Two Children, Two Reading Journeys

Observations from a parent and bibliophile

My poor babies, they had no idea what they were in for — I was choosing the books I was going to read to them before the egg was fertilised. When I was pregnant with my first I was in my late twenties, a freelance editor still paying off student debt. I lived in a sharehouse with my partner, who was from the other side of the world, and we’d known each other for just under a year. In some people’s minds we were a long way off creating the ideal conditions for starting a family, but I didn’t care — I was digging out my old copy of Frog & Toad, thinking about the ideal conditions for raising a reader. All I needed, I assumed, was books and good intentions.

Twenty years later I have a more nuanced opinion about childhood reading. For a start, the way my children each learnt to read was markedly different. The books they enjoyed were poles apart. Neither of them was interested, once they got to the stage of reading novels, in the books I’d loved as a child. And although they had some highly rewarding, intensive reading years — reading at breakfast, or while we walked down the street, queuing to meet their favourite authors, and begging for the next book in a series — the slide into rejecting reading for pleasure came for both at around 14.

Sometimes even the most devoted bibliophile has to accept that, for the moment at least, their ridiculously large bookcase is of little interest to anyone else in the house.

(A moment for my bookcase, which deserves to be enjoyed . . . hopefully this short video of me shelving books will play for you but if it doesn’t you may need to view this post on the website or app.)

So, while I wait for my teenagers to find space in their lives for reading again — and there are hopeful signs that both will — here are some observations from their distinct reading journeys.

Firstborn was and remains textbook firstborn and apparently learnt to read by magic. I discovered this one day in the kitchen. My back was turned when she suddenly sounded out: “Coo-na-war-ra!” and I realised she was in the wine cupboard reading the labels. (Coonawarra is an excellent wine region in South Australia in case you’re not from here).

I thought: that’s odd, she can’t read yet. And also: perhaps that’s not the best place to put the wine. So I handed her Frog & Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel, which we’d read hundreds of times, and she started reading the first story, ‘Down the Hill’, aloud. I thought: that’s odd, she can’t read yet. And also: she’s probably memorised it. I hadn’t taught her to read; I’d been looking forward to it. So I went to the bookshop and bought a book she’d never have seen before. She read it almost fluently. Finally I accepted that Firstborn could read and my services had not been required (a recurring theme).

Secondborn did it the hard way. He loved being read to and he loathed learning to read. Night after night I tried to calmly point at words in the school reader, fighting the urge to stab at them and say “We just read this word! It’s the same word!” For a gentle child he had a violent dislike of school readers. What he wanted was story and decent pay-off for all his hard work. Understandable really — and he’s never done things for the sake of it, just to tick a box. Struggling sound by sound through a school reader, he’d get to the end, look up with tearful eyes and ask: “What was the point of that?” The best remedies for this disappointment were Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie, and Paul Jennings’ Rascal stories: easy to read but funny and satisfying.

Once they were both reading independently I tried to maintain a careful balance of respecting their preferences and discreet influence. Although I started out wanting them to experience the same novels that had made me a reader-for-life, these two children had burst onto the scene so completely and utterly themselves already, so bonded to me but separate from me in personality, that I quickly gathered how strongly their preferences were tied to who they were.

Firstborn reads Elephant and Piggie to Secondborn

Firstborn, the extrovert, socially outgoing and curious about people:

From 6-9 she had a try-anything phase: Mr Gum by Andy Stanton, The Secret Seven, Our Australian Girl, Nanny Piggins by R.A. Spratt, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.

From 10-12, a realism phase: Stay Well Soon by Penny Tangey, The Secrets We Keep by Nova Weetman, the works of Rebecca Westcott, Cathy Cassidy & Jacqueline Wilson.

From 12-15, a thriller phase: Fleur Ferris & Ellie Marney could do no wrong.

And from 16 onwards, one novel a year as long as it was by Nina Kenwood, Sally Rooney, or Diana Reid.

Secondborn, the introvert, an animal lover with a dry sense of humour

I thought who better than the boy himself to tell you which books turned him from so-called “reluctant” to a kid who’d walk along the street reading a book with his mother making sure he didn’t get hit by a bus?

This week he selected these for me from his humour phase, his animal adventure phase, and his visual (graphic novel and Manga) phase:

Old Tom by Leigh Hobbs, The Bad Guys by Aaron Blabey, Dog Man by Dav Pilkey, Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney, The 13-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton

In order of reading: How to Train Your Dragon series followed by The Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell; Warriors series by Erin Hunter; Wings of Fire series by Tui Sutherland; My Hero Academia series by Kōhei Horikoshi; Spill Zone series by Scott Westerfeld and Alex Puvilland; Deadendia series by Hamish Steele; Deathnote all-in-one edition by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.

Jólabókaflóð!

I may be the only one in our house who gazes in wonder at the bookcase, but I believe that a lull in the voracious reading of childhood is natural for so many teens: we mustn’t panic. I have faith that given a sound start they’re bound to come back to books.

Although I don’t badger them about reading, each year I insist on the Icelandic tradition of Jólabókaflóð, (pronounced: yo-la-boke-uh-flowed) or ‘Christmas Book Flood’, which started during World War Two. Books are given on Christmas Eve and read together, accompanied by festive treats. This week I had such a happy time choosing a book for Firstborn (a thriller by Pip Drysdale) and Secondborn (the Death Note short story collection).

As for me, this coming Jólabókaflóð I should think I’ll get out my trusty old copy of Frog & Toad.

Illustration from ‘Christmas Eve’ in Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel

Thank you for reading Voracious.