While learning about what children think a “good” book is, I began to think back to my service learning experience last year. In the Joy of Children’s Literature Book by Johnson, some children described books that make them happy or cry, make pictures in their head, or have dinosaurs in them as “good” books.
For part of an honors option in my English class, I gave my third grade service learning classroom a reading and language survey. Two of the questions I asked were, “How much do you enjoy reading on a scale from 1-10?”, and “What type of books do you read the most?”. Surprisingly, a majority of the class put 9’s or 10’s as how much they enjoy reading. It was interesting to correlate the data because I also found that many of the children who enjoyed reading a lot had a specific series or series’ they read. One girl even as far to say that she would only read the Magic Rainbow or Princess Diary series. The class as a whole had multiple students put the same series as their favorite, such as Percy Jackson, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, and the Series of Unfortunate Events. I learned many things from this survey, one of which was that finding books specifically about things a child is interested in can be a great start to developing motivation and better reading skills. Many of these children found certain books they enjoyed to read and then became hooked on the series. Sometimes it can just take one book to get a child hooked on reading.
I can definitely testify to this because I was one of those people who had no interest in reading whatsoever. It wasn't until my friend introduced me to the Twilight series that I had EVER read a book for pleasure. When reading for school was assigned I would always find some way of getting out of it. It took an engaging book that I was interested in to make me a reader. Because of the Teacher Education courses I am in now I am starting to value reading more and think it is crucial for young children to read, but I understand why children would dislike reading or avoid it as well. I completely agree with you and think that children should be introduced to books that they will thoroughly enjoy in order to have the desire to read throughout their lives.
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