How (Not) To Get Your Teenager Back Into Books
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If you were a teenager in the 1980s, 1990s, and maybe even 2000s, there is an extremely good chance that you sneaked a copy of Flowers in the Attic under the covers and read it in secret, confused and titillated by the incest. But is it a book that professionals should recommend to parents for their reluctant readers? I don’t mean this as a judgment call—reading is reading and any book that gets someone reading has value. But is this the best one to use in an attempt to lure a reluctant reader? What about The Handmaid’s Tale? No? Well, if you had written to The Guardian for advice on this topic, those are among the amazingly misguided recommendations you’d have gotten.
https://twitter.com/noirbettie/status/1147880290762674176
I would suggest that if you hand your reluctant reader a copy of Flowers in the Attic, you might succeed in convincing them not to read Flowers in the Attic, but you won’t accomplish much else. (I suppose if you feel judgy about the book, this might be a good strategy. YMMV.)
The letter writer is a London-based mother who wants her 16-year-old daughter to stop watching Love Island (a very very very terrible “reality” dating show), get off social media, and read a book. The advice given is…not good. Not good at all.
First of all, why should she get off social media? Why should she stop watching her terrible show? Why should she read a book when she probably spends most of her time on required reading for school? If she wants to spend the little bit of free time that she is allotted on those things, what is the problem? Methinks her mother is worrying over nothing.
Second of all, I bet she is reading. Not only does she surely have that required reading, but there is no way she is on social media without following links to interesting articles or exciting fanfic. And those things? Are reading. Not to mention that she most likely reads magazines, or comic books, or Instagram poetry—all things that you and I know are reading, but that a worried mother might not see that way.
