Very Important Readers
Not merely Very Important; they are the Most Important readers! Children, I mean. But, for some reason or other, they seem to be neglected. Oh, publishers do publish lots and lots of books for children, so this is not about quantity. It`s the quality that makes one wonder…
No Reading Children means No Reading Grown-ups, as one has to love books since early childhood if one is to love them at all. Teachers can make most of the pupils learn their ABCs and even use books, but very few teachers are capable of fostering love for books, therefore a good part of the most, as adults, will read newspapers at best, and reading newspapers is not really reading. So it must start well before school, with parents reading to and together with their children. Which seems to mean No Reading Grown-ups, No Reading Children; fortunately, that is not always precisely so.
Anyway, books for children are (still) much in demand. Strangely enough, or perhaps quite naturally, that degrades quality of the product. Well, the covers are glossy and colourful and dazzling, almost to make your eyes water, but that, or the quality of the paper, has little to do with the quality of the text. For some reason, folks think it is easy to write for children. The folks are absolutely and totally wrong. Writing something really good is not very easy in general, and writing for children is much more difficult. Children might lack experience and whatnot, but they can tell true from false. The bulk of printed output is false, alas.
Discussing fresh ersatz would take up too much time and space. I suppose poor writers have a right to exist. Only there seems to be too many of those. And they should not write for children. But they do. Yet there are things much worse. Like the “easy to read” Great Illustrated Classics and such. Books abbreviated (shortened, Baslim the Cripple would say), adapted and robbed off soul. Just events, neither the original mood nor the original style nor the original language left. Enough to make an out-and out readaholic quit reading. Certainly not to inculcate a love for books into anybody. WHY? To make reading easier? For fear that readers too young might not understand texts unmaimed? Please! Reading is easy for any true reader, and a pleasure to boot. As to “might not understand”… of course understanding matters, but it is by no means indispensable. Adult readers understand books each their own way; children understand books their own way, and that`s how it should be! A book one reads at the age of, say, five tells one things different than the things to be found/noticed at the age of, say, fifteen. Matter is, having read a book at the age of five, would one want to read it again at the age of fifteen? Or fifty? If so, the book is A Really Good Book! Only I do not think one would ever want to read a “shortened” one anew…
Back to writers and publishers and printing-houses, though. Those do know books for children sell well (for the time being). So they exploit that. But they ignore a simple truth: selling soulless books scares readers away, or, worse, bores them away. You cannot vie with movies and computer games and things by making covers of the books you publish more and more colourful. The only way is to make your books unique and live(ly?) as texts. Books for children, first and foremost. I do repeat: children are the Most Important Readers. As your Future Customers, at the very least. Why are publishers trying to scare/bore them away is a thing I cannot fathom…
© Dodo