Do Dr. Seuss books really promote reading?

Repeat after me…

Kids hate being forced to read anything. No matter how much they should, no matter how appropriate for their age group, no matter how much they may benefit from the experience; they absolutely hate it when you force them to read something. Take my word, if you want to get kids to stop reading the Captain Underpants series, start forcing it on them. They’ll be reading Heidi in no time.

Dr. Seuss promotes literacy. Any book promotes literacy. The secret is that you can’t force a book on a child and expect them to just enjoy it because you say they should. When was the last time you remember a kid wanting to do what his parents were doing because he thought his parents are cool? Same with reading. Looking back on my high school days, I was force fed some of the worst literature to thrust upon kids filled with teenage angst. Like many high school kids I was forced to read Great Expectations, a lovely story about not getting it all because you suck. Then there was Romeo and Juliet, a play about teenage love and suicide. How’s about A Seperate Peace, where we learn that those we love can betray us so harshly? Or Julius Ceasar, a wonderful performance about a man conspiring and killing his best friend. Then there was the ever popular Lord of the Flies, where teens learn that even the innocence of children is wholly corruptable. Great titles, all forced upon us by a sullen, cynical, boomer generation disaffected with their own meager accomplishments. (That may or may not be the case, but it certainly fit every teacher I had in high school.)

You wanna make a kid read something? Tell him he can’t have it! Don’t think it works? Case in point, a local school had a hearing on whether or not to change the cirriculum because parents complained about the use of Catcher in the Rye and Invisible Man in classrooms. BAM! Instant hits. Couldn’t keep ’em on the shelves. The books were for a senior class. Freshmen, Sophomores, and Juniors along with a few middle school kids wanted these books. Kids were using allowance money to buy the books. All because adults (read “the man”) said that they were bad for them.

Does that mean we should just leave the kids alone and not make some suggestions? No. Look at what kids want to do. Look at what a kid enjoys. If he likes skateboarding, get him some skateboarding books. If she’s into wicca, get her some witch books. You’re going to have a hard time finding a kid that’s not interested in something even if they are a teen that answers every question with “whatever.” They got interests. Foster them. Even if you don’t agree with them, you can’t tell what that interest will grow into down the road. One of the guys I went to school with was kinda scary. He liked stuff about death. He watched Faces of Death, loved slasher movies, read books about death. Morbid? Maybe, but he became a homicide detective and is looking at going back to school perhaps to go into CSI.

Kids are going to hate anything you force on them. At the very least, they’ll resist it. But if you actually bother to look at what they might actually like, you can get ’em to read it.