Tots to Teens
Star Mag, 12th November 2006
Readers Rights
By Daphne Lee
MY favourite character in my favourite children’s series has a rule about reading: once she starts a book, she has to finish it no matter if she hates the story or is bored to tears by it. I tried to follow her example for a time, but it just got too painful. Among the books I plodded through with mounting frustration were Hard Times by Charles Dickens, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and The Cryptographer by Tobias Hill. I abandoned the third one after three chapters and that was the end of my attempt to finish every book I started.
Walker Books UK is reissuing French writer Daniel Pennac’s The Rights of the Reader (translated by Sarah Adams), a book inspired by the writer’s experiences as a teacher at inner-city schools in Paris. The new edition has illustrations by Quentin Blake and you can download the poster at www.walkerbooks.co.uk/Downloads/The-Rights-of-the-Reader-poster.
Pennac lists 10 rights, including “The right not to finish” (No. 3) – phew! I am a great believer in the second right: “The right to skip”. The first time I read a book I skip like mad. The moment my mind starts wondering it’s flip-flip: do things get more interesting two pages on? Maybe five?
Perhaps the next chapter will be more stimulating. (When I was about seven, I skipped through several of Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers books so rapidly that for a while I thought that Peterswood, the village they lived in, was the name of a character!)
If I don’t abandon a book entirely and if I feel it’s worth re-reading (“The right to read it again” is fourth on the list), I will make it a point to pay attention to all the bits I missed the first time round. I also skip when I’m re-reading old favourites. Sometimes I just read all my favourite passages and chapters. It’s like licking the frosting off a cake.
Pennac’s list is the subject of the poster and you can also read it here. Reading for pleasure is what he is championing and damn right too!
Parents, don’t even think in terms of knowledge-gained, increased-vocabulary or improved reading-skills. All that will come, I assure you, but don’t make it the reason you buy your kids books and why you encourage them to read. You don’t want your children to view books with apprehension, but with joy. You want them to see reading as an enjoyable activity.
The list of rights says that the reader is the only one who has a say in what, where, when and how he reads. It says it’s OK to relax with a book; it’s OK to be lazy with a book; it’s OK to escape into a book; be loud with a book; and be silent with a book. It’s all good so long as you’re having a good time.
This book sounds fun. I hope I can find it in bookstores and read it too!
Posted by: Josette | Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 13:43