Developing children's interest in reading

THE 1990s: CHILDREN'S MOTIVATION AND INTERESTS

Articles in the professional literature on children and reading in the public library remained sparse during the first half of the last decade of the twentieth century, as the focus turned toward the school library/media center and its role in teaching and promoting reading. Public libraries continued to use summer reading programs as their primary method of promoting reading and added "family reading programs" sponsored by the American Library Association and McDonald's to promote both adult and child literacy ("ALA/McDonald's Team Up," 1993; "Children's Bookbag," 1999; "For Third Year," 1995; "Riding the Reading Express," 1996). Societal attention on education in general and literacy in particular encouraged further research into causal factors affecting reading motivation and interests, a topic that continues to be explored and debated ten years later.

Early research established that the most effective and efficient method for learning to read was "free voluntary reading," that is, the individualized or self-selected reading that librarians had promoted for decades, and that the act of reading developed cognitive skills, comprehension, writing skills, vocabulary, spelling, and grammar (as reported in Krashen, 2004, pp. 1-55, 81-84). Other research pertinent to public libraries found that children's attitudes toward reading became more negative with age, although this may be more a reaction to teaching methods that restrict choice than to reading itself (as reported in Ross, McKechnie, & Rothbauer, 2006, pp. 65-67). Further research demonstrated that the best method for promoting reading was to provide access to books that children wanted to read, whether at home, at school, or in the public library, with school and public libraries "crucially important" (as reported in Krashen, 2004, pp. 67-77; Wilson, Anderson, & Fielding, 1986). An additional critical factor was being read to, another practice that public librarians had established a century earlier. Other factors included adult models of reading, time for sustained silent reading, direct encouragement, discussion groups, peer influence, book displays, paperback editions, book talks, and author visits. Comic book and teen romance readers were found to spend more time reading, to read more books, and to have more positive attitudes toward reading. Research into the efficacy of incentives or rewards for reading strongly suggested that such rewards do no good and are probably harmful. Children who are rewarded for reading not only do not come to appreciate the intrinsic value of reading, but they view reading as simply the means to the end of winning the prize (Krashen, 2004, pp. 77-119).

Despite the direct application of such research to public library efforts to promote reading to children, very little of it was reported in the professional literature, and librarians' efforts to promote reading to children resembled those that had been instituted nearly one hundred years earlier. Although as a result of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the feminist movement begun in the 1970s, the "children" who were the focus of those efforts were no longer predominantly white males, librarians continued to promote reading using competitive rather than cooperative methods, offering rewards and prizes as "incentives," and utilizing themes and materials that appealed primarily to boys (Cook, 2000; Minkel, 2000, 2003; Roberts, 2005; Totten, 2000).