Content provided in partnership with
Developing children's interest in reading
Library Trends, Fall, 2007 by Suzanne M. Stauffer
ABSTRACT
Librarians have always discussed methods of developing children's interest in reading, but they have focused more on the books being read than on the act of reading. Although many touted the need to "establish the reading habit," a closer reading of the literature reveals that this referred specifically to reading "good books," those which socialized children into culturally acceptable sex roles. As early as 1876, articles warned of the dangers of sensational fiction for both girls and boys. By the 1940s, comic books had replaced sensational fiction as a potential "corrupting influence." Only in the late 1950s did public librarians begin to address the new problem of a reluctance to read at all among children in general and among boys in particular. This paper will examine the effect of gender role expectations on librarians' efforts to promote reading to children in the twentieth century. In particular it will explore the questions of whether these strategies continue to be designed to promote reading literature that reinforces society's gender role expectations and of whether they are designed to promote reading to both boys and girls equally, or whether one group is privileged at the expense of the other.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
INTRODUCTION
Any exploration into issues of libraries and children must begin by defining what is meant by "child." The term has had different meanings during different periods, and is almost never defined in contemporary writings. The primary focus of this paper is what are termed "older children," from nine to fourteen years, because research has demonstrated that the gender-based differences in reading do not appear until about nine years old and fourteen is the generally agreed age at which "children" become "young adults." Another difficulty in doing research in this area is the paucity of published data on the methods used to promote reading, the characteristics of the children reached, the number and type of books read, and the effect on reading ability and habits. Most published information on reading promotion is vague and general. Programs are merely reported as "a success," "a lot" of children participate, and they read "many" books, with no definition of those terms. Even when numbers of children are given, they are not expressed in terms of gender or other characteristics.
THE 1880s--1920s: THE DANGERS OF SENSATIONAL FICTION
The question of how to develop children's interest in reading and how to establish the "reading habit" is nearly as old as public librarianship itself. A glance in the Bibliography of Library Economy reveals at least 250 articles on the topic published between 1876 and 1920, and a further search of Library Literature and its successors suggests that while the topic may have been of lesser or greater interest depending on the era, some measure of attention was always given to it by librarians and library supporters, and even such noted librarians as Samuel S. Green (1879),John Cotton Dana (1898, 1901) and S. R. Ranganathan (1936) addressed the issue in their day.
A closer look demonstrates that the concern was not so much to interest children in reading as to interest children in reading the books that parents, teachers, and librarians wanted them to read, books that would provide class- and gender-appropriate role models and instill socially acceptable values in both boys and girls. The early period from the 1880s through the 1920s, as the country struggled with the problems of rapid urban growth, industrialization, and accompanying juvenile crime (Cunningham, 1995, pp. 134-159), is dominated by articles that deplore the influence of so-called "sensational" fiction and propose methods for developing boys' and girls' interest in "good literature" (Chamberlain, 1879, p. 365). Public librarians and library leaders assigned blame for "many a girl's ... foolish marriage" and "many a boy's rash venture in cattle ranches or uneasiness in the harness of slight but regular salary" to "books that fed early feeble indications of a tendency to future evil" (Wells, 1879, p. 327). They warned that "the case of the dime-novel-reading boy is not nearly so hopeless as that of the yellow-novel-reading girl or young woman" (Coe, 1895, p. 118), who was destined for a life of prostitution. Such works were blamed for instilling in boys the idea that "a quiet life of honest labor is contemptible, and that a career of adventure is the only thing worthwhile" (Brett, 1885, p. 128), and for providing the "inspiration to the unlawful deed which brought the little fellows into the clutches of the police, or into danger and trouble" ("Pawtucket Free Public Library," 1885, p. 105). Such works also threatened the accepted structure of the family and society by leading girls to either accept "male ideals, and sometimes even [wish] that they had been born boys" or to "make excessive and impossible demands upon [life]" (Hall, 1905, p. 391), rather than embracing their traditional roles as docile, submissive wives and mothers. Readers of the Library Journal were advised that "there is no greater evil abroad in the land than the flood of pernicious literature in the hands of boys and girls" (Stimson, 1884, p. 143), and purchasers of dime- and yellow-novels were characterized as "wallowing in the mire of bookstands" which sold the material (Coe, 1895, p. 118). Such books were not the only danger. By the mid-1920s, librarians were deploring "the sensational vulgar moving picture ... [as] one of the biggest factors in destroying children's taste" (Wisdom, 1924, p. 873).
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Arts
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »