Today’s education system has turned it focus towards literacy. To reach out to parents and children in creative ways, innovative schools have initiated the trend of literacy nights and reading clubs. Librarians are making efforts to arrange authors’ visits to their schools to promote the reading habits of their students. To some extent all these efforts are helping children to divert their attention from computers, video games, Wii and Play Station to reading books.
The question here is: are we aware of what kind of reading children are engaging in and who decides what a seven year or an eleven year old child should read. Taking the discussion a step further, is it justified if a fifty year old is writing a book for a five-year old? If yes then the mature adult whose experiences flow through a children’s story must make it possible for himself too to think with a child’s perspective in mind.
There is no doubt that the prime focus of children’s books is on entertaining and providing them pleasure through reading. Attention also needs to be given to the fact that books which children are reading should help them to develop cognitively too.
Being a parent it might be a good exercise to go through what the children are reading in order to ensure that their readings are not just for learning and developing the language skills but also for assisting them in their personal and mental growth. A child’s mind is pure and tender. He can easily be influenced by any idea irrespective of its rationality and validity. And this influence is no less than a trap. Therefore the literature they are going through should carefully be filtered by adults around the child.
Children’s books come in a wide range – from infancy to adolescence. A ten year old reading a book of the level of a fourteen year old may be considered good in terms of better command on language. But on the other hand, there is always a risk of being exposed to the information which is intended for a much mature reader with the capability to interpret the content in the right perspective.
The key lies in balancing our approach towards reading. Reading is surely an extremely intellectual and developmental activity. On the other hand it is also a captivating and entrapping device. So it is important to be aware of the details of the literature that our children are reading. Through this filtered literature we can maximize the benefits and minimize the harms of reading.
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