Just So Long As They’re Reading?
An Expert Weighs In

There’s a reading crisis — did you know? They say no one reads the Classics anymore, that we’re experiencing the Twilightification of literature. And when my early reader’s library selections are almost exclusively Disney, I fear it’s all too true.

But is it? I reached out to Dr. Judy Cheatham, vice president of Literacy Services at Reading Is Fundamental, to get an expert’s take on whether it matters what our children are reading.

Have you heard of the Percy Jackson problem — that kids are reading books that most book-loving adults find appalling? What if all our kids want to read is Captain Underpants?

We should be tickled to death if they want to read Captain Underpants.

There seem to be two camps — the just-so-long-as-they’re-reading camp and one that suggests that if kids start reading pulp, that’s all they’ll ever expect of literature. Does it matter?

It’s a false dichotomy.

Let me see if I can help make it simple. If you look at all the research on what makes children read, it’s just like with grown people — you read about what you want to read about. The research tells us that it’s about access to lots and lots and lots of books, plus choice.

I have a 7-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy. I have a lot of control over the 3-year-old’s reading habits — it’s Dr. Seuss and Where the Wild Things Are and all the books I loved as a child. But the 7-year-old wants nothing but fairy books — and I hate fairy books. Do I need to just let it go?

If you’re thinking about this, you must have done a good job or she wouldn’t be reading in the first place.

There are [several] things you need to know to read — and you can find them in fairy books.

You have to know the alphabet. You can learn the alphabet out of fairy books. The name Guinevere, it has a “g” and a “u” and an “i” and an “e” in it.

There are sound and symbol combinations. Fairy — “f” is the initial sound. If you took off the “y,” it’s “fair.” Fair rhymes with “air” and “pair.”

There are word patterns. Sleeping Beauty, the word “sleep” is part of the title. Sleep rhymes with “deep.”

If Sleeping Beauty says, “Please don’t leave me, Prince!” there’s politeness — Please don’t leave me. The exclamation point. The quotation marks. All of these are examples of correct punctuation.

We’re teaching a problem and solution text structure as well as life skill. Poor Sleeping Beauty has a problem — she’s pricked her finger and will sleep and sleep. What’s the solution?

Fairy books can supply us with a story arc, as well as cause and effect.

And you can do the same things with informational text. You can compare, contrast, look at cause and effect, vocabulary, punctuation, quotation marks, commands, declarations, all the sentence types. You can teach as well from informational text as from a good old fairy story.

So… Percy Jackson is okay?

Yes. With Percy Jackson, they’ve got their Greek and Roman names. You’re reading a modernized version of Edith Hamilton’s or Bulfinch’s Mythology.

It was Albert Einstein who said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

If our children are reading the equivalent of literary junk food, how can we support them?

I’m sure it’s what you already do. You model good habits because you read all the time. You have books all over the house, different corners, different places. I’m sure when your child is reading, you talk to them about the books. You list what you’ve learned and new words.

With a 3-year-old, we’re talking about brain development. Even when you can’t read, when someone is reading to you and talking with you, it’s firing those synapses.

And older kids … A wise woman told me something when my son was in middle school and we didn’t agree on anything. She said, “If you read what he reads, you’ll always have something to talk about.” And that’s what I did. He read Star Wars, Star Trek. I have no interest in science fiction, but I read it anyway, and we always did have something to talk about.

As long as you’ve got books around the house, all kinds of books, and you’re using them for interesting things, you can’t mess that up.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.