A different topic today, but an important one. If you’re an avid reader, you may worry if your child or children seem uninterested in books. Of course, you want to ensure that they can read and write at a high level, because there are numerous advantages in life to having those skills, whether or not they become involved in a literary profession.
As a self-proclaimed book nerd going back to my school days, I thought I’d offer my advice to parents who face this conundrum.
Do schools ruin reading? How to raise a reader in the education system.
Education professionals debate this question, and there are many opinions about how to improve the methods of teaching literature so that students love reading.
Ask many adults who do not read, and they’ll tell you that school turned them off of books. Some often cited reasons:
- Homework, tests and essays on books made reading drudgery and misery
- Classic literary styles are less accessible and therefore less appreciated by young, busy students
- Characters and situations of classic literature are from bygone eras and are not relatable to modern adult readers, let alone young students
Even I, who took every English and Drama class I could, found it challenging to be engaged with most of the assigned books. Sure, there were my favorites even back then (Frankenstein, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Jekyll & Hyde, Scarlett Letter, etc.).
But it was difficult to view school reading as pleasurable even when I enjoyed and appreciated a specific work, because the homework and testing ruined the reading experience.
It was still preferable to math, however.
Rather, I came to love the reading I did every night before bed. That was the reading experience that came to define my understanding of what books could give me.
I read David Baldacci novels like a football fan eats buffalo wings during the Super Bowl. I read the James Bond novels, Le Carre, and anything in the spy, espionage, and political thriller genres I could, then got into crime fiction.
Independent reading on my own time, with books I chose and genres that came to be part of my identity, then gave me a greater appreciation for the books we read in class. Not the other way around.
So yes, schools ruin reading. But a student who discovers a love of books on their own will also likely find books they love at school.
Create a reading culture in your home: how to raise a reader outside the education system.
How then do we foster independent reading at home?
A key factor for me was that my parents were not prescriptive or demanding in their approach to my reading ability. For instance, there was never a time when they sat me in a chair, handed me a book, and said something like, “You must read for an hour before you can go outside and play.”
Had they taken such an angle, they would have reinforced all of the negative effects of the education system’s handling of books.
It would have been one more assignment standing between me and the things I wanted to do as a kid. Namely, playing…a creative act with value that should not be underestimated in a growing human being’s potential to eventually love stories.
Instead, they fostered a culture of reading by doing the following:
- Filling the house with books. There was a bookshelf in practically every room. Books were therefore a part of life, and when one day I decided to give it a shot, I had my pick and it was the most natural choice in the world.
- Reading in front of me. Kids have a special talent for sniffing out hypocrisy, such as when their parents make them drink milk at dinner every night when the parents never have milk, but instead choose more fun drinks like wine, soda, coffee, etc. Well, it works the same with reading.
- My parents read a lot, and let me see them reading a lot. Thus, when they said positive things about books and reading, I believed them. And eventually followed their example.
- Again, this created an opportunity for me to willingly and independently come to books, rather than forcing me to do so.
- Emphasizing the importance of books at a macro level. My mother, especially, would always tell me, “Books are the backbone of civilization.” Of course, this holds true when you study the progression of societies and human history. Writing was fundamental to the advancement of the human race. That argument had a lot of mileage with me.
That culture of reading in the home led me to pick up a book one day, and I have never looked back.
How to raise a reader: it’s not as hard as you think.
So my message to parents is this: don’t stress. You don’t have to force your child to read or devise a complex regimen of activities to help them along. Instead, make books a part of their home life. Surround them with reading, and let them come to love books naturally.
Take it from a book nerd who took it to the extreme and became a writer.
Looking for a new thriller?
Check out my supernatural thriller, The Nowhere Game!
Check out my Queen City Crime Series, available on Amazon in Kindle Ebook and print paperback.
The FBI is a popular choice for crime writers, especially in the serial killer thriller sub-genre. If you’re writing about the Bureau, here’s what you need to know:
ATF is an interesting law enforcement agency because the crimes it investigates are so specialized and specific. They feature prominently in my favorite crime novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George Higgins. Here’s what you need to know:
I’ve saved my personal favorite federal agency for last. The US Marshals Service is the oldest federal law enforcement agency, dating back to 1789. Marshals are famous for their acts of heroism in the wild west, as they pursued wanted men with posses of deputies.
See how boring that is? When you write a passage of dialogue, jump right into the relevant situation at hand. Get to the part that advances the story, characterization, and dynamics without any of the fluff that people go through in real life.
The best dialogue writers (Elmore Leonard, George Higgins, George Pelecanos) all practice(d) this secret.
In my own writing and in the research for each novel, I often find major differences between how various criminal subcultures and organizations treat grammar. The same also goes for the different levels and locales of law enforcement communities.
Am I playing with sentence structure enough? Am I incorporating dialect and background in an effective way? Does any passage go on for too long?
Storytelling can be accomplished through a wide variety of media, and technological advances make that more true with every passing year.
The characters “speak” their thoughts directly to the reader in the narration. Instead of the author’s voice on the page, the reader hears the characters’ voices.
Here’s a passage from my second novel, Mr. Moneybags. It is set in the viewpoint of a character named Reggie, a twenty-four-year-old car thief. Note that the narration is in his voice. It utilizes his rhythms of speech, his ideas of correct grammar, and his turns of phrase…not mine.
Authors who prefer present tense often say that it creates high immediacy. Present tense makes it feel like the story is happening “right now.” The effect is magnified when you combine present tense with first person narration, which also heightens immediacy.
In this point of view, the story is told by the narrator, a character who is deeply involved in the story and relays their perspective with “I”.
In the moment, John can’t possibly know what will happen ten years from the time he uses that knife to kill someone. But the all-knowing narrator does, and can include that little teaser for the reader without breaking the rules of third omniscient.
When I edit a manuscript (and before I send a manuscript to my editor) I spend most of my time analyzing every scene in the novel.
I’ll use my first novel, 
Here’s a trick to help you. If you’re a commercial fiction author writing in a popular genre, chances are your climax will focus on the external narrative. In a murder mystery, it will be the epic conclusion of the investigation, as the detective confronts the perpetrator in a life and death struggle.