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Robert McCrum examines what makes a book a classic for kids and asks when’s the best time for the literary set to indoctrinate them.
Around our neighbourhood at the moment there are a lot of kids sitting exams. Inevitably, the conversation at the kitchen table has been turning to what they’re reading. The recent award of the Newbery medal (a major prize) to Neil Gaiman for his children’s page-turner The Graveyard Book makes this subject extra topical.
A straw poll of two 11-year-olds throws up these names: Jacqueline Wilson, Louis Sachar, Judy Blume, Melvin Burgess, Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman, Anthony Horowitz, Stephanie Meyer – and a hot debate about JK Rowling. Then someone mentions Anne Frank (see the excellent recent BBC TV adaptation) and all at once we’re spinning off into a discussion of classics for kids.
In this arena, several urgent questions crop up. Firstly, how soon should children be introduced to Austen, and Dickens? Secondly, and related to that, when the moment comes to launch into a classic from the English literary tradition, where should they start?
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January 30th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
My grade 6 teacher told me to read Austen and I did, but got nothing out of it but the romance. The social picture, which is the best part of Austen, completely passed me by. My own kids have no interest whatsoever in the literature that I did love as a kid: L.M. Montgomery, E.E. Nesbitt, Louisa May Alcott. My school library was mainly filled with Victorian & Edwardian lit–not all of it good. There were a lot of girls’ boarding school stories. I suspect that a lot of the library books had been donated. My kids like contemporary stories by contemporary authors, which is all in the best interest of writers at least.
January 31st, 2009 at 1:16 am
I think kids should be started on the classics as early as possible, but with an addition – parents, read it to them! Some of my fondest memories are of my parents reading novels to me as a child. When I was very young it didn’t matter what, just that they were doing it, but, as time went on, the books they choose mattered to me because they had were theirs. Their love for the books spoke to me and, when I was old enough, reading them on my own added a whole extra layer to the work.
Of course, that isn’t always practical. If reading to them can’t be done, or they aren’t interested, what about discussing the book with them? Just shoving a book in a child’s face is no good, but showing interest in what they liked and why can be very useful.
January 31st, 2009 at 1:16 pm
The earlier, the better. We grew up listening to mom read the Narnia books – it was the early eighties. The tv broke, and there was barely enough money for the mortgage and the groceries, so we spent a year trekking to the library three times a week. Looking back, those were some of the best and most formative times of our little lives.
I also remember a series of classic pocket books with illustrations. I think they must have been abridged, because ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ seemed a lot shorter than when I read it again this year. But they were a good gateway book into the seamy world of Victorian literature, Tolstoy, and Regency romances. We had an illustrated hardbound set of Sherlock Holmes books, too – picked up from a flea market, I think.
If you can get kids young, you can hook ‘em and build a lifelong habit.