Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

https://slate.com/culture/2024/05/kids-reading-fun-books-decline-by-nine-crisis.html

by petethomas • 2 years ago

254 476 2 years ago

Growing up - we had a lot of programs externally to encourage us to read. I wonder if kids still have the same kind of things

For example, we had things like a Six Flags reading program, Pizza Hut Book It for free pizza, and hand picked Texas Bluebonnet Books. We also had book fairs.

animal531• 2 years ago

I think the big problem with reading is that it's much slower compared to other media.

Add in the fact that you can also only read for so long before your eyes get tired and then people just naturally veer away from it.

lotsofpulp• 2 years ago

I gravitate to text forums because watching/listening is too slow. Videos/images are good for instruction on how to do something though.

secstate• 2 years ago

This. I find myself tremendously bored watching most videos online these days, scrubbing through to find things that are of interest. There's just so much filler and even when it's not, the information density is very low.

In the meantime, along with reading, I also have longreads in my RSS reader, so every evening I get a few fantastic long form online articles and feel pretty well connected to what's going on.

082349872349872• 2 years ago

If you read more than a little, it's much faster compared to other media.

True about eyes getting tired, though: I try to take a break every few hours.

If I wanted to read, I'd go to school —B-H

soylentcola• 2 years ago

Nice Mike Judge ref there...

Agreed about being faster than a lot of other media - at least in terms of density. Also, the tired eyes thing can be a bonus too. For years I had trouble falling asleep at night and I'd stay up later because I didn't like going to bed until I knew I would conk out immediately.

Now I get in bed and read about a half hour or hour before I want to be asleep. It gives me something to focus on while relaxing and when my eyes get too tired or my mind starts to wander, I know it's time to sleep.

cjf101• 2 years ago

Seriously. This is why I don't like how much knowledge is being locked up in video platforms. I can get what I need to know from text so much faster than video unless the knowledge in question is inherently 3d/visual.

octobus20217• 2 years ago

I disagree with "much slower" but I do agree that it's different. It's not about having tired eyes (what do you use to watch videos?), it's about shortening attention span (you get bored and want to switch to something else). Long attention span is good, short attention span is bad. This is why reading books (long form) is better than reading Twitter or Instagram (short form). And this is why getting kids to continue to read is important.

inasio• 2 years ago

I feel the opposite way, at least from the point of view of absorbing information. I often have a hard time with podcasts and often youtube videos because I feel I could have read the info there in a few minutes vs watching/listening to something for much longer

chankstein38• 2 years ago

I agree but think that's different. That's probably a 10min-read kind of article versus a couple-hour-long book. I agree with the parent comment that reading is just slower. All of the blabbering people do in podcasts and in youtube videos to draw out the length feels like it ends up in books too but it's harder to skip because you don't really know when the important stuff happens. I just turn youtube videos and podcasts up to 2x speed then I don't really have to worry about it.

janalsncm12• 2 years ago

We live in an attention economy but the content that demands our attention is increasingly low value. Often the vast majority of podcast content and YouTube video content could be simplified to maybe 10% of what is there. I have unfortunately seen this in some of the nonfiction books I read as well, which tend to spend way too much time on filler and fluff than actually advancing the main points. This wastes my time and irritates me. (Stuart Russell’s most recent book is majority garbage.)

saghm2• 2 years ago

Not only that, but reading lets you easily jump around to refresh yourself on other parts if you see something reference it much more easily, and you can choose your exact comfortable pace without having to stretch or squeeze the source material unnaturally.

I have a recurring habit of glossing over names I don't recognize when first reading them in a news article and then will frequently need to jump back to find where they were initially referenced when they get mentioned again only with their last name. While this can be a little annoying when reading, it would be far worse in a video; I can't imagine trying to scrub back to the point where someone first was mentioned. At best, the video might have captions (which I'll always have turned on), but it's a lot harder to look at a caption and remember exactly which information came before it and which came after because the text isn't all visible at once.

Detrytus• 2 years ago

On the other hand, reading a novel can take you a few days, but watching a movie based on the same novel takes 90 minutes.

guestbest• 2 years ago

Also the hands get tired holding the book open for long periods

havblue• 2 years ago

I'm not sure if some people think that audiobooks "don't count", but I think they're the only alternative when you have a heavy schedule and a long commute. Plus you can adjust the speed of the playback as needed. So slowness shouldn't be a problem to put on in the car if your kids are ready to read chapter books.

Simulacra• 2 years ago

I think social media, TikTok style short videos etc. are training young people to have very short attention spans. If it doesn't continually provide a Döpamine hit they quit.

nottorp2• 2 years ago

you can also only read for so long before your eyes get tired

I'd say you need some eye correction then. Ever since I got glasses, getting tired by reading means it's time for a visit to the optometrist to update my lenses.

humansareok15• 2 years ago

This is not a bad thing. Kids shouldn't even be exposed to the mind altering dopamine tsunami that is modern media, Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.

randcraw• 2 years ago

I think the bigger difference is that reading a book allows you to stop, anytime, and think. No other medium allows this. When the story takes an unexpected turn or the author makes a subtle point, in a book you have time to reflect and let it sink in. That's precious, especially in a world where all other media has evolved to overwhelm you with oversimplified pap intended to prevent independent thought. Don't think, just react. But with a book, _you_ control where your focus goes, and nobody else.

microflash• 2 years ago

I think the big problem with reading is that it's much slower compared to other media.

Speed is subjective. I read way faster than consuming the same thing with audio or video. Reading also gives me opportunity to wander at a pace I'm comfortable with.

theshrike799• 2 years ago

You can skim through text - a skill many kids today don't have. They really think you need to READ every word.

Just skimming through a long-ass tutorial finding the bit you need seems like a superpower nowadays with the younger generation resorting to watching a 45 minute video instead.

theshrike799• 2 years ago

You really think that a 40 minute rambling video on how to set up, say, Docker and a piece of software on it is slower than the exact same content written with images?

curtisblaine• 2 years ago

Personal experience: when I was a kid, I instinctively knew when a book tried to "teach" me something or instill some world view and I immediately know the intention and found that boring. The really exciting books were those that either didn't try to teach anything or those that didn't make it so obvious. Might it be that the contemporary literature for children is constantly trying to push an educational agenda and kids instinctively despise that (as I did)?

nottorp2• 2 years ago

when a book tried to "teach" me something or instill some world view and I immediately know the intention and found that boring

Entertainment with a message is fucking boring no matter the form. Movies are no better in this respect.

Unless they're done by a genius but then you won't even notice the message.

bluefirebrand• 2 years ago

Before I looked at the article I guessed it was because schools are making reading as un-fun as possible

That's why I stopped reading for fun, probably when I was 15 or so. Seems they've just accelerated it

Sure enough, that seems to be their guess too. Maybe our school systems kinda suck

cheeseomlit• 2 years ago

Agreed, at least in my experience in the US we are conditioned from a young age to associate reading with tedium and monotony. When you have to 'read along with the class', stop after every chapter to write an essay, hyper-analyze every sentence until all the fun of discovery is sucked out, and generally be in an unpleasant and uncomfortable environment as you do it, you will over time associate the activity in general with those negative aspects and avoid it- despite the activity itself being potentially very enjoyable in a different context

RecycledEle2• 2 years ago

When you can read for fun, it's fun.

When your teacher criticizes you for not reading the boring book he/she ordered you to read, you stop enjoying reading and stop reading.

It's the teachers' faults.

barfbagginus• 2 years ago

Not sure about that. I would read for fun instead of reading the assigned reading. The teacher would get mad. I'd continue to ignore them and continue reading my book.

So you can't just blame the teacher. If the books give you something essential, you'll turn to them to escape a harsh reality.

coldtea2• 2 years ago

Kids read 50x as much at times teachers were even more strict and critical of them, so clearly it's not that.

The mass availability of low effort digital entertainment options is what made the difference

RecycledEle2• 2 years ago

My comment is based on my person experience as a student.

nerdjon• 2 years ago

100% this.

School largely ruined my interest in reading until I became an adult and re-found it.

Being regularly told to read boring books, of course any interest in doing it casually was going to go out the Window.

Sure there is value in needing to read certain things from an academic standpoint, Beowulf is a good example. But there was zero reason I needed to read "The Outsiders" when we just watched the movie after reading it anyways.

Just because something is a classic, doesn't mean we have to consume it in its original form to get the meaning.

Instead fill the library with a diverse collection of books, let the kid choose what they want to read, don't rush them, and importantly if it just isn't working let them move on to a new book.

Side note:

I know some people are going to groan at this. But seriously, books based on video games can be a fantastic gateway towards actually caring about reading. It is how I re-discovered by interest in reading as an adult.

johnneville• 2 years ago

Required reading of books I couldn't relate to played a big role in me stopping reading for fun but I don't place that blame on my teachers for it. I doubt they had the freedom to choose which books we were assigned or whether we were assigned books at all.

jimbob45• 2 years ago

When your teacher criticizes you for not reading the boring book he/she ordered you to read, you stop enjoying reading and stop reading.

I've read more books than most people, I think. I certainly was in the top percentile by the time I was 18.

I never once read a book start-to-finish that a teacher assigned to me. When I had a book on my desk that I went out of my way to find at the library on one side and then some random book my teacher thought was good on the other side, I picked my book every time. I'd half-heartedly skim through their book and struggle my way through reading quizzes. The only saving graces were Cliff's Notes, film versions, or if the teacher outright read us the book out loud.

bcrosby95• 2 years ago

At least in our school district, this is not how its done in elementary school. Teachers don't assign books. Either it's completely free choice, or fiction/non fiction, or genre (e.g. mystery).

When I last read about this, it was blamed on 4th grade being the time when you shift from reading just to read, into reading to learn.

octobus20217• 2 years ago

Don't know why this is on HN but anyways.

My youngest will be 9 soon. Finding books for him is pain. I started trying more in the last few weeks, grabbing more or less random things from my local library (beginning chapter books, chapter books). Most of them are series, he liked a few (Galaxy Zack, Time Jumpers, Desmond Cole books), did not like others (Magic Tree House, something called Byte, Code Breakers, and really anything else I gave him). He mostly outgrew Geronimo Stilton books.

They do have book fairs at school and we always go, but we rarely buy anything as it's mostly gifts. We're trying to get book from libraries as opposed to buy them.

They do have an awesome library at school and he spends a few hours per week there and I see that he's taking some books from there, but it's mostly Captain Underpants, Stick Dog, and other comics.

I absolutely DESPISE Dan Pilkey's books (Captain Underpants and Stick Dog) as well as My Weird School (and other Dan Gutman's products), they really dumb things down and basically lead kids away from "regular" (ie long-form) books. I my opinion they can lead to behavior issues in kids, however it's possible that kids simply start reading them during that period when hormones start kicking in.

I have a bunch of books from DK Publishing (coffee table encyclopedias) and leave them an frequented areas of the house, and notice that kids check them up every once in a while, at least that's something. They are designed for people with decreased attention span, if you want to learn about a subject, you read a page or two and you're good.

My older kids stopped reading a lot around that time (~10yo), mostly after reading My Weird School and Captain Underpants and similar crap.

Older kids did go through the entire Lemony Snicket series though (way before NetFlix series came up) so that's something.

My 8yo has an iPad from school (we were forced to get one from school when he did kindergarten remote) but his time is very strictly controlled, and it's only for studying (no games). He does have access to an old XBox but only on weekends and for a limited time. He will not have a smart phone for a long time, that's where we lost our older kids (around 13).

So yeah, it's a major problem...

tsycho• 2 years ago

I agree, and have the same problem.

What books did you end up liking for 9 year olds?

octobus20217• 2 years ago

Just as I said, Galaxy Zack series (he must have been 7 at the time though), Time Jumpers (fairly recently, there's only 4 of them and I don't know if the author will write more), Desmond Cole (about ghosts). But that's pretty much all for the last 1+ years... I'm trying some of the "Scooby-Doo" books, not comics but regular chapter books, and he seems to read them at least. I'm going to try more "grown up" books (just picked up Class Dismissed, it's a winner of some prize or whatever), we'll see how it goes.

But it's honestly really frustrating. I'm older (grew up in the 80s) and we read MUCH more, and I think it's important.

Do you know of any resources/discussions I can look up/participate in?

392• 2 years ago

When I was that age I read basically nothing but Hardy Boys books. Also Alex Rider books and Harry Potter, all out of order.

grepLeigh• 2 years ago

Some of these might be less interesting to a boy at that age, but here are the books/authors I loved around 9 (lots of talking animals, magic, and adventure/detective plots):

Garth Nix Sharon Creech Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Jane Yolan David Clement-Davies E. L. Konigsburg Louis Sachar Avi Brian Jacques Louise Erdich Edward Bloor Susan Fletcher "Reader Beware, You Choose the Scare" Goosebumps (like Choose Your Own Adventure but more modern at the time).

I grew into the kind of avid reader that still reads 50+ books a year. My Mom didn't try to control what I read, even if it was complete junk.

I also adored fact books like the coffee tables you mentioned. I remember having a pulpy "100,000 weird facts" book, both covers torn off because it was used so much. This was before Wikipedia.

octobus20217• 2 years ago

(I'm going to assume you meant "interesting to a boy as opposed to a girl". If I'm incorrect my apologies).

I only have boys so do not have personal experience but I read/heard that girls do and will continue to read more than boys at any age, and the gap is getting worse starting around that time (7-8-9). I do think that some books are directed at girls, but I do see a lot of books directed at boys too (though not recently, Hardy Boys was a loooong time ago). It's just boys are less interested regardless. Not really sure what to do about that honestly...

pomian2• 2 years ago

From personal experience I think don't rush it and worry about it. Reading gets more fun - perhaps because it is more of an individual understanding - (you read alone and to yourself), after grade 4 even better - grade 5 and 6. I would suggest some 'classic' adventure stories: most books by Andre Norton - the time trader series for example; Jim kjergaard - Big Red, later on Zane Grey. Good luck. Have fun with those kids!

octobus20217• 2 years ago

My 8yo partially dislikes Geronimo Stilton books because they're "too old" (they started in 2000s and are now mostly done publishing the new ones). The books you mentioned were from mid-20th century :)

squigz5• 2 years ago

My older kids stopped reading a lot around that time (~10yo), mostly after reading My Weird School and Captain Underpants and similar crap.

Have you considered just being happy your kids are reading stuff they enjoy? If I picked up on this sort of thing from my parents, I probably would have been less inclined to read myself...

hjej• 2 years ago

If it's painful to you, you're doing it wrong. At 8 you should get him to the library and let him chose himself what books he wants to read. Also, you don't have to like the books he choses. You despising his book choice is irrelevant.

octobus20217• 2 years ago

If I just let him do what he wants he just plays on iPads or computers in the library (iPads have bunch of games installed, computers do not have games but you can obviously play Web-based stuff etc). He doesn't care much about books unfortunately. It's my job as a parent to make sure he does read something (I'm trying to find something he likes and something that's more of a long form as opposed to a comic). I do realize that the more I pressure him the less he likes it but I'm doing my best to find balance.

As for choice of books, both Dan Pilkey and Dan Gutman are considered controversial authors and a lot of parents feel uneasy about their kids reading their books. Check parents' reviews on goodreads or any other site, you'll find plenty of negative reviews, it's not just me.

coldtea2• 2 years ago

Don't know why this is on HN but anyways

Well, for starters because HN is not just for programming and startups, things are on HN because they're upvoted (or sometime because it's some YC promotion), and anything that tingles our intellectual curiosity will do (it's even in the site's guidelines).

wiredfool2• 2 years ago

Look at Ursula Vernon/T Kingfisher (at least the kid/YA focused ones). Danny Dragonbreath might be the right age range for the youngest (text + cartoon), and Minor Mage, Illuminations and Wizards Guide to Defensive Baking would be slightly older (chapter book level).

I'd hold off on the fairy tale (dark. weird) and romance ones (paladins) for a few years yet...

Mine have gone through Paolini (Eragon), Sanderson (all of them. damn he writes a lot), Wings of Fire (Tui Sutherland -- Cute, chapters, skews younger)., Scott Westerfield (Leviathian).

bart_spoon• 2 years ago

I think I got into reading the most when I hit about 3rd or 4th grade. I think 8-9 years is when the reading possibilities really open up for kids. Its around that time I and many of my friends got into Redwall and Animorphs, and within a few years Harry Potter and books like the Black Cauldron.

gwbas1c3• 2 years ago

Consider an activity that requires reading. For example, my 8-year-old plays "Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom," which involves a lot of reading. She gets stuck and then Googles hints.

Remember: All children are different. I have 3 kids, and their interest level and approach to reading is very different. My oldest loved being read to starting around 6 months, and we started getting into chapter books when she was 5-6. My other two wouldn't sit still for books until around 18 months, and my almost-6-year-old doesn't have the attention span for a chapter book.

trimblent• 2 years ago

If you want your kids to read books then they should see you reading books.

WarOnPrivacy3• 2 years ago

If my attention was in a book, I'd be looking up to find one on the roof, one trailing blood and one packing pencils into the toilet.

I'd also not be cooking or cleaning or spending the 1000th hour on the phone with the kids insurance provider. This between activities, assisting with 4-6 hours of homework, working, etc.

Reading typically came out of sleep time.

source: father of 5

wiredfool2• 2 years ago

Reading to kids every night early on helps. Not being pressured to read stupid crap in school helps. "You can get a library card once you learn to read" helped. Piles of books lying around helps. Older brothers reading a lot helps, especially for reading recommendations.

(Father of 3, youngest is 14 now. after a while, the biggest problem is keeping them in books they haven't read)

MisterBastahrd3• 2 years ago

I can only speak to my own personal experience, but I was a voracious reader as a child and then sorta just... stopped. The longer life went on, the more I was instructed to ignore or hide my personal feelings and so I just didn't find the characters in the books for my age group, who were largely written by women, to be relatable. There was as large a stretch between the main characters' behavior and what I was taught to do as there was between the real world and Mount Doom. I devoured the entire non-fiction section at my library in the historical and scientific sections by the time I was 10, and then just stopped going because there wasn't a point. None of the books were for me.

I've made attempts to get back into reading from time to time, but I always go into the more rigorous non-fiction areas. I picked up a Brandon Sanderson book and wanted to throw the damned thing against a wall because of how juvenile the narration was. It felt like a very poor apeing of HHTG or Discworld narration without any of the wit.

voidpointercast• 2 years ago

A lot of the same for me, down to reading silly non-fiction books just to read something as a child. This has become nearly vestigial as I've gotten older.

I'm curious what books you felt were 'for' you?

MisterBastahrd3• 2 years ago

Books like Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Brave New World, 1984, Animal House, Treasure Island, The Lord of the Flies, The Old Man and the Sea, etc. made much more sense to me than any of the Judy Bloom style books that are so prevalent. The last of those books I enjoyed was "How to Eat Fried Worms," and then, that only resonated with me because we were forced to participate in a school book dressup day and I realized I could coat crunchy chinese noodles with chocolate and bring them to class.

I was a kid of the 80s and 90s. I grew up outside. I played rough and got hurt and then played rough again. I explored. My parents existed to feed me, clothe me, and yell at me for not achieving enough. Any book depicting a parent who sat their child down to give them sage advice about life was completely foreign to my experience.

com2kid• 2 years ago

Here are some authors to try out instead, biased towards Science Fiction -

Greg Bear - Amazing science fiction author who builds incredible far future worlds. He is asking questions like "what will humanity be like 10k years in the future".

Charles Stross - First off, wonderful characters. His Laundry Files series is like "what is a 1990s geek, complete with a Palm Pilot, worked for a secret government agency that handles occult issues" but over time it gets deeper and the characters get really fleshed out. It is also awesome because you get to see technology move with the time, since the books take place concurrent with our technological progress, so technology like PDAs make way for smart phones.

Elizabeth Bear - Just all around great characters.

Greg Egan - Science Fiction but deeply rooted in real science and math, his homepage https://www.gregegan.net often dives deeper into the math behind his books and includes citations for further reading! Many of his books lack the "science fiction gadgetry" feel (although some have it) if you are trying to avoid that.

Cory Doctorow - He used to be huge in the open source community (not sure, maybe he still is?) his books all explore interesting social issues through the lens of technology driven change.

FWIW many people do not like Brandon Sanderson and I avoid recommending his books.

IMHO all of the above authors have good characters, Doctorow tends to write younger characters (early to mid 20s), but the rest focus on mature characters. Some, such as Stross, let you watch a character start out young and mature throughout the books (I think his main character has gone from his 20s to his 40s, and it shows in how the character acts and approaches issues).

If you really like math, try Greg Egan. Quite a few of his books have the premise "what would be the impact if this odd bit of, real world, complete with citations, math was just a little bit different?" If that is your thing, then you'll be delighted at what he writes. :-D

e.g.

In the universe containing Seth’s world, light cannot travel in all directions: there is a “dark cone” to the north and south. Seth can only face to the east (or the west, if he tips his head backwards). If he starts to turn to the north or south, his body stretches out across the landscape, and to rotate to face north-east is every bit as impossible as accelerating to the speed of light.

Fun mind bending stuff. :-D

LordDragonfang• 2 years ago

Cory Doctorow

Little Brother was, for a long time, my absolute favorite novel. That and Pirate Cinema.

lupusreal• 2 years ago

I just didn't find the characters in the books for my age group, who were largely written by women, to be relatable

Were you reading contemporary books or older books? I found that there's lots of fiction for boys, written by men, from the 19th and 20th centuries. A lot of it is very good, many popular classics like Treasure Island. Edit: I see you mentioned that one.

Aromasin• 2 years ago

Even Sanderson's "adult" fiction can read as incredibly immature at times. Every character seems to have a caricature of a mental illness. Every thought and feeling they experience seems to tie back to it, and it derails the story while taking away from the excellent world-building. I loved the Stormlight Archives to start with, but they became more and more "woke" (as much as I despise using that word) as time went on.

If you're interested in returning to fiction but through the lens of an adult - a little grittier - I'd recommend Joe Abercrombie, Pierce Brown, Dmitry Glukhovsky, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Dan Abnett, and Andrzej Sapkowski.

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

My daughter is 12 now, and reading tons more than when she was 9. The difference is now she has twice daily access to the high school library versus once a week access to an elementary library.

Not sure how much it generalizes, but what would have had her reading more then would have been a well stocked manga section in the elementary library and daily access.

Manga really is an accessible way to get used to reading, and a gateway. She just finished Lord of the Rings.

giancarlostoro2• 2 years ago

My daughters still a toddler, but when she sees me holding a book, she gets hers out too. I taught her to point out what the pictures are, so she does that on any book. If she can read LOTR someday, that'll be something :)

BadCookie• 2 years ago

My 10-year-old did not understand that I was reading a book when I was using the Kindle or Libby app on my phone. He was surprised and excited to learn that e-books that I read out loud to him are available in print! This has disturbed me so much that I am contemplating switching back to physical books in order to role model better (or more obvious) behavior.

All that is to say, maybe kids aren’t interested in reading partly because they don’t see their parents doing it … at least in a way that they understand.

MisterBastahrd3• 2 years ago

One of the problem with a lot of schools is their layout. Yes, they have libraries. But many students have no way to access those libraries during lunch hours except by way of special passes. All school libraries should, by default, be necessarily directly adjacent to the common area so kids can browse during recess in the same way that they are adjacent to school cafeterias.

jobs_throwaway4• 2 years ago

I don't particularly buy any of the explanations given in the article, or ITT for that matter. I had tons of screen time as a child, that didn't stop me from reading a ton then or now. Schools (and I) were just as test-focused back then. I wasn't getting book recs from my peers so that doesn't make sense to me either.

Maybe I'm an anomaly here but I never found the books targeted at children/teens especially interesting. Around 8-9 my mom gave me a book, a couple hundred pages long, intended solely for adults, but it was about something I was passionate about. I loved it and never stopped reading after that.

My advice: if you want your kid to read, give them books they'd be interested in. Not 'age appropriate books', just books. Read books yourself and talk to your children about them. Build a personal library and lend books liberally, to children, friends, family, everyone. A culture of reading and enjoying books is your best bet for instilling a love of reading in your chilld.

aetherson• 2 years ago

Do you have kids?

"Give your kids books they'd be interested in" is kind of classic meaningless advice. Like, sure, of course that's what you want to do -- except, if you have a kid who doesn't have an existing strong reading habit, how do you find books they'd be interested in? Like, that's the goal! You can't just assume the solution.

I have a nine-year-old daughter who definitely does read, but isn't a voracious reader, and I've tried a lot of different things to up the amount of time she spends reading. It's tricky. One of the things that I've found is she's more willing to invest in graphic novels than prose novels, but I don't feel like at this point graphic novels deepen her literacy.

bjornlouser• 2 years ago

You've probably already seen these, but just in case:

https://www.mangaclassics.com

WarOnPrivacy3• 2 years ago

I've tried a lot of different things to up the amount of time she spends reading... she's more willing to invest in graphic novels than prose novels

If you haven't yet, push out beyond fiction. In my experience, libraries have a really divergent collection of large, illustrated volumes.

When I was 5-10 I read comic strip books - but also encyclopedias. Specifically World Book; Britannica was too dry.

note: I've no complaint with graphic novels. Sons 1, 2 & 5 were big into them. One is writing fiction. Two was into physics and anime, is now into psychology and early Japanese film making. Five performs+crafts his own music videos.

Domenic_S• 2 years ago

I have kids, my older is 11 and reads almost whenever she can. She loves to read herself to sleep at night.

We've taken her to the library since she was a baby where we'd find new baby books to read to her. Over time, we stopped picking out books for her and let her wander the isles, picking whatever seemed interesting to her. She usually chooses a wide assortment of things from comics to YA fiction.

My son is much more interested in screens, but he still reads a lot. Whenever we restrict the screens his next default is to read.

We read a lot to both of them as infants & toddlers. We have a couple bookshelves worth of books in the house, but honestly they spend almost their whole reading time on new-to-them library books. We've hit the library checkout limit pretty much every time we go! And it's no waste - every book is returned read.

if you have a kid who doesn't have an existing strong reading habit, how do you find books they'd be interested in?

I'd start by taking them to the library and letting them explore. Chances are they'll find something that interests them!

humansareok15• 2 years ago

how do you find books they'd be interested in? Like, that's the goal! You can't just assume the solution.

What a strange question?

If they are interested in fantasy movies give them a fantasy book. If they're interested in mystery, the same. If they're interested in Dinosaurs, the same. How is this some great challenge? The things you like to read about are the same things you already like... Are you implying you know nothing about your daughter?

ars• 2 years ago

Try the Fablehaven series for her.

For the the mid-teens, Mistborn series.

jobs_throwaway4• 2 years ago

I do. I've given my son who's an avid swimmer a non-fiction book about a group training to try and make the Olympics. I've given my nephew interested in space 'The Right Stuff'. Both devoured the books and went off on their own reading journeys from there.

IncreasePosts2• 2 years ago

I have kids and it seems like fine advice. You find books they'd be interested in by knowing about their hobbies, interests, and personality, and finding books that match that in some manner, and then pitching it to them, regardless of whether it is age appropriate or not.

Of course it is hard to do - at least, harder to do than saying "I have a 5 year old, and this book says it is for 5 year olds, so I will have them read it".

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 2 years ago

I agree with you. Age appropriate usually have terribly boring stories.

To be fair, the same is true for tv shows and movies, I can't stand any "per child" tv show, we moved immediately to disney classics and then onto Miraculous Ladybug (mine are 3 and 5 years old).

As for books, we have a very fun series of "choose your own adventure" books that really hooked them, they love making their choices

quirk• 2 years ago

This is good advice. My 9yr old reads adult fiction, so long as I have read it and don't think there's anything too "adult" in there. I'm saving Heinlein for his teen years lol.

jobs_throwaway4• 2 years ago

Yeah, a bit of supervision at that age is appropriate, but my advice is don't screen their books for too long! If they're mature enough to be actively seeking out mature titles, you trying to gatekeep them isn't going to prevent them reading what they want to for long. Better to let them make their own choices and discuss sensitive topics with them as adults.

jongjong• 2 years ago

I was never very keen of non-fiction books. The reason is because I could usually just watch it in movie format which is a lot less time-consuming.

The last fiction book I read (over a decade ago) was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the reason I read it is because I had watched all the previous Harry Potter films and wanted to know what happens but the movie didn't exist yet at the time. I was hooked and there was literally no other option. I'm sure this effect worked very well in J.K. Rowling's favor.

Some people claim that they prefer fiction in book format because they can fill in the gaps and imagine the worlds and characters however they like... But personally, I prefer getting as much information as possible; visual information is part of it. If I had to choose between watching a film in color or black-and-white, I'd choose color for the same reason... With black and white, I could let my mind wander and assume that the person's clothing is made of gold yarn but I'd rather not as it mostly distracts from the story and those aren't details that interest me.

When I consume fiction, I'm looking for narratives, external perspectives, messages, lessons, principles and insights in a format that is as objective as possible. In book format, there's too much that comes from me, I end up projecting my pre-existing biases into the story and it doesn't feel as satisfying or mind-expanding.

mwigdahl• 2 years ago

I prefer fiction in book format because the depth of characterization, thought processes, internal monologues, etc. allow me to connect with and understand the characters at a level that is impossible when watching an actor portraying that character on screen.

Personally I find the messages, lessons, principles, and insights come through a lot more clearly when I have access to the characters' internal thoughts, perceptions, and reasoning, and you get a lot more of this in the printed version.

mondobe• 2 years ago

I love how condescending this headline is, lol.

WarOnPrivacy3• 2 years ago

Throughout grade school, I had several different environments. Most of them were unsupervised and not regimented. Before class, class, after school, home, out of the house, exploring away from the house, time with friends.

My kids had class and home and sometimes activities. None were unsupervised or non-regimented.

Coming home from exploring and popping open a book is nice. Opening a book and hoping it provides some escape from the 160th hour in a box with adults is desperation.

Izkata• 2 years ago

Yet I can’t help but be worried that the kinds of books that changed my life between ages 8 and 12 are falling by the wayside. Is there room for the thoughtful, serious, beautiful young-person’s novel in 2024? Can you publish Bridge to Terabithia in the age of Captain Underpants?

...Uh, come the 90s, Bridge to Terabithia was a required reading book that I don't think anyone my age cared about. The popular series I remember were, in no particular order: Animorphs, Goosebumps, Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, and Redwall.

I think it's much simpler, adults don't know what kids are interested in. For example, just before that age I was interested in animals and the solar system. Read anything I could find on them, and had no interest in anything being pushed by school or parents. At age 9, I just happened to see Animorphs #11 The Forgotten in the impulse-buy section of our local drugstore and begged my parents for it - for anyone unaware, the Animorphs covers showed kids turning into animals, which was how it drew my attention. That set me onto sci-fi in general, then fantasy - and I've kept reading since.

themanmaran• 2 years ago

in the age of Captain Underpants

Captain Underpants is at least 20 years old now. Becoming a piece of classic American fiction in it's own right.

humansareok15• 2 years ago

It's probably a mistake to think kids need new books to be published. The classics are classic for a reason. There are many childhoods worth of incredible books already available. I'm not weeping for struggling authors. If they write something incredible it will be noticed, if they don't then just like you said Bridge to Terabithia, Nancy Drew, Redwall, HP, The Hardy Boys, Chronicles of Narnia, Eragon, etc, etc, etc. still exist.

saghm2• 2 years ago

...Uh, come the 90s, Bridge to Terabithia was a required reading book that I don't think anyone my age cared about
I think it's much simpler, adults don't know what kids are interested in

Pretty much everyone I know (including myself) who read a lot as a kid but doesn't read much anymore identifies being forced to read things in school as the reason they don't. Being forced to read stuff we didn't find interesting isn't the whole issue though because I think there are things I might have actually enjoyed reading in another context. In my experience, the larger issue is what happened in the classroom alongside the reading. Most if not all teachers I had would give quizzes designed to ensure we kept up with the reading that essentially would pick out tiny random details from the assigned chapters ask us about them, and that took the focus away from actually absorbing the higher-level themes and insights that I'd normally make when reading on my own. Even worse, when discussing things afterwards in the classroom, there was usually a certain analysis or viewpoint that was deemed "correct" that we were supposed to figure out and be able to reproduce when we were tested on the entirety of the book after we finished it. Making me read a book to memorize random details and _not_ have any thoughts of my own on what things meant because I would just get told what to think later ruined any enjoyment I used to have of reading; they might as well have just given me a page of bullet points to memorize than give me an entire book full of pages and pages of stuff to distract from what they actually were trying to make me learn.

AnimalMuppet• 2 years ago

Uh, come the 90s, Bridge to Terabithia was a required reading book that I don't think anyone my age cared about.

Exactly. It's a book adults think kids should read (because literature or whatever), not a book that kids actually care a rip about reading.

gazelle21• 2 years ago

When I was in elementary we had a program where you could read a book and then take a test on that book. If you passed the test you would get a prize from snacks to coupons at restaurants. There were no limits and the book choice was large.

I ravenously read through books at first and would take the test asap. I was gaming the system, but through this I found books I became enthralled with. This was the foundation of my love for reading.

Not sure what my point was, but I wonder if any programs like that exist anymore.

jesterswilde• 2 years ago

I stopped reading because it became a larger part of school. I strongly disliked school, so reading was a part of the thing I strongly disliked. Really, anything they tried to force was soured on me for a long time.

My disdain for school started around 9 or 10

janalsncm12• 2 years ago

Indeed, several people I spoke to mentioned that middle-graders’ lack of phones created a marketing problem in an era when no one at any publishing house has any idea how to make a book a bestseller other than to hope it blows up on TikTok. “BookTok is imperfect,” said Karen Jensen, a youth librarian and a blogger for School Library Journal, “but in teen publishing it’s generating huge bestsellers, bringing back things from the backlist. There’s not anything like that right now for the middle-grade age group.”

This part of the article is very off-putting to me. You don’t need TikTok to find good books for kids. Kids don’t need to see digital advertisements to make a decision. They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy.

The author mentions later on that libraries are being defunded, and this is likely to be the root cause. Rather than spending so many words on speculation it would’ve been nice to see some hard numbers on the subject.

tivert3• 2 years ago

This part of the article is very off-putting to me. You don’t need TikTok to find good books for kids. Kids don’t need to see digital advertisements to make a decision. They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy.

They need a library stocked with "books that kids will enjoy," recently published doesn't have anything to do with it. It's not like filling the school library up with stuff only published in the last 3 years is what we need to get kids reading.

The author mentions later on that libraries are being defunded, and this is likely to be the root cause. Rather than spending so many words on speculation it would’ve been nice to see some hard numbers on the subject.

I doubt that's the root cause. Frankly, all the other things seem more significant: making reading education more test-focused and less fun, screens (in a zillion different ways, subtle and obvious), the pandemic breaking peer-influenced reading, etc. They're all probably working together dis-synergisticly.

I also wonder if there's other missing social components. I remember in elementary school feeling that reading "chapter books" was important step to being more mature. Do kids still feel that way? Of course I also often read pulpy junk that was fun or interesting, not serious.

The OP said:

Connor was more blunt: “Maybe you think a book about a school shooting is really important,” she said, “but kids want to read a fun book. That’s what kids want today—they want to have fun.”

I think that's always been true. IIRC, I always disliked the "important" books I was forced to read for school (e.g. the ones that tended to win important awards from adults and get articles written about them in the New York Times to this day).

faeriechangling3• 2 years ago

It's not like filling the school library up with stuff only published in the last 3 years is what we need to get kids reading.

I’ve heard newer English literature evangelized quite a lot since older English literature gets more and more Eurocentric the further back you go. Usually on political grounds, but also with the claim that newer literature is better and more relevant to especially diverse children’s lives.

joe-collins• 2 years ago

Recent can be a generous time period, but it's not unimportant. When I was very young, I was able to enjoy the Hardy Boys and the Chronicles of Narnia, but even in the 90s, just forty years after the latter was written, they both felt very, very old. When I started finding more current writing, like Redwall or Animorphs, I never looked back.

majormajor• 2 years ago

This part of the article is very off-putting to me. You don’t need TikTok to find good books for kids. Kids don’t need to see digital advertisements to make a decision. They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy.
The author mentions later on that libraries are being defunded, and this is likely to be the root cause. Rather than spending so many words on speculation it would’ve been nice to see some hard numbers on the subject.

You also need "evangelism" from people in a position to influence. That's unlikely to be librarians; and parents/teachers are also not the best-positioned for that.

Overall the costs of social media likely still outweigh the harms here, but it seems to me like they've identified a legimitate "good" usage in encouraging reading in certain niches.

How to replicate that without social media? Gotta make a bunch of local kid "influencers."

smileysteve2• 2 years ago

Or sponsor book fairs and bookit programs ... which have higher costs than digital ads.

janalsncm12• 2 years ago

Watching someone do a thing and doing the thing are different. One of the pitfalls of a lot of recommendation systems is that they don’t know or care about the difference. Watching a video about a book is fine, but then you need to go out and read.

It’s a little like reading an article before commenting. Most people don’t. You will get a lot more out of the conversation if you do though.

keiferski• 2 years ago

I think you dramatically underestimate the influence that TikTok has on young people. If you want something to be popular amongst young people, making it popular on TikTok is a huge way to do so.

Libraries already have thousands, if not millions, of books on hand. I don't think it's a funding issue.

bshacklett2• 2 years ago

There’s a lot more cost involved in running a library than buying books. Staff and building upkeep are big expenses. That said, you want to have some newer books coming in, too, if you want to keep kids interested.

tigen7• 2 years ago

The defunding thing sounds like a bit of obligatory politics.

"In some states, teachers can’t even keep a classroom library because they have to protect themselves from book bans"

Yeah this sounds false.

SpaceManNabs5• 2 years ago

Yeah this sounds false.

I have quite a few teacher friends in Georgia and NYC, and I can tell you that this is the case for them. Organizations that represent teachers have said so themselves. Hard evidence is best though. Do you have numbers to dismiss their claims?

rimunroe2• 2 years ago

What sounds false about it?

A (very straightforward) search surfaced this article https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmq54/florida-teachers-are-...

janalsncm12• 2 years ago

It’s a pretty standard pattern in right wing politics. Defund a thing, it becomes less efficient, politicians claim the thing they broke is better handled by the private sector, defunding continues. We have seen this with pretty much every public good since the Reagan/Thatcher era. The nice things we had in the West have been gutted and sold off for parts.

It should tell you something that these “concerned parents” never pressured Amazon to stop selling the books they complain about. It was never about the books.

SpaceManNabs5• 2 years ago

They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy.

Sure. The next step is helping them making a decision on which book to read and provide a social environment for doing that. Libraries do not really do that and haven't done that even in the early 90s.

janalsncm12• 2 years ago

I am sorry your experience at libraries was so unfulfilling. To me, libraries opened up a world of knowledge. When I was a kid my mom would take my brother and I to the library and just let us loose. As a kid I could spend what felt like days looking at cool cutaway diagrams of castles or reading about how black holes worked. And at the end I took home 5 or 10 of the most interesting books. And it was all free!

faeriechangling3• 2 years ago

If you don’t need TikTok to find good books, how would you recommend finding good books? Even if you’re at a library that doesn’t narrow things down all that much, I’ve been to libraries with several floors filled with bookshelves.

janalsncm12• 2 years ago

Long before TikTok and YouTube and even Google there was the Dewey Decimal System. We use it to categorize books into a hierarchical tree structure. So I think what most people do is to find a category they’re interested in and look inside that category for either subcategories or books they find interesting.

devbent2• 2 years ago

My local library has an "ask the librarian" program.

Tell them what you like to read and they'll email you a list of 10 books to try next.

akira25012• 2 years ago

Kids don’t need to see digital advertisements to make a decision. They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy.

At 9 I had no idea how to go into a massive thing like a library and make a selection for myself. "Word of mouth" made a lot of choices for me when I was young.

MisterTea• 2 years ago

In the NYC public libraries there are kids sections where you just walk around and look at books. If something seems interesting then pick it up and read it. I preferred things with technical pictures so the kids section was quite boring.

triceratops2• 2 years ago

Weird. At 9 I randomly picked whatever looked interesting. If I liked it, I proceeded to read every single other thing by that author.

There was no "word of mouth" because I was the only kid in my class who read for pleasure.

smileysteve2• 2 years ago

At 9 (and before) i had bookit; where if you chose one of many of the sponsored books at the school (or public) library you got a personal pan pizza coupon.

An interpretation is book cos have cut physical benefit advertising for cents on the dollar internet advertisements.

janalsncm12• 2 years ago

That’s ok, part of the joy of going to a library is finding out about new things you’ve never even heard of. And we also already have human recommendation systems, they’re called librarians!

tylersmith• 2 years ago

There will always be people unable to figure out basic skills but that's not a reason to handicap the entire system.

kulahan• 2 years ago

I still don’t, honestly. I’ve never gone to the library when I wasn’t going to get some specific title. I Google stuff first.

karaterobot• 2 years ago

I assume they were talking about the school library, rather than a big library downtown somewhere. Certainly that is where I first fell in love with books. Sometimes all it takes to make someone a lifelong reader is a good librarian with a shelf full of curated picks, eye-catching covers facing out.

As the article notes, school libraries are getting defunded and politicized, which is extremely sad to me, and disproportionately worrying for the future.

codemusings• 2 years ago

Well my school did trips to the local library so that everyone could acquire their paper card for borrowing books. The process of borrowing and the different sections in the library were explained by the librarian and at least in my mind that helped a great deal to seek out books on my own.

renewiltord• 2 years ago

It's interesting that all problems in America are due to "funding". It's actually quite curious because funding was a problem for electric vehicles, funding was a problem for space, funding was a problem for literally everything. But then sometimes people come up and succeed at things that others have described as a funding problem for ages.

I think I can conclude reasonably from this is that the lowest efficiency lever one can pull is funding. Schools with the highest funding have the worst performance. That's because the people there only know one answer to every problem: "funding".

devbent2• 2 years ago

Schools with the highest funding have the worst performance.

It could also be because the schools with the most special / high needs children need the most funding.

Schools in poor neighborhoods need more help just to achieve median results. They need to contend with issues like teen pregnancies, drug use, violence, and kids who don't even have food at home.

Compare those challenges to rich suburban kids and of course the schools in poor areas need more funding.

feoren2• 2 years ago

Schools with the highest funding have the worst performance.

Spills with the most paper towels are the messiest. Why does everyone think they need paper towels to clean up spills!?

janalsncm12• 2 years ago

The billionaires who look for every tax loophole possible certainly know the value of “funding”. They are currently funding their yachts to take them to their superyachts. Private equity controlled health care companies are extracting billions of dollars in profits (read: overcharging people who want to live) leading to “efficiencies” like understaffing and under training which cause thousands of excess deaths every year.

Elon Musk received plenty of government funding for his companies as well. And guess what? BYD sells more cars than Tesla now (a few years ago Elon said he wasn’t worried about them and now they’re suddenly a problem) because of what? Government funding. Governments have also funded the majority of fundamental research which made present day technologies possible. Even today NIST, DARPA, NHS, NSF etc continue to fund science and technology research.

kderbyma2• 2 years ago

I think most of our problems are due to digital marketing....

it's not good for stuff.....something's....but it's not a panacea.... Meta and Google and Tiktok all claim otherwise.....but the cultural effects show.

advertising in the modern age is not good .....

it's not sticky.....

it's vapid and forgotten faster than the fly you accidentally swallowed at some point in your life...

DavidPiper5• 2 years ago

This whole thread - and that whole chunk of TFA - is totally alien to me.

When I was 9, our school had a small library with a librarian (or at least an on-duty teacher), and if you wanted to read something you could always go and ask her what she thought you'd enjoy - and that was on the off chance you couldn't find something that looked appealing.

There are also public libraries where you could do the same thing with your parents in tow.

When did that stop?

turing_complete• 2 years ago

Not even recently published. There a lot of great children's classics.

willsoon• 2 years ago

Reading is a solitary activity. I stopped reading when I was in a relationship, so I have to spend some leisure time together. It was terrible at first, then I found Lars Von Trier films and the burden was a bit better, so... that was it.

Also, society has changed so much.

I grew up in a time when there was no such thing as "children's books". My first reading was some pulp fiction, then some bestsellers, then Dracula. I got to Wuthering Heights when I was n. I found it gripping, but I understood almost nothing. Luckily - crazy luckily - I have a friend, a n-year-old girl, who also read Wuthering and introduced me to it. So I read it again.

65• 2 years ago

Another issue is books are too long. Especially non-fiction books. Book publishers know no one is going to buy a 50 page book, so there has to be filler and excessive detail to make a book long enough to be sellable.

It ends up just being the same thing over and over again. The author explaining minute details about the day they interviewed someone, what the weather was like, extreme details of the interviewee's facial expressions. The author somehow managing to fit the Stanford Prison Experiment in the book. The author going into excruciating detail about the scientific method. The author giving an unnecessary history of the topic back to when humans were hunter gatherers.

It has been a very long time since I came across a non-fiction book that didn't feel like it could've been 50 pages long. I end up giving up a few chapters in.

mejutoco• 2 years ago

I have an heuristic for this. If I can find the book in an airport, it has the filler you mention. Textbooks are another item where this usually does not happen.

How we sleep, the secret to business blabla, consulting tricks, the life of tech visionary, or lifehacks for the 21st century: filler,filler, filler.

OnionBlender• 2 years ago

Self help books are especially bad for this. I was reading Dopamine Nation and the author describes their office:

My office is ten by fourteen feet, with two windows, a desk with a computer, a sideboard covered with books, and a low table between the chairs. The desk, the sideboard, and the low table are all made of matching reddish-brown wood. The desk is a hand-me-down from my former department chair. It’s cracked down the middle on the inside, where no one else can see it, an apt metaphor for the work I do.
On top of the desk are ten separate piles of paper, perfectly aligned, like an accordion. I am told this gives the appearance of organized efficiency.

beezlebroxxxxxx4• 2 years ago

There is something really funny about reading a book about instant gratification and the ways modern technology has altered our demands for it, and then criticizing that book for not getting to the point quick enough.

I do agree that 90% of self-help books are better left as blog posts, though. To be honest, all of these "how to fix your attention span" books have been repeating the same thing for nearly 2 decades now. They don't really say anything new about how to do it; they package the same repeated things in new packaging.

BobaFloutist• 2 years ago

I mean seeing a paperback (or ebook) novella priced at $20+ hurts, even if it's what the publisher needs to charge for the economics make sense.

adolph2• 2 years ago

The book has a distribution challenge in that the content is the same for all people. Sort of like how every programming language book has some content about setting up ones environment, building and the basics that make the rest of the book usable for the person of least experience/knowledge.

Just skim past the umpteenth telling of Abraham Wald and the bulleted bombers and get to the meaningful parts. Even Thomas Jefferson condensed the New Testament down to 84 pages. [0]

0. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-thomas-jeffe...

allturtles3• 2 years ago

It sounds like you're talking about adult non-fiction bestsellers. I don't think that has much to do with the reading habits of nine-year-olds. There are plenty of 80-150 page books being published for this age group.

ghaff• 2 years ago

And there are tons of novellas and short stories in many genres.

faeriechangling3• 2 years ago

Books are trending shorter since the advent of ebooks since a short ebook looks the same as a long ebook. So that DEFINITELY doesn’t seem causal to me.

I’ve also been hearing for a long time how novellas are the future of books and people simply don’t buy them and they remain a niche format and I don’t see that changing.

beezlebroxxxxxx4• 2 years ago

Part of this is because a lot of popular non-fiction (i.e. non-academic) comes from long form journalism. Personally, I like that style but understand that some people don't. The focus on that style is not pure information --- the authors aren't writing a textbook or a self-help book --- the authors are telling a story. I could read the wiki page on the Wright Bros, but I read David McCullough's "The Wright Brothers" because the writing is graceful and elegant and the storytelling is vivid and captivating.

The worst offenders, in my opinion, are the self-help/business books that aspire to long form journalism but are probably better off left as a bullet list on a blogpost. These ones are also infected by the idea that everyone of their bullet points needs a vague connection to some elaborate neuroscientific explanation and a "case study" that is usually some oversimplification. Cal Newport is painfully guilty of this, for an example; but it's everywhere in the self-help genre and especially in "airport" books. (I actually think Newport is a better blogger and occasional NewYorker writer than a book writer. His "insights" aren't that grand.)

Fiction, well, I think a long work of fiction is fine as long as the story can handle it. My tastes tend toward florid, "purple", and quite dense prose and descriptions. I like when an author "paints a scene". On the other hand, I find the recent trend of extremely "to the point", stripped down "minimalist" writing that is very common in a lot of contemporary literature (Rooney, for example) and fantasy writing (Sanderson, for example) to be downright boring and comes off as half-baked. There are probably too many 500+pg books because of publishers though. Fantasy has its own obsession with "epics". 200-250pgs is actually a great goldilocks zone that doesn't get published so often nowadays, but should make a comeback. The big publishers hate them though.

WalterBright2• 2 years ago

Haha. Most books are padded or compressed so they fit pretty much the same volume. A paperback can have dense, small type in it, or larger type with wide margins to "puff up" the size. I've also noticed some paperbacks having thicker pages to make it look like there's more material. I suspect books the same size can have a 2:1 difference in the amount of text.

arvinsim• 2 years ago

Now that we have LLMs, it's possible to trim the fat out of books and condense them to a more concise version.

humansareok15• 2 years ago

Idk about anyone else but my school had a program called Accelerated Reader where you could read a book and take a test about it to score points. Harder books were worth more points, at the time I think Anna Karenina was the "hardest" book on the list. Anyway the drive to win was what initially got me reading a lot.

allemagne2• 2 years ago

I had to take these tests. For me, all it did was turn reading from a fun hobby into homework.

humansareok15• 2 years ago

I know it did that for some of my classmates but I was quite interested in the competition aspect so it drove me to read a lot.

adolph2• 2 years ago

The industry can’t depend on Captain Underpants forever, even though, as [Brenna Connor, an industry analyst at Circana, the market research company that runs Bookscan] noted, “The devil works hard, but Dav Pilkey works harder.”

"Book people" know why 9-year-olds stop reading. "We have met the enemy and he is us.” [0] (which my child read from the reissue [1]).

0. https://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2022/04/we-have-met-the-enem...

1. https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/walt-kelly

gwbas1c3• 2 years ago

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have.

I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my homework?)

Once I was out of college, I rediscovered reading.

gffrd• 2 years ago

This was my experience as well. Loved reading when I was younger, but lots of assigned reading from elementary onward poisoned the well, so to speak.

In retrospect, it's surprising how rigid the required reading was at my school: no choice in the material whatsoever, so the most important engine that drives reading (curiosity) was held out of the equation.

bluerooibos• 2 years ago

rediscovered reading

Any tips? I didn't, somehow. After leaving high school, then university, my brain went into full on "be productive all the time" mode. My brain somehow doesn't think reading is a good use of my time, so I've settled for audiobooks when falling asleep or on long drives.

The last book I was able to devour and actually enjoyed was the Harry Potter series, which ended just before I went to university.

imzadi3• 2 years ago

Well, first, audiobooks totally count.

Have you tried Dungeon Crawler Carl?

gknoy3• 2 years ago

Seconding the "audiobooks count" that Imzadi said, I'd like to note that the Martian audiobook is exceptional, and I've heard that others by Weir are excellent as well.

You might enjoy reading _short_ novels. I really liked the "All Systems Red" series, each of them feels short enough to read in a day. If you enjoyed Harry Potter, you might also enjoy the Invisible Library series, or maybe the Harry Dresden novels. They both felt like fun-pulpy romps through magical worlds.

Maybe you can convince your brain that reading at bedtime is a good use of time because it promotes healthy sleeping by not being on a screen. ;) (It hasn't worked for me, I still have a backlog two shelves long.)

octokatt• 2 years ago

It sounds like you enjoy books, the problem is convincing yourself you deserve to take time to read them. To quiet that anxiety:

The habit of reading is a meaningful way to meditatively intake large portions of information. Reading helps with creativity, focus, and communication. Reading light-hearted, entertaining books increases these skills while preserving focus for work in a way that reading the latest O'Reilly book does not, while making reading non-fiction books in the future easier because you've been practicing reading.

Separately, humans are not machines. In general, we aren't wired to constantly be doing things, and taking time to play or to enjoy stories or to do absolutely nothing is an entirely necessary maintenance task.

Removing joy and rest from your life for productivity is the biological equivalent of accumulating technical debt. This debt can intensify until you need a complete rewrite; when this happens, it's called burn out, and it's kinda really bad.

iknowSFR• 2 years ago

Try Brandon Sanderson novels.

General change to my habits has been that if I’m not feeling a story, it’s okay to put it down. The amount of reading I have trudged through because I was afraid of quitting…

nullhole• 2 years ago

One key thing is: don't feel like you have to suffer through reading an entire book if you don't like it. If it's a chore to read it, find something else - different author, or different type of book.

chrisan2• 2 years ago

I wouldn't call audiobook "settling", I enjoy them more than books with a great narrator.

What got me back into reading was Harry Potter. I hadn't read a book for fun since middle school and had grown to loathing reading of any kind from all the assigned reading. (just give me the cliff notes).

HP was new, all the rage, and wife convinced me to give it a try (she had always been an avid reader). I had maybe 3 books to catch up on and I read them all back to back and was eagerly awaiting the 4th. We'd do midnight releases and each buy our own book and didn't sleep till we were through.

dumpsterdiver• 2 years ago

Setting aside time for relaxation and leisure activities is highly productive, but unfortunately that isn't something that becomes obvious until your work visibly suffers from "all work and no play". The costs of overworking yourself truly are insidious. It really is akin to a rogue wave - you don't know how deep it runs until it finally hits.

gwbas1c3• 2 years ago

> rediscovered reading
Any tips?
The last book I was able to devour and actually enjoyed was the Harry Potter series

Actually, it was Harry Potter that got me back into reading. I read the first 5 books over the course of 2 weeks the summer after I graduated college.

In some cases I'd see an interview on late night television and read the book the guest was promoting. More recently I read a book that was discussed on the radio during my commute.

In other cases, there was a subject I wanted to learn about, so I'd read books about the subject, or biographies on people who were known in the subject matter.

Sometimes I'll see a movie / TV show based on the book, and like it enough to read the book.

And: J. K. Rowling's new series about Coroman Strike (written under a pseudonym) is excellent. Read it slowly, though. I'm also slowly re-reading Harry Potter to my kids and it's a lot more enjoyable in bits instead of as a binge.

pomian2• 2 years ago

I would up vote trying audiobooks. They are great for traveling, also cleaning up and other chores. Classic narrators make everything fun to listen to. There are voices for lulling you to sleep. Others to make the stories exciting. The Harry Potter books have two narrators -they are both great, in different ways. Lord of the rings is much more fun in audiobook format. Try to find audiobooks read by Simon Vance, for example - he reads the Master and Commander series, and the original James Bond series. Have fun.

wonger_• 2 years ago

I'm not an avid reader, but I've rediscovered reading in the past couple years. A few tips that help me:

1) Keep a list of book recommendations mentioned from HN, podcasts, friends, etc. Eventually, some will be recommended twice or more, and that may be enough to tell your brain "this will be worth it."

2) Try non-fiction if you're usually a fiction person, or vice versa. I grew up enjoying only fiction. But now I realize I enjoy non-fiction a lot more.

3) Don't stick with boring books for more than a couple chapters. I've been using thriftbooks.com, so it's affordable to toss a few dollars away and try again.

nicbou3• 2 years ago

- Try something entertaining instead of something useful. Pick books out of interest, not out of pragmatism or obligation. If a book doesn't work for you, try another.

- Make it a special time. Start your bedtime routine early, light some candles, make tea and have a go at it. Or sit in a nice café, or after a nice picnic. I love reading myself to sleep, or with tea on the balcony in the morning.

- Remove distractions. I read on a disconnected iPad with no internet and no apps except for reading and notetaking.

If you want to put it in productivity-over-everything terms, reading before sleep is a really good way to wind down and get solid sleep. It's also a great way to build vocabulary, get different perspectives, and enjoy idle time without doomscrolling.

dageshi• 2 years ago

Yeah, don't read "worthy" stuff, or things to enlighten yourself, find your particular brand of entertaining trash and mindlessly consume it.

I recommend bad litrpg and progression fantasy personally. Mother of Learning is a good one to start, it's free on royalroad.com or available on Kindle.

prisenco3• 2 years ago

| Any tips?

Here's a trick that helped me after a ten+ year hiatus and having my attention fried by social media:

A lot of people who have lost their attention span to technology will find themselves reading but not absorbing, their mind wandering, until they realize they'd "read" 3 pages and don't remember what happened.

So read slow and with purpose, but most importantly at the end of each page, ask yourself what you just read and have a conversation with yourself about it. This helped rebuild my comprehension and focus. This is similar to how English classes will read a book as a class: Reading then discussion, reading then discussion. But instead of as a group, do it as an internal dialogue.

NegativeLatency• 2 years ago

Find a nice local book store and go have a look around at what looks interesting to you.

big_whack• 2 years ago

My reading dropped off for years until I got a kindle. The kindle made reading way more convenient and portable. Totally changed my life.

em-bee8• 2 years ago

another vote for audio books.

i was an avid reader in my youth but stopped when i entered university (and got a computer (guess where i spend most of my time instead of reading books ;-))

about a decade ago i discovered audiodrama, short story audio magazines and finally whole audiobooks. i mostly listened to them on my commute. later when i had no commute i started going for walks (to get out of the house and move) and i also listen during housework or other mundane tasks. i tried listening before going to sleep, but that didn't work because i would doze away and miss sections while hearing others. that meant hi had to relisten the next day to catch what i missed.

i get about an hour of listening time on average, sometimes two, when i have a good daily routine, less otherwise.

one hour per day is enough to listen to 2-3 books per month. i alternate between all three types so i usually only get one book in a month, sometimes less. but that adds up too. my reading list has almost 80 titles. with an average of 10 hours per book you can finish a whole book in a month with only 20 minutes per day.

mbesto• 2 years ago

In my mid twenties I had a mundane 30 minute commute in a crowded London tube which meant no internet (maybe thats different now). I cranked through so many books in that ~2 year timespan.

tpmoney4• 2 years ago

If you're into fiction, can I suggest looking for short story magazines in your preferred genre. Look novels are great and all, and I love devouring a book that really hooks into me, but the modern publishing landscape is full of 500+ page books that are part 3 of a 48 book series. That can be overwhelming and certainly difficult to drag yourself into if you're not in the habit of reading.

Sort story magazines introduce you to multiple authors and multiple stories, most of which could be read in 30 minutes before bed, and give you a chance to enjoy reading for fun without committing to a who "extended universe" of material you feel like you have to know.

If SF&F is your preferred genre, "Asimov's", "Analog", and "Fantasy and Science Fiction" are old staples that are still being published. "Locus", "Lightspeed" and "Strange Horizons" are also options, with Lightspeed and Strange Horizons being relative newcomers to the field. weightlessbooks.com carries a couple of those and some magazine in other genres too if SF&F aren't your jam.

lupire5• 2 years ago

Quit your job.

It's not reasonable to do a cognitively demanding job all day and then expect to do cognitively demanding leisure at night. Unemployed people are great readers.

Aerroon3• 2 years ago

Maybe it's a problem of taste? Maybe you don't like the books you've tried to read because of the contents of the book?

From what's popular these days I think you should try reading: The Martian and Cradle. If you don't like it then stop reading and go for something else.

If you want to try a lot of different stuff I would recommend trying web novel on sites like RoyalRoad, Web novel, Scribblehub. Just pick something, read a bit. If you don't like it, find something new.

tarsinge• 2 years ago

Regarding time reading is faster than listening. Also way more efficient than movies, series or video games. I can’t play story based video games anymore like Witcher 3 because at one point I’m like I’m wasting so much time compared if I was just reading the book.

Also books are less isolating than listening, for example if you are in a park with nature sounds.

If you enjoyed The Expanse you could try the last 3 books. If you haven’t read for a long time it’ll be hard at first to stay focused but by the middle of the book you should hopefully get the feeling of wanting to pick the book anytime like a new episode of the show just dropped.

prawn2• 2 years ago

Read when you're fresh (set your alarm earlier and read before you get out of bed) rather than when you're tired at the end of the day. Use a habit tracking app (mine is Streaks on iOS). If tired, walking around the house while reading ticks off pages and steps. Read books you like; quit anything that you feel is a waste of time. Read while eating breakfast if it's not antisocial. Pick shorter books to get momentum (Old Man and the Sea, Into the Wild). Read on your phone, so it's always an option. Put your Books app prominently on the home screen and relegate social media apps out of view.

WalterBright2• 2 years ago

I avoided all optional English class in school. But I still read at least one book a week, sometimes two.

bamboozled• 2 years ago

I never really had any homework, or I never did it. I never read for pleasure either. I don't think it's that, but I get your point. Too busy = no time for reading for fun

naasking• 2 years ago

Not just no time, but making even otherwise fun things mandatory with a volume that's overwhelming can suck the fun out of it and/or make it seem dull.

boringg• 2 years ago

When can we change our education to promote better educational outcomes instead of training for the test or alternatively being devoid of fundamental knowledge/skills? It feels like we should be progressing in this area much faster then we are. Yes - i know - its way to broad of a question.

kevindamm• 2 years ago

I'm sure it's more complicated than this but something that definitely has had an influence -- when budgets for a school district are determined by how many students pass vs being left behind, there is an outsized incentive to prepare students for the test instead of for more broadly reasoning or for enjoying the practice of learning.

flawsofar• 2 years ago

Indeed. My love for reading went Gone With The Wind.

swayvil• 2 years ago

Some of us determined that school is something to be avoided. To squeak through it with absolutely minimal effort. Never do the assigned reading. Never do the homework.

Which leaves mountains of free time (an irreplaceable commodity, you will agree) for reading whatever the heck you like.

I like science fiction.

zdragnar• 2 years ago

I had plenty of assigned reading and half-assed it because high school classwork was not hard l remotely hard. Writing an acceptable book report was trivial with only some brief scanning.

I still read for fun, but stuck to fiction.

somenameforme• 2 years ago

I had a similar, but different, experience. My issue is that in school I approached reading as a task to be completed in the most efficient manner possible - consuming as much as I could, as rapidly as I could, while ensuring an ability to regurgitate on demand. So I never really got to experience the joy of actually reading; in many cases I never even actually thought about what I was reading. So many books have amazing moral tales, metaphors of major events, and so on - yet one can completely consume books and remain absolutely clueless to what you're really reading.

Then as I aged, at some point I ended up getting into classical literature somehow, and now that I actually "got it" and could see and understand what it was saying - beyond the words themselves, it became a complete joy to read. For instance reading "The Republic" in modern times can make one think Plato was a prophet more than a philosopher. Or reading Aristotle's "Politics" can give one such an incredible amount of insight into thinking in the past, society, and even into your own thoughts. Or reading Aurelius' "Meditations" while bearing in mind these were the inner thoughts, never meant to be published, of not only one of the greatest leaders in history, but also arguably the single most powerful man alive at the time. It makes reading feel amazing. Another less well known example would be The King's Mirror [1]. A Norwegian text from 1250 that was a training/philosophy manual, in the form of a Q&A, intended for King Magnus VI. Highly recommended.

Now I see things like middle schoolers being assigned Animal Farm and I just kind of sigh, though it's not like I can think of a better solution!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konungs_skuggsj%C3%A1

RealityVoid• 2 years ago

I fully agree with your point, and your experience is similar to mine in a sense.

I got lucky in never "bending" to the task of reading because I had to, just reading the school curriculum books if they were interesting to me. And I enjoyed reading greatly. But some books Ichose to read I slogged through and could not enjoy them because of my lack of maturity and perspective. Revisiting them revealed a lot more depth. And my reading of them grew with my understanding of the world. So I guess the experience is normal. And I wonder if I did not slug through those books at that time if I would have ever reached the insight I had on subsequent reading.

I am certain things from a good book stick with you, even if you don't recall it explicitly. It just lingers there in the back of your head, like bricks that are piled up on each other until you don't see them anymore but you do see the wall they form.

pests• 2 years ago

Any book or movie that I enjoy I end up doing a deep dive on it's author, their situation in life, what was going on in the world at the time it was written, etc just to get a context for what may have inspired the creation. Sometimes a single detail about someone's past can instantly click the meaning or moral or conflict they were trying to portray.

nothercastle3• 2 years ago

It’s not just homework it’s outside activities… but also the time spent at class is often wasted so there are not enough hours in the day to do everything.

godelski• 2 years ago

And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my homework?

Not to mention that we're reading right now...

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have.

Yeah. My nine years old goes to a school where there's no homework. She now reads a lot: kids at school all shares any cool book they read and then they all want to read it. Today she brought back a brick and started reading it. She devours book.

gnicholas2• 2 years ago

Funny, my 4th grader has basically zero homework. She goes to a 'good' public school in Silicon Valley, for reference.

zikzak2• 2 years ago

Same, but in our case he's doing it all in class. The kids that can't get it done or choose other activities are taking it home.

nytesky• 2 years ago

Out elementary and middle schools have a no to low homework policy. By high school the most they assign to non AP courses is 15 min per class.

Only assignment is reading 30 min a night, any book they want (including graphic novels). Yet that does not foster a love of reading.

I had a ton of homework, but still read a book a week (though I did not do sports, only band, so had way more time than most mainstream students in that regard).

My reading waned when I had kids, basically as working parents I am always too exhausted to read, I always doze off. So I can’t set a good example, which I wonder if that is part of the problem — my mom was always reading.

btilly3• 2 years ago

Our? Where?

My kids had far more than that.

calvinmorrison2• 2 years ago

15 mins x 7 periods so 2 hours of work after working from 7-3, some light sport or after school activity until 5. Home, dinner, and more work? Absurdity.

kqr2• 2 years ago

My reading waned when I had kids, basically as working parents I am always too exhausted to read, I always doze off. So I can’t set a good example

I don't know if you want to set a good example so this advixe is certainly unsolicited, but in my case reading really took off after having children. First when they were tiny and needed to be carried/pushed around which is great for reading, and now that they're toddlers and I'm in the habit, I squeeze it in where I can.

I hope we can read together more as they get older. I'm really looking forward to re-reading some classics like the Hobbit and the books about Narnia. For every year, the space of literature they are capable of expands massively.

giantg2• 2 years ago

I think a lot of it is what goes on at home (surprise, this is basically for all education). I know I did reading as part of my schoolwork and homework. The reading I most remember was during the summer. A few were summer work related and needed reports, but the book choice was open ended. Many were not school related but encouraged by my parents.

alpinisme• 2 years ago

Is 30 minutes really the amount of novel reading we find unacceptable these days? I’m not asking quite as snarkily as that sounds.

Do you think the problem would be alleviated if the hours of class time were shorter and (maybe) handed over to a study hall period or even to just being sent home? In college I know the theory is supposed to be that one hour of class time equals two hours of homework (though that rarely happens in practice, in my American experience). But high school has far more hours of class time.

tpmoney4• 2 years ago

For me as a kid who loved reading and fell out of it by the time I finished school (and then re-found that love decades later), the biggest contributing factor wasn't 30 minutes of reading for school. It was forced reading of books that were uninteresting to me in the first place, and then having to engage with those books in a wholly artificial way.

There's a lot of interesting things to be gleaned from books and certainly expanding students horizons is not in and of itself a bad idea. But school reading is painful, whether it's 10 minutes or 4 hours. You're given pre-selected material with pre-selected lessons to be taken from that material. You are expected to write summaries that explain why the curtains in the foyer of this book were blue (regardless of whether there's actually a reason the author did that or if the lesson planner just hallucinated some meaning out of thin air), and then discuss obvious lessons in non-fiction materials as if there was any other purpose to writing the book in question except to present that lesson. Sometimes you're given books to read that match whatever the current hot social topic is, again without regard to the quality of the books, and then expected to regurgitate the correct opinions on that topic as if the book presented those opinions, and again without regard to what the book actually said (or failed to say).

Reading in schools is presented and treated with the rigor of a mathematical proof, and the soullessness of dispassionate scientific observation of dying rats. It should be no wonder that what that is the experience of children with reading, so many fail to find a hobby or pleasure in it. We don't seem surprised when most students don't do mathematical formulas in their spare time after learning it in school, why should reading be any different?

__MatrixMan__2• 2 years ago

Several high school teachers I know don't assign long reading sessions because their students are dealing with some kind of unstable home life (or are homeless) and don't have an appropriate setting for it outside of class. That is, they avoid it because it injects a class bias into their grades.

Given that, making space within the school day for such things seems like a good idea.

everforward4• 2 years ago

Half an hour is fine, it’s really the cumulative volume. If a kid has 7 classes and each gives half an hour of homework, that’s 3.5 hours of homework. Add on the classes and they’re “working” 11.5 hours a day or 57.5 hours per week, every week.

That would be concerning for adults, it’s well into burnout territory. Then we want to act surprised when kids don’t want to read on their own and only want to play video games, as if all us adults are working 60 hour weeks and then excited to keep doing our job in our free time.

My novel approach would be to cut out a bunch of shit that kids don’t strictly need and hope that gives them the time and freedom to explore those things on their own.

We do not need 12 years of history classes. They’re nice to know, but widely forgotten anyways. That could probably be cut to like 4; I do not and will never need to know about Sumerian burial rites.

We do not need most of the flowery English classes. Reading comprehension is important, identifying symbolism is not. No one has ever asked me to check if an email contains a motif.

Much of our science classes are generally useless; chemistry comes to mind. I have never, even once, used anything I learned in chemistry. I know too little to do anything practical with it, and yet it was a year long class.

The other option would be to just kill summer break and use that time for teaching instead of homework. I don’t care for that, though. In a decade we’ll be back to having homework and summer break isn’t going to come back.

cbsmith• 2 years ago

That's not exactly a new phenomenon though. "Decline by 9" is a comparatively new thing.

btilly3• 2 years ago

And what is the value of that homework for learning?

Close to zero! A lot of the time it is done wrong, which just cements wrong ideas that need to be unlearned.

It's only jobs are to be PR about how rigorous school is, and to hurt underprivileged kids whose parents can't help with homework. :(

shannifin• 2 years ago

I confess I mostly just read cliffsnotes and sparksnotes. Felt a little guilty about it at first, but it helped me ace the tests, and saved a ton of time.

throwaway20376• 2 years ago

I never understand why we are forced to read so much of the literary canon. Most of it is so hard to read, and so unenjoyable. Many of them could be re-written in a more enjoyable way for young children, through teenagers. I am exactly like you: I hardly ever read for pleasure when I was younger unless there was a blatant bride ("award") awaiting me. Most of the time, I was underwater reading some garbage prose from 1850 that doesn't stay with me today.

lupire5• 2 years ago

Which books of the canon did you read that you found to be garbage prose?

moregrist• 2 years ago

As an alternative perspective, I am glad that my middle and high school curriculum included several works of Shakespeare, especially Macbeth and Hamlet, and several 19th century classics.

They really do require time, they’re hard to make time for, and while reading them wasn’t exactly fun, I’m glad that I did it. Many of the themes are timeless, the prose is elegant if difficult, and there are cultural references to these works everywhere.

They form a big part of the English speaking world’s cultural history. I think it’s worthwhile for children to be exposed to that history.

And if not then, when? I couldn’t make myself do the work now; I’m too busy and tired to read anything but easy/fun fiction after work. And I’m not sure I would have had the focus then if it hadn’t been assigned. Sometimes education isn’t fun or easy. That doesn’t make it less valuable.

Aidevah• 2 years ago

Very true. Here's Dr Johnson:

What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.

teeray• 2 years ago

I also went to a private college prep school, and the workload was practically abusive at times. I remember some days when I’d work on homework during class, get home, then continue working on homework clear until 3 or 4 AM. Then it was back up at 6 AM to go back to school. Some nights were light and I got to bed at 12p-1a. The weekends following the hard weeks were mostly nonexistent because I was unconscious for most of them.

phone86753094• 2 years ago

Surprise, surprise - when you work somebody 60-80 hours a week they don't find things fun when they get home and are just trying to recover.

Modified3019• 2 years ago

Another thing is the mandated reading comes with punishment attached. One goes into it knowing that they’ll have to puke out some key points, contort bullshit into an intro-body-conclusion format, or worse, overanalyze it for “meaning”.

Early in high school among other things I had to read was “The Veldt”. Of course I hated dealing with it like everything else. I couldn’t have even told you who the author was a few weeks after the assignment.

In late high school, I discovered Ray Bradbury as I began exploring my local library, branching out from comics (Calvin and Hobbes, pogo, bloom county) and nonfiction books into fiction. He quickly became one of my favorite authors due to the sheer volume of short stories he had. Many were good, some were bad, and some were great. It was a bit of a pleasant surprise to encounter “The Veldt” again without a teachers whip at my back. It was sad to finally work my way through the last of what he wrote knowing there would be no more.

WaxProlix• 2 years ago

You've almost certainly come across them by now, but his novels are fantastic. I started with The Martian Chronicles and then The Illustrated Man, but ended up loving Something Wicked This Way Comes and even Dandelion Wine.

There's something about good fiction and youth that just went together so well -- maybe people who did a lot of, say, swimming in their formative years feel that way about "good swimming" and youth, but I have to believe that good fiction would still trump most everything else for the time period.

knallfrosch• 2 years ago

>overanalyze it for “meaning”.<< I doubt overanalyzing actually happens. But pupils, including younger me, just don't understand how much more work and thought have gone into the legends they are reading. Yes, it's a 500 page tome. No, neither the blooming flower nor its color on page 356, line 38 are "random" and them symbolizing the meaning of life isn't "bullshit." Yes, a work like this happens only once a decade on one continent. That's exactly why it's one of the maybe 20 books that you read in full during your schooling.

leokennis2• 2 years ago

I loved the approach my “high school” (in The Netherlands) took around 2002: you had to pick a few books from a list of books the teacher read. Then read those books and have a 30 minute “free format” discussion with the teacher about them. She’d ask for shared themes between the books, or differences in the way the stories were told, what it showed about the approach or background of the authors etc. Basically a teacher-student one-time book club.

Aerroon3• 2 years ago

I stopped reading books because of mandatory reading.

When I graduated from high school one of the thoughts on my mind during the ceremony was "YES!! I will n e v e r have to read books again!!"

I also stopped reading around age 9-10 for fun.

My 'favorite' book during school was Crime and Punishment. I didn't like the book, but I knew the teachers liked it. So if it ever came up I 'liked it very much'.

Many years after school anime -> manga -> light novels -> web novels got me back into reading. Now I spend far too much time on reading, but I don't think I will ever read fiction in my native language again.

Grimblewald• 2 years ago

As an adult who does a gargantuan amount of reading for a living - while work is busy i cannot fathom reading for fun but during breaks I start up again. To me this is all quite sensible and a bit bit of support for the argument we need to slow everything down a bit. Fix work-life balance accross the board.

jgalt212• 2 years ago

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have.

Probably this, but also this. Kids don't even show up for school post-pandemic

36% of NYC public school students were chronically absent last school year

https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2023/9/6/23862246/nyc-publ...

beaeglebeachh• 2 years ago

Obtaining information through books is like trying to put out a fire by sucking water out through a straw. The printing press was great but it's a slow and constrained way to get into from the greatest minds. I read voraciously as a child but when I came to university I pretty much stopped reading when the experts were there to teach in real life using all the senses.

If I were a 9 year old today I'd probably pick YouTube over reading. When I built my house I found myself learning way faster watching tradesmen and listening to them on YouTube than having to suck that information through a tiny straw that is reading a book . I find myself truly hating reading now, far too inefficient.

petercooper• 2 years ago

I read a lot when I was young and a big motivating factor for me was the natural progression to reading grown up books and works of literature with more interesting plots and subject matter. Nowadays, there seems to be more commercially-driven infantilization of entertainment where comics and books for kids are no longer a stepping stone but an end destination. My teenager only reads manga and comics which can be very deep and cover mature topics (unlike anything I could get my hands on in the 90s) but are still, ultimately, not novels. I haven't decided if this is a good or bad thing - it probably just 'is what it is' and I'm getting old.

beezlebroxxxxxx4• 2 years ago

I agree. Looking back at my own reading as a kid, I worked my way through the "age appropriate" material really quickly, in part, because those books simply weren't that interesting. They were more about learning to read. Once I got through those kids books (and I saw them as kids books even when I was a kid), I moved to "adult" books as soon as I could because they are better novels, and I could tell that right away, with more complex stories, better characterization, better prose, different settings, and a real sense of scale and ambition.

A lot of it comes down to context: my parents were and remain voracious readers. They read all the time and have strong opinions about books, and I wanted to read what they did and have strong opinions about books in the way that they do. That sensibility was something they taught and which I grew up in. I could just as well see the absence of that having an effect.

farceSpherule• 2 years ago

My idea of reading for fun as a kid, and even now, included(s) reading technical manuals, research papers, encyclopedia, or other materials where I am gaining knowledge.

I have always hated reading fiction and never saw the point in wasting time on it. I would prefer to waste that same time on watching a movie.

rossant2• 2 years ago

Ha! Same.

skydhash4• 2 years ago

Fiction can be nice. But the hardest is finding good books. I like computer science and electronic books and finding good materials to explore the fields is relatively easy. They're more dense so I can use them for a longer period of time. Finding a good fiction book is not that easy (even though I restrict myself to Fantasy and a little bit of SF). I have a list of 153 series (some I still have to explore) collected over 3-5 years. I've read more, but that's basically the ones that warranted a reread. And even then some are just for light reading.

bdcravens• 2 years ago

When I was in high school, I was a voracious reader of Star Trek novels. I'm now 47 years old, and as a birthday treat, I decided to go into Barnes and Nobel to find one to read (I haven't read anything other than technology books in many years, and rarely even then, since most good information is online)

I found like 2 or 3 (back in the day, there were at least a dozen or two to pick from at any time). The sci-fi section was a bit smaller, to replace the huge manga and other graphic novels section, which was absolutely huge. Many of the sci-fi titles that were there were taken up by novels that have been made into movies.

jerojero• 2 years ago

I had a teacher in school who decided the best thing for people to read is to simply have the students choose the book they wanted to read for the month.

She'd then read the book and make a short quiz about it. She had several classes so she'd have to read a lot of books every month. But after a while books start to repeat, after all, kids will mostly get together and form groups to read certain novels they're interested in. And most of my classmates would all choose a sort of "minimal effort" book.

All in all, this is an experience I still remember to this day; even though it's been 15 years.

If we want children to read then you need a similar approach, a big part of the fun in reading is actually finding a book to read. The children should be motivated to find books they want to read and then share it with their peers; then perhaps the class can decide which of the books they will be reading together.

INTPenis• 2 years ago

I'm 40 but I think I know, from personal experience, why kids stop reading.

A video game in the 90s was 10x more exciting and immersive than most books, to me.

Today it's at insane levels of over-stimulation.

A 30 second tiktok clip can give you the same type of knowledge that a 300 page book can, but it cuts to the chase, and doesn't bury the lead.

Not only life-lessons or hacks either, teenagers are producing entire short stories that follow classical formats of drama and comedy.

What we thought was insightful and revolutionary knowledge is now conveyed to a 9 year old at breakfast.

thefaux• 2 years ago

A 30 second tiktok clip can give you the same type of knowledge that a 300 page book can, but it cuts to the chase, and doesn't bury the lead.

Perhaps, but if that is true I highly doubt that you can actually absorb the information in 30 seconds. Doubly so if you quickly move on to the next thing, as tiktok pushes you to do (I guess? haven't used myself).

IncreasePosts2• 2 years ago

No, a 30 second tiktok clip cannot give you the same type of knowledge that a 300 page book can. That is such a silly thing to say, that I can only imagine you heard it on tiktok.

skeaker3• 2 years ago

To play devil's advocate, it has become common to simply read a plot synopsis on something like Wikipedia rather than engage with the book/movie/show/etc. be it for lack of time or interest. This brings one up to speed with the content of the media and is often interesting enough to be worth doing while also taking 1/1000th of the investment. Such a synopsis could be reasonably condensed into a thirty second video. Obviously this is not an equivalent experience to engaging with a 300 page book, but the information conveyed is undeniably the same type of information. Having such information packed so densely, if imperfectly, was unheard of even twenty years ago.

wing-_-nuts• 2 years ago

A 30 second tiktok clip can give you the same type of knowledge that a 300 page book can, but it cuts to the chase, and doesn't bury the lead.

I'm sorry, this isn't just wrong, it's laughably wrong, and if this view is popular I can see why there's so little nuance in most people's understanding

pie_flavor• 2 years ago

Anime is an extremely lucrative market, and Westerners spend an absurd amount of money on it, with Hollywood missing out. It's not because it's Japanese, or its weirder quirks, it's just because Japan is making it and Hollywood isn't, because Hollywood is institutionally incapable of believing people want (a) weird fantasy (b) that takes itself seriously (c) in quantity over quality, or even that adult media can be animated in the first place.

I really don't think it's that hard to imagine the same is true of manga vs books. The manga section at any serious bookstore is the size of 3-4 other sections put together, and it isn't for no reason. Even if you assume it's a graphic-novel-specific preference, for every one Western hit like Bone, there's fifty more equally massive hits out of Japan, because they simply try more often. Authors making weird stuff in the West are unable to enter traditional publishing (with the industry learning the exact wrong thing from the YA phenomenon) and frequently settle for a web serial + Patreon model, whereas if they were in Japan there's a well established light novel to manga to anime to movie pipeline.

Filligree2• 2 years ago

Hollywood also appears institutionally capable of making movies where the actors enunciate properly, where the effect soundtrack isn't louder than the speech, and where nobody is mumbling.

I've given up on them. Sure, fine, that's not how people talk in real life. Whatever. I want to hear what they have to say, otherwise what's even the point?

rsync• 2 years ago

Tangent: if your 8-9-10 year old loved Bone, a great follow up is usagi yojimbo.

jabroni_salad• 2 years ago

I love graphic novels but have almost no interest in superheroes, so I'm very thankful to Japan for hard carrying the industry in that regard. You can find Manga about pretty much any topic and level of sophistication.

tstrimple• 2 years ago

I was thrilled when Love Death & Robots came out on Netflix. I hoped mature animation would pick up a bit in western media. That didn't happen unfortunately.

The pipeline you mention has been a key factor in my kids learning to enjoy reading. They went from anime to manga because the manga often runs ahead of the anime and they wanted more from the world. Then they started reading more novels. They skipped the light novel step, likely because there's very little availability at Barnes & Noble or local used book stores.

When the local theater runs Studio Ghibli or anime like Your Name I make a point to go even though I'm not too fond of the theater experience these days because I want more!

dehugger• 2 years ago

Weird stuff in the west exists, but lives as amateur/fan fiction online, with patreon being the big funding method. I believe this is directly due to publishers hesitance to touch anything "weird", just like you said with Hollywood.

skeaker3• 2 years ago

I'd revise (c) to just "in quantity." They're able to throw a lot out to see what sticks, and while a lot of it doesn't, some of it really does.

kderbyma2• 2 years ago

Sounds like committees....animes tend to have a visionary person who writes the core story and characters.....

Hollywood is filled with board rooms of groups who are all incentivized in a way to 'get buy in' through concessions.... the first concession is the art...the vision....

then the talent....

then it's all down hill from there

lmm3• 2 years ago

Sounds like committees....animes tend to have a visionary person who writes the core story and characters.....

Funny, I've heard the exact opposite complaint a lot, that every anime in the last 20 years is made by committee and that's why the vast majority of anime are just slavish adaptations of already-successful manga, and even the few original anime projects that happen tend to be retreads of genre cliches.

gizmo686• 2 years ago

Anime tends to have a pipeline. A lone auther (possibly with an illustrator) writes a light novel. Popular light novels get a manga adaptation. Really popular ones get an anime. At this point, I'm half convinced that most anime is made as an advertisement to sell more books.

This pipeline isn't exactly unique to anime. The book -> movie pipeline is very real in western media. The big difference I have noticed is actually that anime makers tend to be less visionary than western movie makers, and instead give you a much more faithful translation of the source material to the TV screen; whereas Hollywood adaptations tend to take much more creative liberty (usually for the worst).

raincole2• 2 years ago

I don't know. As an Asian who has grown up reading manga I find anime generally very cliche. More than Netflix shows. Especially those adaptations from light novels.

I think it is just about what's novel to you.

theshrike799• 2 years ago

It's the variance in plots in Manga/Anime that's the thing.

Some of my very favourite anime have been about:

  - Kid learning Go (the board game) from the ghost of an ancient grandmaster (Hikaru No Go)
  - Baking bread (Yakitate!! Japan)
  - Playing Tennis (Prince of Tennis)

There is exactly zero chance that "Hollywood" would make any of these.

Der_Einzige2• 2 years ago

Cliche is why people love it. We’ve become an overly analyzed, postmodernist hellscape with our media. A lot of people really want to see cute anime Waifus acting stereotypically. They really want to see it, badly.

They also like when women start to take notice and dress like the anime characters do. Women love anime because the men in anime usually look very attractive, and in the fujoshi anime that they often watch, the men are willing to be gay.

blindriver2• 2 years ago

I'm in my 50s and I used to read a lot for pleasure when I was a kid. I still remember reading Lord of the Rings or Watership Down over an entire weekend, with my mom yelling at me to stop reading and eat dinner, etc. Books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye changed my life as a youth.

I stopped reading fiction after I graduated college because I simply didn't care anymore, it was like an off switch. Unless it was a computer or finance textbook, I simply didn't care to read. There was a brief hiatus after reading Moneyball and Blind Side which fascinated me for some reason, and I haven't read non-textbooks since then either. I think part of it was that I read so many bad fiction books I didn't want to waste my time taking a chance when I could be programming or learning more directly.

araes• 2 years ago

The situation with kids is an issue. However, about the mean attacks online mentioned in the article, the American Library Association president, unfortunately made a rather poorly chosen quote at almost the inflection point they're describing, in April 2022. Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Wyoming pushed to withdraw from the ALA after the quote. Per [1], on being elected, Drabinski wrote:

“I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary”

Sure, it's a single tweet. It mentions a better world. However, I also suspect most normal Americans with slight sense of political winds right now (Ukraine, Feb, 2024?? 2 months?) might comprehend why labeling yourself as a "Marxist lesbian" who "wields collective power" might be taken wrong by some of America on being elected to lead all American libraries.

I used to work for/with the Feds, and I think they would have been justifiably mad if I had very publicly announced I was a Marxist who wields power in the Feds on election.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/american-library-associ...

kazinator• 2 years ago

crisis point for publishers

Now there is something to care about: whether your kid reading or not is good for publishers.

People reading old second-hand books, even if voraciously, is also bad for publishers.

amadeuspagel• 2 years ago

The title refers to "book people" not because we should care what's good or bad for them, but because they might know more about the topic.

eitally• 2 years ago

I think there are perhaps trends, but at the end of the day this phenomenon ends up being individual. I have three kids - 7, 13, and 15 - and they're all different. The older two read voraciously from 2nd grade (when they first picked up Harry Potter after finishing the Magic Treehouse series) through middle school. My oldest doesn't read as much anymore, but it's largely because he's too busy and ends up too tired to concentrate on books when he does have downtime. My middle (7th grade) still reads constantly and we've run out of bookshelf space for all the series we've purchased over the past couple of years. My youngest is in 1st grade and just started her chapter book reading journey this school year. Now she reads while she eats her meals and reads to herself every day. We take her to the public library every couple of weeks to refresh.

Two things to bear in mind: my wife & I also love reading and we have a house full of books. We've also prioritized reading to, and around, our children from the time they were infants. Even today I frequently wake my kids by reading aloud to them.

allemagne2• 2 years ago

There's no good reason to think it's not phones.

The article kind of rejects this out of hand but I think it's mostly because that doesn't make for an article that touches on all the other topics the author wanted to write about.

It might be screens, but it’s not only screens. It’s not like kids are suddenly getting their own phones at age 9; recent survey data from Common Sense Media reveals that phone ownership holds steady, at around 30 percent, among kids aged 8 and 9. (It isn’t until they reach 11 or 12 that the majority of American kids have their own phone.) Indeed, several people I spoke to mentioned that middle-graders’ lack of phones created a marketing problem in an era when no one at any publishing house has any idea how to make a book a bestseller other than to hope it blows up on TikTok.

So there's an uptick in reading for fun when the majority of 12 year olds have phones, allowing publishers to learn how to market to them? I really doubt it. Couldn't find anything supporting that in the Scholastic report where "decline by 9" comes from: https://www.scholastic.com/readingreport/navigate-the-world....

I think they're misinterpreting the Common Sense Media info they cite: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/researc...

Age 8 is as far back as that data goes. If phone ownership started shooting up by 8, for example, it would make sense that it would take about a year for the reading habit to die off as much as it does.

throwaway11460• 2 years ago

I had a phone since I was 8-9, and I used it to read under the table in class and everywhere else.

Wasn't the only one. We used infrared port to share books with other kids.

nicbou3• 2 years ago

Why wouldn't it be phones?

I could read right now, but instead I'm on my nth round of the Hacker News front page. Reading competes against instant gratification, and it doesn't win as often as I'd like it to. Reading requires discipline when scrolling is an option.

xandrius2• 2 years ago

Isn't HN mainly text? Aren't you reading?

madrox• 2 years ago

If this fact began in the last decade, I'd agree with you, but the linked Scholastic report shows this phenomenon pre-dates phones. Interest in reading at different ages has held steady dating back to at least 2010. 2010 is before most kids had their own smartphone. It also isn't like all kids suddenly get a smartphone at age 9.

bagels• 2 years ago

Isn't Hacker News reading, but just not novels?

xandrius2• 2 years ago

I hated reading even before phones were "cool", I just didn't find it the best medium for me.

Now I still hate the act of reading but it's often eclipsed by the joy I get from acquiring new knowledge.

So no, it doesn't need to be phones.

fatnoah• 2 years ago

As the parent of a 16 year old, I find this discussion fascinating. My son used to love reading books, from when we started with the "Bob Books" in Kindergarten, through somewhere around 5th or 6th grade.

He still loves reading, but mostly for items of topical interest. He does it for fun, to entertain himself, and to learn new things...but it's not books! He scarfs up online content like it's going out of style.

TBH, I had no idea just how much he was reading until I paid attention to how much mispronounced advanced vocabulary he was using, which was a sign of seeing and not hearing the words. The other evidence is just how well he does on crosswords, Wordle, etc. The vocabulary is definitely there.

All of this is to say that the article seems to focus on "books" rather than "content." Are kids not reading for fun, or are they not reading _books_ for fun?

philomath_mn2• 2 years ago

It is a good question, but reading 400 pages of content is not the same as reading a book.

Books are (usually) the product of intentional long-form writing along with heavy editing and review. The ideas per unit of a book are usually more polished than the ideas in a similar sized unit of online content.

(not criticizing your kid btw, sounds like he is doing great).

lmm3• 2 years ago

The ideas per unit of a book are usually more polished than the ideas in a similar sized unit of online content.

Is there any objective measure of this? Books have to be 300+ pages because that's the size you can sell them in, I've seen plenty of books that feel padded out because, well, they've been padded out.

AbrahamParangi• 2 years ago

I think the core advantage of content is that the idea density is actually much higher. Many books could be essays and still communicate the main points. Many essays could be paragraphs. Many paragraphs could be sentences, etc. Density is a feature of content, maximizing brain stimulation per second.

nothercastle3• 2 years ago

Part of the solution should be going to every free library near a school or playground and filling them with a bunch of first books in a series. I know my kids got hooked on looks of books that way

rossant2• 2 years ago

My older son is 8 and is finishing Harry Potter #5. I hope he'll still enjoy reading after he turns 9.

darepublic• 2 years ago

I remember lugging along a copy of The Idiot by Dostoyevsky with me to read on the subway and feeling like it made me an intellectual badass. I still treasure the memory of the classic lit I read but I very rarely get any pleasure reading in now. This trend among youth is worrying but seems part of an accelerated mutation of our culture

vasco• 2 years ago

There's also an epidemic of kids not listening to the radio, but nobody has questions about why.

nothercastle3• 2 years ago

There aren’t any spaces left to take your kid to look at books. Without access to internet the only option is the public library but books there are often not displayed in a way that would draw new readers in

boring-alterego• 2 years ago

I was turned off to reading in 7th grade by a teacher that required mandatory books that were her favorites but the topics consisted of 1800s gilded age parties, gossip amongst the upper class of people at that time and absolutely no fantasy or adventure.

Before that I was the top reader in the summer reading program going back to first grade highest in the school for each grade level. After that class I kind of fell out of the practice of reading to enjoy books until I was out of college.

I picked up the habit of reading and listening to audiobooks in 2014 3 years after college because I was doing a lot of 6-8 hour drives between my home town and a vendor for a project.

If I could say one thing to that teacher, just because you like a book, forcing someone else to read that book doesn't make it a good book for that person.

nickd20015• 2 years ago

Age 9 is about time to get into "The Hobbit". That might save some people ;). Or Terry Pratchet''s "Truckers" ? So much utterly fantastic kids literature out there, most of it not at all new.

tmaly• 2 years ago

You can’t discount things like Roblox and online video as being part to blame.

But overall I do think kids have too much homework and projects to have time for leisure reading.

an_aparallel• 2 years ago

people give up reading the same reason they give up anything "hard". The combination of "prescribed texts" and "bad pedagogy". When i self teach...i start a book...downloaded immediately from libgen, if it sucks, i trash it, and download another immediately...if the author is not a time wasting hack, guess what? I'll buy that book immediately, having found the correct resource. It pains me to read what the most recommended books are for learning most hard subjects - they are generally on the poor side...they are generally not written as simply as possible. Yes - this is a hugely opinionated response.

Onto method - If the method in which it's taught is garbage/pedagogically horseshit...of course they will hate it. Learn maths with Paul Lockhart, or computer science from the ground up playing Turing Complete (on Steam)...or learning ANYTHING from someone like Brett Victor..and you'll see precisely the issue is with not just reading for fun, but doing any socially uncool thing like exercising the intellect.

eslaught• 2 years ago

How many people here are commenting based on their kids' experiences and not based on their own? Nothing in a 4 year-old trend (or whatever it is at this point) is going to be anticipated by people who were that age 10, 20, 30 years ago. (Sorry folks.)

My kids are just short of this age, so this article is very topical for me. I'm trying to encourage them to read, and they do, but it's also been difficult (in my experience) to make the transition to "big" books (i.e., anything other than a graphic novel). Books that I am 99% sure I read by their age, they don't seem to be responding to---and not just those books specifically, but anything in that class. And my kids have very low screen time.

bawolff• 2 years ago

But others also pointed to the way reading is being taught to young children in an educational environment that gets more and more test-focused all the time.

Seems like there would be an easy way to test this - do we see the same decline in other countries with different educational systems?

mik1998• 2 years ago

Traditionally, middle-grade book discovery happens via parents, librarians, and—most crucially—peers. At recess, your best friend tells you that you have got to read the Baby-Sitters Club, and boom, you’re hooked

I've never experienced this in my school life. Used to be the one guy who spends all of his time helping out and reading at the school library back in elementary school. Later in high-school, I stopped reading as much due to the appearance of the computer in my life, which had great things like the Internet and such.

If you spend all your time on TikTok, I feel like it's unlikely you'd read too much.

ethanholt1• 2 years ago

Whenever I was about 9-10, I used to love reading books, and I read about 1-3 full novels a month. Whenever I graduated elementary school and went into middle school, the required reading that was assigned left me to have no more time reading what I found interesting, which eventually led to me just losing my interest in books.

bennettnate5• 2 years ago

I remember Scholastic would put on a big book fair twice a school year in our school's library. There would be tons of new/upcoming book series marketed that kids could buy (with their parent's money), along with the obligatory custom bookmarks and kid-oriented stationary. It targeted 8 to 12 year olds--maybe that was the practice pre-covid and booksellers have moved away from that sort of thing?

o11c• 2 years ago

One thing I definitely noticed with COVID (not specific to libraries and book fairs): a lot of older volunteers stopped volunteering for good - basically "retired" now rather than later. Alone that would imply the situation fixes itself as new volunteers age in, but that's also the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge ...

Unrelated to COVID, our local library was recently taken over by a young new librarian who seemed to make it a goal to actively drive away literally all the old library community.

There was also a proposal to build a new library with a builtin homeless shelter or something ... which is exactly the opposite of helping, since the predominance of "homeless people" is a major reason patrons avoid the library already.

imgabe• 2 years ago

They need to bring back the scholastic book fair! Or is that still a thing? We also had Pizza Hut giving us free pizza for reading books.

I read a lot as a kid, to the point where I got in trouble in class for reading a book instead of paying attention. I’m trying to think about why, but I don’t think it was any outside push. I don’t remember most of my peers reading so much.

Fnoord• 2 years ago

Anecdotal (from NL): I had access to a library end of 80s/90s. Everything mandatory wasn't fun, but had to be done. Providing a small, meaningful choice would've been more fun. Comics and non-fiction for kids was available, but if you did not like fiction then you are kind of hosed. I 'never' (esp in early youth) liked fiction because I could not easily imagine the story, or it just did not interest me. It wasn't real, so I couldn't see the point of it. My weakness for sure, but if I had access to more/better informational non-fiction I would've read it like the info sponge I was. And having fun while doing so.

I remember very well when I was about 8 or 9, I always lost the trail when we did group reading at school (each kid one sentence). And then I got punished for that. Also not very... let us say encouraging.

Nowadays, I'm still not much of a fiction sucker, but I've come to enjoy quite some fiction. Just not in time for high school, and even then I liked books which weren't for my age or my gender or whatever.

If my kids don't like certain fiction, I won't force it upon them. I want them to read, and will try with suggestions and what not but if they really do not like fiction, forcing it upon them won't help.

I just hope they won't waste their time on something as useless and nefarious as TikTok. One could argue that is the comics or TV series of the 21th century. Well, even if TikTok were harmless to health and a great application, comics or TV series didn't profile you for an authoritarian state.

EDIT:

Yet, somehow, reading persists; more books are sold today than were sold before the pandemic

This does not mean, at all, that [all] these books are read. Terrible assumption.

bimguy• 2 years ago

I wonder how many kids would read more if Taylor Swift or Mr Beast or 'Insert favourite youtuber/celebrity here' started promoting book reading.

koalaman• 2 years ago

My daughter stopped reading when her school forced an ipad on us with no way for us to administer our own screen time controls. Now I never know if she's doing homework or trapped down some YouTube shorts rabbit hole.

tifik• 2 years ago

Forced an iPad? How is that legal? Isn't it possible to do whatever assignments she is getting on a PC?

dukeofdoom• 2 years ago

As adult people get sucked into reading forum posts or twitter. And it's often very addictive since you feel you're getting closer to some truth being revealed, or your views/opinion being validated. Better use of time might be to read books, but then there's nothing to suck you in the way online networks do with some headline. Maybe books should have AI post about them the way of news articles, with some catchy headline, that would get people to start reading them.

As a kid I loved mysteries, and revenge books like "The Count of Monte Cristo", that were recommended. But as an adult I don't know what I don't know. And there's nothing to get me to start reading something.

bigger_cheese• 2 years ago

I think it helps if the parents set an example. I grew up in the 90's in a house full of readers, reading was normalized.

Until about age 10 my parents would read to my sisters and I every night. It was part of the bedtime routine. We would gather in my youngest sister's bedroom and my Dad would read a chapter from the book of the week to us before bed. It was mostly stuff like Enid Blighton and Roald Dahl, but I can also remember 'Treasure Island' and '20,000 Leagues under the Sea'.

As we got older it evolved into us reading for ourselves, all of us had a reading light beside our beds and it was normal to read in bed before going to sleep. It essentially became a habit I formed, to this day I still read in bed as an adult.

At least here is Australia, you used to be able to get a lot of things from the local newsagent. I was really interested in computers as a teenager. When my parents would send me to the corner store to grab bread or milk I'd buy a PC Magazine with the spare change and read it cover to cover, some of them would come with neat demo cds etc.

gregjor6• 2 years ago

My oldest daughter could read at age four. By second grade, in a Texas public school, she liked to read Nancy Drew mysteries on her own. One day she came home from school crying and told us she didn't want to go back -- she said she had got in trouble for reading her book. Her mom and I went to talk to the teacher. Our daughter had got "caught" reading a Nancy Drew book at her desk while the other kids -- many of whom couldn't read at age six -- struggled with their ABCs. The teacher took the book away from our daughter and shamed her in front of the other kids. The teacher told us that "policy" prohibited students reading "non-assigned" books at school. Our daughter was supposed to sit there bored waiting for the slowest kids to catch up.

Public schools have a bureaucracy you can't really fight. We didn't make our daughter go back, we withdrew her from school the next day and told the principal we had to move. We homeschooled her, and our two other kids when they came along. No regrets. All of my kids obtained high school diplomas (not GEDs) by passing the ludicrously dumb state tests. Two went on to university. They all have jobs and support themselves, and continue to read for fun.

John Taylor Gatto, a former teacher of the year, describes exactly how public school punishes and wipes out imagination and independent thinking, a process mostly completed by age nine when children give up on reading for fun.

https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

I'll add that I could also read at age four (thanks, dad!). I went to Catholic private school in the '60s. When the teachers found out I could already read in first grade they put me in a program with other kids who had got ahead of the curriculum. We would go to the school library for a couple of periods and choose our own books, then write up summaries. When I had to move to public school in 6th grade I almost immediately got punished the same way my daughter was -- told that I couldn't choose my own books and forced to read along the approved curriculum at the pace of the slowest kids in the class.

kqr2• 2 years ago

Home schooling is illegal in my jurisdiction but this entire discussion is making me think about it more and more.

A question though: does homeschooling require essentially that the entire family can be supported on one salary? (Either by one parent working and the other teaching, or two parents working but paying a full time tutor which becomes a 2-1=1 sort of thing anyway.)

bruce5113• 2 years ago

Home schooling is a complex topic, and one end of a broad spectrum. I wasn't home schooled, but my wife did home school the kids to about grade 4, and yep, she didn't have a salary in that time.

But home schooling is a nuclear option. For most people it's not a realistic option.

Of course, as parents, we're always home schoolers, even if the kids are at school during the day. There are so many ways to stimulate and engage (especially younger) children.

Reading is one avenue, but its not for everyone. Some get into cooking, or nature, (or programming) or music or art, or whatever. Interests change as they grow.

Reading young is very empowering. My parents taught me to read before I went to school. Reading to very younger children helps them understand the concept of stories. (I read a chapter of Swiss Family Robinson to the kids when the oldest was like 6. Hint: some editing and commentary is required - it was written in a different age.)

There are also schools with good teachers, and ones with crap teachers. Sometimes you get lucky. Some kids are good at adapting to adults not having their best day, others not as much.

zarzavat• 2 years ago

does homeschooling require essentially that the entire family can be supported on one salary?

Yes. The main purpose of government schools is to provide a place to park children so that their parents can be more economically efficient. At least in my country, the “learning” supposedly provided is a secondary priority (your country may be different). My government is very concerned that children go to school, they are somewhat less concerned about what happens when they get there.

squigz5• 2 years ago

The American public school system does indeed seem broken. Fixing it, like most other public institutions, is going to be difficult.

For what it's worth, my experience in Canadian public schools was not at all like this.

globular-toast• 2 years ago

Your daughter did the right thing. I pray they didn't manage to squash her behaviour for good. I remember doing the same as her much later in school. I was reading Fight Club and had it in my bag. We had these sessions where we'd watch a pointless bullshit video for an hour about some common sense topic like "other people have different religions" or "don't stick your fingers in the plug socket". I just decided I'd had enough and turned around and quietly read my book instead. I didn't get into trouble but got some funny looks. I consider this a turning point for me. It's my life and it's ending one minute at a time!

bjornsing• 2 years ago

Interesting. Having grown up in Sweden during the 80-ties and 90-ties I’m very familiar with this attitude. Here and back then it was almost policy to hold gifted students back, to promote “equality”. But I thought the US would have a higher tolerance for ability.

What do you think is the driving psychological force behind this attitude in US schools? In Sweden I’ve always thought it’s mainly a sort of crab mentality, semi-formalized in “the law of Jante”. But maybe there’s more to it, if it happens also in very individualistic cultures like the US?

Sometimes I get a feeling that many people in the “helping business” have trouble with self-sufficient people in general, perhaps because it conflicts with their self-image as “helpers”.

P.S. Homeschooling is illegal in Sweden.

gregjor6• 2 years ago

When I was in school, a long time ago, schools “tracked” students into gifted, regular, and special needs classes. At least in California where I grew up. I’m sure that varied by school district because in the US schools get managed locally and funded by property taxes, leading to lots of variation in quality and available programs.

At some point in the ‘70s tracking got abandoned. I think it happened because of a desire to eliminate inequality but I’m not sure — could have happened due to lack of funding.

Americans have private school options but those get expensive so that’s mainly an upper-middle and upper class thing.

The “no child left behind” idea mandated standardized tests and ranking teachers, which led to optimizing for the tests and grade inflation.

Fortunately by the time I had kids we could homeschool. Religious fundamentalists paved the way in court, making it legal in most states, with different rules and levels of enforcement. I raised my kids mostly in Oregon, ultra liberal and lax about homeschooling.

conductr• 2 years ago

What do you think is the driving psychological force behind this attitude in US schools?

The curriculum is so prescriptive that it is really helpful if everyone progresses at the same pace.

latexr• 2 years ago

The teacher took the book away from our daughter and shamed her in front of the other kids. The teacher told us that "policy" prohibited students reading "non-assigned" books at school.

That’s a bad policy, but a worse teacher. They could’ve turned a blind eye.

We didn't make our daughter go back, we withdrew her from school the next day and told the principal we had to move.

Why the lie? Was homeschooling prohibited where you lived, or something?

gregjor6• 2 years ago

Simpler to lie about moving than deal with the bureaucracy. Every state has mandatory schooling and truancy laws. We planned to move out of Texas anyway. Easier to say we’re moving than try to get permission to homeschool my own child.

honzabe• 2 years ago

If I had to make kids read, I would make reading forbidden. There is something about reading as a duty that kills the joy, and others already described it better than I could. I loved reading as I kid, and I was lucky I had read most of the books I love before they were assigned, but I especially loved reading the forbidden books - I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia and reading the "Hedgehog in the Cage" series secretly borrowed from a friendly neighbor was magical. That series is unfortunately totally unknown in the West, but for Czech kids of my generation, that was our Harry Potter.

nevdka• 2 years ago

Maybe the books that they're trying to market aren't books that kids want to read. There are a couple of quotes that point to that:

Connor was more blunt: “Maybe you think a book about a school shooting is really important,” she said, “but kids want to read a fun book. That’s what kids want today—they want to have fun.”
But if you’re a new author who’s written a quiet, issue-oriented debut, “you might have to think about adapting, in a way.”
Eberly, the book agent, doesn’t think the supply of serious, “award-winning” books will dry up. “Knowing the editors that I sell to, those are the types of books they want to shepherd into the world.”

Maybe kids would rather read fun adventure stories rather than the issue-driven stories that adults are pushing on them.

red_admiral3• 2 years ago

I think this is a big part of the problem. Publishers are looking for the next Harry Potter as if they were Y Combinator picking startups based on who's most likely to become the next unicorn.

DavidPiper5• 2 years ago

“I’m hoping that the tent expands. I’ve always kind of hated it when there’s only one tentpole, like Harry Potter or whatever. I want there to be more tentpoles with room for more people underneath.”

There already are? Deltora Quest, The Old Kingdom, The Chronicles of Narnia, Goosebumps, Percy Jackson, Keys to the Kingdom, Artemis Fowl, Tamora Pierce, David Eddings, Robin Hobb (depending on reading level and expectations) ... And there are plenty of non-series books for that age group as well - Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle - they mentioned Bridge to Terabithia too...

The idea that reading isn't possible for young kids without the next black swan publishing/cinematic/theme-park experience, or that there just isn't anything other than Harry Potter to read seems crazy to me.

But I guess I'm not 9 anymore. Interesting that they didn't actually ask any 9-year-olds either it seems.

red_admiral3• 2 years ago

If you're trying to get kids to read books, those are all great choices. If you're trying to make money, few of those have the option for making a whole new franchise with merch and films and theme parks and video games. (They sort of managed that with Tolkien and the LotR films, though.)

And that's before we get into the whole politics angle. I'm with Freddie deBoer here, who said: if you want your art to change the world, you first of all have to make GOOD art.

DavidPiper5• 2 years ago

I guess those are the things I find unusual about the article. They think they've figured out "why kids don't read", but all they've discovered is "we're not making as much money as we'd like", and maybe this demographic is a problem because "THE LUCRATIVE TEENAGE MARKET" could falter in a few years.

I'm not sure that 9-year-olds care about "Good Art", they just care about the things they're exposed to - and there's plenty out there they _could_ be exposed to. Once they're exposed to enough to develop taste, they start caring about Good Art -- or at least art they enjoy more than others.

They didn't talk to any 9-year-olds, or even their parents. Why aren't they asking parents what books they're exposing their kids to? ([1] One possible reason, I know this is a controversial/poorly sourced topic though).

Or, as O’Sullivan asked, “Is this generation just iPad babies?”

I mean, it's a boring answer. But seems more likely to me than "These kids can name over 500 Pokemon on cue but don't read a thing because not enough of them are on TikTok yet, we haven't managed to scout the next Harry Potter, and our 9-year-old reading curriculum is far too intense which is ruining the joy for them."

[1] https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/48239-54-per...

Der_Einzige2• 2 years ago

You forgot the last dragon chronicles by Chris D’Lacy. I love me some books about magical clay dragons and that the main characters love interest is a goth witch.

Plus you learn a whole lot of words that start with G: Gadzooks! Gollygosh! Etc

DavidPiper5• 2 years ago

Oh, I never read them! I'll have to see if my cousins know them :)

PeterStuer• 2 years ago

From what I observed with my own kids, the books that were either mandatory or on the selection list to read for assignments were shockingly bad, and on top of that 100% targetted at the girl half of the class. Wether this is the result of teaching having become almost exclusively female or other cultural drives is hard to say.

Hayatoo• 2 years ago

I don't like mandatory reading. Reading should be a joyous activity, where I choose the books I like to read, not something where others tell me what I should read.

scotty79• 2 years ago

Not sure about exact timing but isn't it just the time when school orders kids to read boring books until every last bit of enjoyment is squeezed out of the activity of reading?

Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

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