Parents welcome the Harry Potter-led reading boom - but where do we go from here? Rachel Billington shares ideas on how to turn children on to great literature
Wednesday November 19, 2003 The Guardian
It is extraordinary to think that not so long ago a child described as a "bookworm" was assumed to have a problem. "Take your head out of that book," was the caring parent's command, "and get outside while the sun's shining." As soon as parents saw their children seduced from books by the lure of the dreaded TV, though, the tune changed. Of course, television wasn't all bad - but bookish parents wrung their hands all the same and looked back nostalgically to the hours they had spent hardly breathing with excitement as they left this world for another, mysteriously conjured up by print on page.
So when the JK Rowling phenomenon hit the bookshops, followed by Philip Pullman and others, many parents heaved a huge sigh of relief. Every queue outside a bookshop proved something astonishing: children could read, after all. No more talk of bookworms: the torch under the bedclothes became something for parents to boast about, not to forbid. Six hundred pages in a week? Nothing for a child trying to uncover the next Voldemort atrocity. So is this a happy ending? Children hooked on books again and parents off the hook?
It all depends on the next stage in the reading lives of those hooked readers. My generation of children discovered books from a combination of parental recommendation, reading lists at school and visits to the library, which were then a much more positive force than they are now. But there was no aggressive marketing to switch us in the direction of a particular book. Finding a book was an adventure that involved real choice.
The result was that we humble bookworms read widely, with a catholic lack of discrimination, and only gradually discovered what we enjoyed. By the age of 12, I veered between Streatfield, Nesbitt, Goudge, Trease, Macdonald Fraser, Heyer and absurd romantic fiction. I also read for the first time the adult classics which, over the years following, became old friends: Austen, Bront
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