When I was a child, our parents used to go out and leave my older brother in charge of me and our younger sister, Margaret. One of his tasks was reading to Margaret. Oliver mostly did his duty, but occasionally he would grow restless. I would register a slight shift in tone as rebellion crept in. In the middle of Little House on the Prairie he would pause, clear his throat and announce in a sonorous voice, “And then Laura died.”
As I fell about laughing and little Margaret screamed, he would continue: “The funeral was a sad affair. Ma and Pa arrived at the church in their covered wagon. Soon, they, too, would be dead.” It always took a while for the uproar to subside. Oliver would resume, Margaret would gradually stop screaming, and we would settle down to focus. It never occurred to us to stop before the chapter was finished.
We had a large collection of children’s books, and we went frequently to the public library, too. My memory of books as a child is the degree to which they enlarged the world. I lived in Tohunga Crescent,in Auckland’s Parnell, and at the same time, intensely, in all the parallel universes created by fiction. Those places and their iconography were shared by the family and enriched our common understanding.
Books added layers of possibility, a view into other lives, a dazzling variety of characters, vivid and exotic landscapes. To be read to as a child, and later to read to yourself, is to be introduced to the power of your own mind. It’s a driving lesson for the imagination, and the imagination fortifies, arms the spirit with resilience, fuels resourcefulness, generates happiness.
Childhood without children’s fiction would have been narrower, duller, sadder. It would have lacked the intricate map of cultural references, the in-jokes, the heuristics and mutual understandings that are built up when children and parents are reading together.
We had the beginner’s classics: first picture books like Where the Wild Things Are and The Tiger Who Came to Tea, before moving on to chapter books that we could start to read ourselves. These were also excellent for reading aloud. Realism and fantasy were equally compelling. Writers like Joan Aiken, CS Lewis and Nina Bawden were favourites who went on for years producing wildly imaginative and atmospheric novels.
No good kids’ book should be a chore to read aloud. Swedish Finn Tove Jansson’s books portray fantasy creatures, the Moomins, who are lovably plausible in their interactions, and in their poignant and piquant personalities. The Moomins’ adventures take place in a natural world filled with mountains and forests, rain and storms, ice and snow. From melancholy winter to dreamy summer there are landscapes and scenarios so beautifully evoked that the books are compelling for adults, too.
The series reaches its height with Comet in Moominland, in which a comet threatens Moomin Valley, and the small beasts must embark on a long and hazardous journey to find out what will happen to their world. This book has it all: suspense, apocalyptic landscapes (at one point the comet dries up the sea), camaraderie, comedy, complex relationships and an extremely dramatic and satisfying dénouement.
I once met a parent who told me he wouldn’t allow his 4-year-old son to have Tintin comics, as they were “too violent”. I was mystified, and sorry for his son. Tintin is brilliant; to this day I and my children can recall and discuss individual drawings and funny moments between Tintin, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus and the rest. Asterix comics are nearly as good, both verbally and visually.
I inherited many of the children’s books I grew up with. When our first son was a year old, I brought out the best picture books, full of vivid illustrations, bright colours and repetition. We would talk through them together.
During the years, I read to all three children, consistently, conscientiously, often exhaustedly. It was the best way to stop, settle down, communicate, share; the most effective way to teach them how to listen, articulate, formulate complex sentences, entertain abstract ideas – all effortlessly, because it was entertainment.
There was a marked difference in listening styles. I would read a chapter as my daughter sat motionless, absorbed. My son, also paying attention, would push himself on his back towards an armchair, lever himself on top of it, descend the other side, roll back, crawl army style, as if invading enemy territory, towards me. And so on, until I’d finished reading. Each had a perfectly clear recall afterwards of every aspect of the chapter. It made me wonder: are people too quick to label boys hyperactive?
In those school years, I noticed parents who fretted about progress, got hung up on discipline and teaching quality, and talked about “going private”, yet weren’t reading to their kids. Reading aloud from the start gives children a huge educational advantage. They’re learning comprehension, grammar, focus, vocabulary, pronunciation. When you hook them on fictional dramas, you’re introducing them to complex and sophisticated ideas. You’re getting them to speculate, hypothesise, think outside their experience. They will have a massive head start with formal grammar if they know instinctively, from constant exposure, how a sentence fits together.
Insidious screen time
Excessive screen time has always seemed to me insidious and a potential disaster, since it involves physical inertia and mental passivity. I’ve wondered if some kids who are depressed or failing educationally might have missed the basics: being talked to, being encouraged to exercise and play sports, being read to and encouraged to read. It’s difficult if parents don’t have time and resources, but those are good priorities.
Reading aloud is a way to show care and spend time that’s not intrusive. It’s a way of giving attention while being an entertainer. The most obvious downside for exhausted parents is that it takes effort. But the more you do it, the less of a drag it is. This was the counterintuitive discovery I made: if your children are really annoying you, it helps to spend more time with them.
Children’s books don’t need plodding messages; they don’t need to promote “okayness”. Learning is the byproduct. If kids are equipped with a level of verbal sophistication, it helps them to be confident and articulate, to assert themselves, to think clearly, follow ideas, enjoy life, learn empathy and humour, be happy. It’s not about correct messaging; it’s about giving them the ability to reason.
Anyone who’s watched schoolkids on the edge of their seats and screaming with laughter at the Globe Theatre in London can easily dismiss as fatuous and philistine the idea that schools should give up teaching Shakespeare.
In our family, it was my husband Paul who did the longest tour of reading duty. For more than 10 years he read to our three children at bedtime. They worked through my inherited library, adding new books along the way, including the Harry Potters and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series.
Every evening when Paul finished, they set up a chant, begging him to carry on. Tuning in now and then, I took note of the duds and smash hits: Philip Pullman was terrific; Harry Potter (although adored by the children) sounded so pedestrian and clunky that I sometimes resorted to earplugs. I remember an exchange between Harry Potter and Ron at the end of the final book. They’d become middle-aged and were having a grindingly dull exchange about parking their cars. When it finished, I was overheard to mutter in the next room, “Thank fucking god that’s over.”
Our two boys and one girl had pretty much the same tastes. So long as it was a good story, they were hooked. I did notice they weren’t fans of the Little House on the Prairie books, which I’d found absorbing as a child. They judged Laura boring, virtuous Mary a drag, and Ma and Pa unbearable. (Perhaps this explained Oliver’s occasional breakouts.) Apart from panning Laura Ingalls Wilder, they embraced the classics. They were fans of fantasy, science fiction and rugged realism. They loved humour, suspense, spookiness, adventures, intricately detailed plots.
All three have gone on reading. My younger son, who had the benefit of listening as a toddler to his older siblings’ more complex books, is a fan of audiobooks. I had more time when he was small, so I also spent seven years telling him a running story with a large cast of characters.
The books become part of the language of the family. The favourites, the duds and smash hits, the titles, plots, characters, illustrations, all represent shared experience, common history. They are the labour of love, the story of the years, all the dreams and memories, all the hours and hours.