LET 'EM READ JUNK!
By Kathy Ceceri
Captain Underpants! The name strikes terror in the hearts of teachers and school librarians everywhere.
As well it should. For Captain Underpants, also known by his true identity as mean old Mr. Krupp, principal of Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, is the comic book creation of George Beard and Harold Hutchins, fourth-grade goof-offs for whom no authority figure is above mocking, and no potty humor is too disgusting.
Little wonder then that Captain Underpants -- like George and Harold themselves, the foul offspring of the mind of children’s book author and illustrator Dav Pilkey – is the hero of millions of young readers, including my 9-year-old.
He has the boxed set of the first four Captain Underpants adventures, complete with its own whoopee cushion. He has “The Captain Underpants Extra-Crunchy Book o’ Fun,” and is saving up to buy its sequel. He even has a motorized rotating cardboard Super Diaper Baby (another character in the Pilkey pantheon), generously donated by a bookstore manager friend.
But Captain Underpants, with more than 14 million copies in print, is but the latest children’s book series to capture kids’ hearts and imaginations, much to the chagrin of education professionals.
Adults have hated series books ever since the genre started over 100 years ago with the forerunners of today’s Magic Tree House and Marykate and Ashley books, series like The Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, and Tom Swift, according to child-lit guru Jim Trelease.
In “The Read-Aloud Handbook,” Trelease relates, the chief librarian of the Boy Scouts of America warned adults in 1914 that "as some boys read such books, their imaginations are literally 'blown out,' and they go into life as terribly crippled as though by some material explosion they had lost a hand or foot."
But though today’s educators also fear the power of George and Harold to make students laugh at classroom authority, though some parents quake at his ability to turn their offspring into bathroom-noise-producing jokesters, there are those who welcome the arrival of the caped, bald defender of bored kids everywhere.
When a PTA mom in Mission Viejo, California cried out for help to thwart the principal’s plan to bar Captain Underpants from the spring book fair for fear he’d encourage “bad behavior by the students,” Trelease replied, "If you're a praying woman, get on your knees tonight and thank God for 'Captain Underpants.’”
As described in an essay on his website (www.trelease-on-reading.com), he told her, “'The research overwhelmingly shows that lifetime readers (which includes graduate students) cut their reading eye-teeth on 'series' books and comic books, not the classics. The more 'junk' they read, the better they got at reading and thus were able to graduate to more sophisticated books later.”
Yes, uttering their battle cry of “Amount Counts!,” many educators now believe that letting kids read things they enjoy is the key to producing lifelong readers, even things grownups consider “junk.”
Series books – both the quick and easy commercial kind, such as Nancy Drew, Goosebumps, and The Baby-Sitters Club, and the more sophisticated series, like Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, The Narnia Chronicles, and Harry Potter – can be addicting for kids. My son brings home Boxcar Children paperbacks from the library by the armful.
And according to Trelease, the large chunks of reading done by the series reader are the equivalent of what one researcher calls "private lessons."
“These daily readings teach the child the rules about skimming and inferencing, about where one must slow down to decipher the clues, about the importance of chapter titles, or character and setting,” Trelease writes. “The adage that ‘The more you read, the better you get at it,’ is not only true, but it should be the slogan of series books.”
Award-winning children’s book author Jennifer Armstrong agrees. Armstrong, whose writing includes well-constructed historical novels and non-fiction, spent the early years of her career ghostwriting books in the Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley Kids series. But she isn’t shy about acknowledging these titles among her other works.
“I don’t think there’s any bad reading,” Armstrong, a Saratoga Springs resident, says. “It’s like training wheels. They help you learn to enjoy books.”
Armstrong cut her own teeth as a reader on what some might consider “frivolous” books. When the Scholastic book sale came around to her classroom, she spent her money on collections of Peanuts comic strips. As she got older, she took great pleasure in reading Nancy Drew. But she reports, “My choices as a child didn’t wreck me.”
All kids go through the series phase, confirms Saratoga Springs children’s librarian Laura Clark. “I read all that junk as a kid,” she admits. “They usually don’t stick with it.”
Clark points out that series books can be comforting to children, who can face a lot of stress at home and pressure at school. And a popular series like “Goosebumps” gives kids something to discuss and share with their friends, helping to spread the reading habit.
Trelease’s book notes the fact that all readers, young and old, like to know something about a story before they pick it up. That’s what made Oprah’s TV book club so popular, he believes. And with a series book, you know just what you’re getting.
Every book in a series features the same characters, the same style and the same pacing. Readers can get attached to their favorite characters. For Armstrong, Nancy Drew became someone she felt she knew and admired. “I thought she was fabulous,” she remembers.
And knowing there was always another book to read in the series meant Armstrong didn’t have to face the disappointment of not spending any more time with that character – “You look forward to going on another adventure.”
Armstrong also says, for what they are, series books are often well-written. “You always have to consider who is writing these books. I’m a pretty darn good writer, and I used a pretty sophisticated vocabulary.”
Armstrong believes books like Harry Potter, which are even more rich and compelling, are nonetheless popular because of the same qualities as a series like Goosebumps: “You pretty much know what you’re getting, but you get a new one each time.”
However, savvy adults, she said, can use these more involved books to open the doors for children to even more challenging and complex literature.
“One of the jobs of librarians is to extend that literacy experience for readers,” she said. “See a kid reading a magazine about dirt bikes, suggest a novel on the same subject. And now we’re getting him into the habit of reading stories.”
Getting kids to read “real books” may be the goal – my son also belongs to a kids’ classics book club that has introduced him to “Treasure Island” and “The Secret Garden” – but adults need to remember that required reading and dioramas assignments don’t foster a love of reading itself.
Trelease notes that many schools have started to emulate the adult book clubs that have sprung up around the country in the wake of the Oprah phenomena. But in their eagerness to tie their efforts to the curriculum, many get it very wrong.
“A big fear among educators is that someone will charge that valuable instructional time is being wasted on reading that is only enjoyable and not "testable,’" he writes. “Thus it is in Los Angeles they're insisting the 9th and 10th graders produce essays and art work associated with ‘Fahrenheit 451.’ Funny, but I don't recall any of the discussion groups (telling adults) to produce essays or posters on the books they were reading. Does anyone else see the contradictions here?”
Homeschooling parents have a particularly strong stake in encouraging literacy in their kids, since they’re responsible for making sure their children learn to read. On a recent warm fall afternoon at the rec fields on Geyser Road in Saratoga Springs, a group of homeschooling parents had only good things to say about series books.
“I used to love ‘Cherry Ames, Student Nurse,’” laughed one mom.
“I have this to say for them,” another mother, Barb Moore, chimed in. “My daughter is famous for starting books and never finishing them. Lately she’s started reading Nancy Drew books. She’s read four so far, and she can’t wait to get her hands on the next one.”
Debra Wetzel had the same experience with her son Graham, who’s hooked on Harry Potter.
“We have to wrestle him away from them to do anything else,” she said.
Raising readers, kids who love to read, has rewards that go far beyond mere enjoyment.
“Reading is such a wonderful thing,” said Andrea Hogan, whose 4-year-old Galen loves to hear the Arthur books over and over. “You’re never lonely. You’re never bored.”
“Literature in my view is one of the jewels of a civilized society,” Armstrong says. “It produces a more educated public. It produces thinkers. Literature allows us to be bigger than ourselves.”
© 2007 Kathy Ceceri BACK TO TOP |
