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The Power of Mediocre Children’s Fiction
Reach back in your mind to the time when you emerged as an independent reader. You could choose your own material, and didn’t have to rely on others to read it for you. What stories did you prefer? For some of us, the books that drew us in weren’t sophisticated. In fact, there’s a good chance the books you’re recalling were formulaic series that publishers cranked out at high volume. Although it’s tempting for parents to steer their children toward richer literature, there is a case to be made that you actually derived benefit from your obsession with Superman comics or your seven weeks in a row of checking out Babysitters Club books.
Students who learn ably to read and write early on, and then build on that knowledge exponentially throughout their education, are ones who enter Kindergarten already primed with a large vocabulary. This vocabulary development comes from regular conversation with loved ones at home, life experiences such as outdoor walks and petting zoos, playtime with other children, and hearing books read aloud.
With such a stimulating and varied daily life, children build a network of long-term memories through which to interpret anything new they come across. The more they know — the greater number of connections they formed — the faster new information is meaningfully processed and assimilated. A child’s knowledge can be expressed and demonstrated in terms of vocabulary, words with their attendant associations and indication of familiarity with a domain. Any book that increases that word-hoard, filling out familiar concepts and introducing new ideas, strengthens the mental network and thus lays the groundwork for further learning. In sum, reading mediocre children’s fiction makes you smart.
Learning new words in context is difficult; the research tells us that we have to encounter the word many times before it becomes part of our vocabulary. When you were lounging with that middling story back ten, twenty, thirty years ago or more, you were grappling with words and their associations, creating mental layers that now give precision, depth, and clarity to your communication. Furthermore, our brains give favored status to stories, lending the takeaways from your reading extra vibrance and permanence.
A strong vocabulary builder was, in my case, the Nancy Drew series. I didn’t read all of them, but I did binge on them occasionally in my preteen years. They were especially beneficial for me as someone who hadn’t fully lived in American culture. I could learn and experience it second hand through these works and others.
Nancy was a character who had it all — looks, smarts, boyfriend, confidence, a car. Her father was a handsome lawyer, and wealthy. Anytime Nancy needed to go somewhere to solve a mystery, she and her friends could pack and be whisked to an exciting new destination. Nancy could pick up on any new skill immediately — acting, playing tennis. Circumstances always ended well for her and criminals were always apprehended. Nevertheless, this character took me places and showed me new things I would not otherwise have come upon for some time.
The first Nancy Drew book I picked up was Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes. I was eight and was absorbing all the newness of my first semester of boarding school. This book with the pretty young woman on the cover, playing bagpipes in a kilt — I think I already had bagpipes, Scottish, kilt in my head — was a promising read. Next was Password to Larkspur Lane. That one I remember for its introduction to the ideas of nursing home, visiting hours, perhaps password. (Really? Hospitals in America had only certain hours when you could visit? Picky and strict!)
Other words acquired from the series were as varied as Nancy’s adventures: amateur, phantom, titian-haired, kachina dolls, false bottom (as in a secret compartment). There was a criminal with pale blue eyes that startled me to contemplate pale blue eyes as perhaps being pretty, but in this case meant to confer more creepiness on the bad guy. I had thought blue eyes were desirable. I also less consciously absorbed the idea of describing a character’s physical traits to indicate the non-tangibles. I still reflect on pale blue eyes occasionally, especially when I see examples of what the writer must have been thinking.
Just a survey of vintage Nancy Drew titles shows the enormous variety of ideas young readers encountered: Stagecoach, dragon, mannequin, locket, quest, ranch, tolling, moonstone, ivory, sapphire. The attractive covers, the range of settings and contexts, the fast-paced narrative with suspenseful chapter endings, and the scary parts gave rich meaning to the words and a permanent place for them in their minds.
Published in General
I remember wishing I could read the Nancy Drew books growing up. My mom populated the house with all the Hardy Boys and ND books, (the former for the boys and latter for the girls, mostly) and the mysterious covers totally enthralled me. For some reason, though, I only read a handful from each.
Wonder if the Sherlock Holmes canon didn’t kind of supplant these others as grist for a young boys need for intellectual stimulation and adventure.
Oh, there was a competing series, Danny Dunn, (danny dunn) I think that appealed to me more. More science oriented. But there must have been something else…Oh, now I remember. The henry reid kids books – science oriented again. But only a couple of these. I can’t shake the feeling that I am missing some other series though. I was an avid reader, but didn’t read that many from the HB or ND series, only a few from DD and HR, so what did I read? The Phantom Tollbooth, yes, totally awesome. Sherlock Holmes, awesome again. But something’s missing…
My favorite book as a child was Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp by Mercer Mayer. I didn’t really care much for reading until I was twelve and I discovered Stephen King, then it was off to the races. Now I find King’s contemporary writing a bit soft. In Doctor Sleep (sequel to The Shinning) no main character dies and it has a happy ending. The man is losing his touch. The books I enjoy most now are biographies, classics and adventures like George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series.
Will anyone besides me also admit to The Bobbsey Twins?
Yep!
I do. I admit, also, to happily reading the entire “The Happy Hollisters” series of books.
I don’t know about reading being “the only alternative to crushing boredom” anymore, but I can attest that is possible to create an environment where reading is a child’s top voluntary choice of activities. My husband and I were very strict about prohibiting all TV before age two and limiting TV quantity and options thereafter for our daughter. At age 11, she has become a discerning viewer, occasionally asking to try a show she has heard about from her peers and usually rejecting such shows as “killing my brain cells.” This is a child who will prop a book on the sink and read while she brushes her teeth!
She is not just one of those kids who reads, either. She rides horses, belongs to swim club and American Heritage Girls, makes Scratch animation programs, plays the violins, crochets, and spends plenty of time climbing trees to study birds, bugs, and leaves. (Our recent decision to begin homeschooling allows her greater flexibility to follow her diverse interests!) So while reading may not be her only alternative, it seems to be her preferred one. :)
Absolutely!
MT, I could see this possibly working along the lines of the Magic Treehouse book being the “homework,” that is, the students have read and absorbed the story on their own, with the class portion an expansion of that period in history with other books and resources being introduced (games, acting out scenes, films, etc.). I don’t see how you’d “teach” the Treehouse book itself.
I read the Hardy Boys books like crazy when I was young. Every single chapter ended with a cliffhanger, making it so hard to put them down, turn out the light, and go to sleep.
Me too.
I loved that book so much.
Have you seen the movie?
The trailer:
“Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
“You’re guilty, guilty, … I’ve never seen anyone so guilty,”
I was a late bloomer, with no one even sure I could read until I turned seven. I vividly remember the book that proved to me that I could read, though: it was a Swedish botany book. Of course, I couldn’t read most of the words, but I could decipher just enough to recognize the Latin names and English cognates – blom for “bloom”, första for “first”, sommar for “summer”… – just enough to get a vague sense of what was going on. Surely if I could do that, all the adults who were telling me I still couldn’t read had to be wrong.
After that, I began devouring everything. Plenty of adult nonfiction for the general reader, but also lots and lots of mediocre children’s fiction. I remember thinking for a long time, though, that Nancy Drew’s titian hair was “titan hair” – like really big hair… maybe the author thought red hair just looked bigger?…
To this day, I still prefer “trashy kiddie fiction” to a lot of trashy adult fiction – or even worse, trashy young adult fiction. Probably because reading a sex scene still gives me that awkward feeling of having stumbled into the wrong room at a house party.
That’s exactly what I thought!
Oh yes, The Bobbsey Twins! Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden were also staples of mine in elementary school.
I’m not sure about the mediocre label–at least in their original forms. I think a lot of those series have been “updated” for current audiences in ways that may make them more palatable for today’s readers, but perhaps not as challenging.
Several years ago, I found a well-thumbed copy of a 1918 Readers Digest left in the attic of my house by the original owners. They were a farming family with education levels typical of the time, so I imagine this was regular reading fare. Looking through the articles, I was struck by the quality and sophistication of the writing–vastly superior to the material on offer today.
FWIW, the story behind many of these series – including the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew – is very interesting. They were the products of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Stratemeyer wrote the plot outline, then hired authors to write the books, paying $100 – 200 per book. A Canadian author named Leslie McFarlane wrote many of the Hardy Boys books. (He later went on to the CBC.) The cliffhanger chapter endings were a Stratemeyer requirement. IIRC, he also had strict page and chapter number requirements. The books I read in the late 50s and early 60 were actually re-worked versions of the originals, done after Stratemeyer died and his daughter took over. She felt the books needed to be updated to reflect changes in techonology, society and language, including eliminating some offensive racial and ethnic elements. When the second generation appeared, many older folks thought the vocabulary and prose had been simplified too much. There a few good books about the Syndicate.
God, I have some nerdish moments.
Right now I am not feeling a lack in any subjects. We’re happy with the math program we’re using, I like the history classes I’m teaching, the science this year is pretty good.
I teach science even though I don’t have much of a science background. I took college level chemistry, physics, and astronomy, so I do ok, but the high school classes are the hardest for me to teach, mostly because I have to do good prep and can’t just wing it like I can with history and literature!
For most homeschool families of my acquaintance, science is the one they’d like help with most. Many of the homeschool friendly science texts are young earth creationist, which I don’t teach, so it can be harder to find good materials.
This year in our co-op, a mom with a graduate degree in physics is teaching that class. Woo hoo!!
And I’m teaching chemistry. Less woo hoo, but not terrible.
I’ve done online classes with some of my students. Some were better than others. The chess class was actually the most fun…
Tutoring other homeschool families in math and science has always struck me as something I could usefully do with my degree while raising kids. I’m still nervous, though, about the biology thing – quite frankly I wouldn’t know how to even make sense of biology without the greater portion of evolutionary theory, much less teach it as if it were a subject that made sense. Sigh.
Why wouldn’t you teach evolutionary theory?
To other people’s kids in a homeschooling setting? It would require the parents’ permission, I suppose. Which I hope I’d get, but wouldn’t be surprised if I also didn’t get – and I suspect garnering a reputation as the sleeper agent out to subvert other families’ kids would not go over too well.
Tom Swift Jr., for me – the stories of a globe-trotting boy inventor who made magnificent things like floating machines that paved the Amazon were perfect for growing up in the Space Age. Tom Swift pere preceded Tom Jr., of course, and while his inventions were more pedestrian, they thrilled kids who regarded the world of Radio and Airplanes with the same gee-whiz wonder.
Didn’t know it then, but they were part of an American tradition of intrepid adventure stories which went back to the 19th century. Before Tom, there was Frank Reade Jr – a 1890s-era American who had his own town, Readesville, and turned out an endless series of subs, planes, electrical vehicles and robot horses, traveling the world with his faithful ethnic stereotypes – a ruddy bluff Irishman, and a Black cook who was subject the most appalling depictions. They fought pirates, sea monsters, Red Indians, and Mohammedans.
I’ve put together a site on the subject, if you’re interested. It’s quite a period piece.
I still own a Nancy Drew book or two plus a Bobsey Twins book. I liked reading but wasn’t in love with reading until one summer, a dear family friend (a teacher) gave me a grocery sack full of books and told me that I was to read every one and we would discuss at the end of the summer. Being the procrastinator that I am, waited until the end of summer to get started and fell in love with The Witch of Blackbird Pond, among others. She knew what she was doing.
We encouraged our son to read whatever he wanted at whatever grade level he wanted to try. In fact, we moved him from a private parochial school because they forbade him from reading outside of his grade level even though he tested at a ninth grade reading level in third grade. His vocabulary and writing ability soared once he was able to continue reading at higher levels. Why hold back children from growing? There was a reason that they did this but this is a story for another post at another time.
The point here is to read. They don’t all have to be great works of fiction.
Are any of you parents using Rush Limbaugh’s new book series (time travels with exceptional Americans) about Rush Revere and his talking horse, Liberty? I read them myself, and find them very interesting, informative, and even fun. If I had kids, I’d read the books with them and ask them to see if they can find anachronisms (modern elements that don’t belong in the past). The next one “Rush Revere and the Star Spangled Banner” comes out on the 27th of this month.
When we homeschooled, as we did from first grade through high school graduation, my wife would read to the kids at the end of the school day. She read CS Lewis’ fantasy and science fiction works. She read Harry Potter to them and when they got to the point where they could read Harry on their own, they did.
She read other books, I think in part because she was interested in them and hoped that the kids would be as well. (In any case, they weren’t free to depart ‘school’ until mom was done reading.) I do remember that the kids weren’t always interested, but they were compliant and stayed, because ‘dad’ was the alternative and they weren’t looking to lock horns with ‘dad.’
Shameless plug here but for those of you who home school and/or teach, you can get free materials from the Bill of Rights Institute. HOA, Jr. is writing some of the material.
The Bobbsey Twins – I loved them, the second book I ever read cover to cover, a real book, not a picture book. My family didn’t read, parents or grandparents, but my mother knew the values of books and reading. I struggle with several learning disabilities, including dyslexia, so the desire to read saved me from sped-ed hell.
I didn’t like most series with the exception of the Twins, and those were already hard to find in our town by the mid-1980s. I read mostly nonfiction from the elementary school and town library. My favorite were the American Heritage Junior books on historical topics. They were amazing treasure troves of period illustrations and photographs. I now buy against that day when my son can read them. They gave me a cinematic introduction to American history.
I also loved those simplified versions of the western literary canon with a picture on every other page, Illustrated Classic Editions, I used to have 40 or 50 of them, they gave me a huge leg up later in life when I wanted to or had to read those same titles.
When I married Mrs. Salieri I had to downsize my private library of 15,000+ volumes and pack the 9k or so books I kept, during the packing Mom often said she slightly regretted getting me hooked on books as a toddler with Little Golden Books.
…words such as “Slartibartfast”, “Zaphod Beeblebrox”, and “Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster”…
;-)
I was discouraged with the young kids’ literature when my kids were in elementary and middle school. The Sweet Valley Twins were horrible. And I have some very uncharitable things that I think about Judy Blume. (There used to be a morality that said that adults shouldn’t get too close to kids emotionally–she crossed many lines in my mind as a parent.) I much preferred Beverly Cleary.
I took over our book fairs at our middle school two years in a row, so upset was I with the horrible stuff the book fair companies were peddling to the kids.
A friend of mine ran a local book store, and he helped me with it. No Judy Blume.
We offered nothing but the classics–The Yearling, for example. And E. B. White. Louisa May Alcott.
A week before the book fair, we had had a enrichment program where a woman brought in live birds of prey to show the kids. The kids loved it. We had an auditorium full of middle school kids who were absolutely soundless when the woman asked them to be when she took the golden eagle out of its cage.
The next week we held the book fair, and my friend who was replenishing the piles of books each day for the fair told me that the Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds was disappearing. I laughed. No surprise.
And they tell me these kids are too hard to teach. :)
Oh, Nancy Drew…. I remember being able to check books out of the school library in the second grade, picking up every Nancy Drew book I could.
I remember reading Nancy Drew when my mother made me get up to do some job for her. When I sat back down with my book, I said, “Mom, reading is so much better than TV. If you have to get up and do something while you’re watching TV, you miss out. If you have to get up and do something while you’re reading, you don’t miss anything! The book is still there for you.” Before DVRs and Netflix, obviously. I’m sure she did a little happy dance once she was out of my sight.
Now I’m so happy to see my kids devouring Rick Riordan books, Harry Potter, and even Ever After High. Not so sure about all the vampires and dystopias awaiting them in the teen section of the library. I’m about to start reading the Hunger Games series, because apparently my two are the only 6th graders in the world who haven’t read those. So I suppose my days of mediocre teen fiction aren’t over.