideal.