Katie Baker raises this question in 'Sweet Valley High,' the Great Retweening and Why Boys Won't Read, a fantastic whirlwind exploration of the tween literary and cultural landscape. Baker profiles the many books, TV shows, and other cultural products for girls, and explores the growing concerns of parents, educators, and cultural critics that boys are being left behind. She references a recent New York Times piece by Nicholas Kristof, who suggests that one of the ways to help boys engage more with the increasingly verbal world around them is to encourage them to read “lowbrow” books. Baker also discusses the re-release of two classic, decidedly non-literary series for girls: Sweet Valley High and The Babysitters Club. She cites interesting data profiling the reading habits of SVH fans, which demonstrates that reading trashy books does not scar you for life, apparently.
So. Is lowbrow reading better than no reading at all? Is Captain Underpants just as good as Moby Dick?
Well, yes. Reading Captain Underpants is better than no reading at all. The back of the cereal box is better than no reading at all. But that seems to be only part of the point to me. I think it’s dangerous to throw our arms open to Captain Underpants and his kind, only to have the story end there. Yes, we want tweens to read. Yes, they should have choice and agency about what they’re reading. But it’s also important that librarians, educators, and parents continue to work hard to source engaging, high quality materials for boys and girls to read, and present them in compelling ways. I don’t think it has to be either/or.
When I taught second grade, many boys in my class loved Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Boys who otherwise were only interested in banging themselves against walls could sit in rapt attention for 45 minutes, looking at cards, discussing powers, and reading all the while. Hooray for that. We had Pokemon card drawing time, we had student presentations on the various Yu-Gi-Oh characters and all of their fancy powers. Those cards and games became part of our classroom lexicon, because they were important to the children. But were they permissible at quiet reading time? Nope. Because books are important too.
We can talk to kids about these choices. We can relate our experiences to theirs. For example, sometimes I feel like reading a complicated novel; sometimes I feel like reading a cookbook or knitting pattern. Sometimes I feel like reading blogs. Sometimes I feel like reading People Magazine articles about Angelina Jolie’s new tattoo. These are all fine choices. But if I only read People, then that might not be so good. Part of becoming an avid, lifelong reader is exploring and celebrating all kinds of reading behaviors. If books about nose-picking are the most compelling for a fun read, that’s fabulous. And probably that shouldn’t be the only sort of book offered to a child. Especially as Kristof, etc. are talking about lackluster school performance, we want to be careful not to accept too low a standard for boys (or girls—Hannah Montana is a different kind of low standard all together. To see it touted as confirmation that there’s never been a better time to be a tween girl by Ada Calhoun in Baker’s article was a little unnerving. But I digress.).
Maybe I don’t digress, actually. The same highbrow/lowbrow dichotomy implicit in this discussion of tween reading behavior also seems implied in the discussion of boys vs. girls. That boys are not doing well is an assertion I don’t dispute (I like agreeing with Nicholas Kristof, plus, there’s data). We need to work harder and do better for boys. The place where this argument gets dicey for me is with the assumption that, because boys aren’t doing well that girls are doing great, that because there are shows about girls on the Disney Channel, all is right with the world. We need to do better for boys and girls. We need to give them lots of choices: lots of Captain Underpants and Hardy Boys and Sweet Valley High and also The Time Warp Trio and Island of the Blue Dolphins. We need to learn what’s appealing about video games and iCarly, and also give tweens the language and knowledge to become savvy cultural critics. We need to make sure that we don’t have only Captain Underpants expectations, but also welcome and respond to our students’ and patrons’ excitement about reading, regardless of what they want to read.
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