Clarifying the debate: Children and Young Adult books, and the idea of ‘Literature teaching’

 

Clarifying the debate: Children and Young Adult books, and the idea of ‘Literature teaching’

There’s a been something of a debate lately concerning the value of Children’s literature, and by extension, YAL (Young Adult lit.). You might have seen it coming by online, and in newspapers: something along the lines of ‘Which books are good enough (‘rich’ enough) to be given to read to the youth?’.

Some have answered in a restrictive way, pointing out the value of ‘rich content’ books and how those can add value to the reading experience. Some, of course, advocate an ‘anything-goes’ attitude, where whichever book you get someone to read is a good thing: what matters is not really what they read, but the very fact that they read. Among those, it’s fair to say that sometimes their reaction seems informed by their own interests (see Sander Meij in the NRC, October 2024, who quotes his own books as being worthy of being read), or by a research project, or by a desire to be ecumenical, or by morality.

I’ve recently written about the thorny problem of morality when choosing texts to read (HERE and Here too), and it’s clear that this is playing a role here too: after all, if you’re from the ‘Anything-Goes-as-long-as-it’s-reading’ school, it’s very hard to avoid the feeling you’re acting somewhat morally. If ‘Anything goes’, it means the simple act of reading is, in and of itself, a good thing – a somewhat surprising idea if you stop and think about it for two minutes. Is reading like, say, jogging or going to the gym? Is reading like practicing your instrument? That is, is the act of doing it enough to justify the doing of it? If I go and jog for, say, 20 minutes each day, that will be good for me and my body, even if I have no intention of running a marathon later. But if I read, say, a low-level, poorly written, cliché-riddled, unimaginative, derivative text: what do I gain?

A couple of years ago I read ‘Red Queen’, by Victoria Aveyard, a best-selling YAL novel of absolutely no originality – basically a mix of everything that has been successful in that genre over the last 20 years. It’s horrendously badly written, it’s so full of clichés it’s risible, and it’s so derivative it’s obvious this author didn’t come up with anything new, original or even slightly personal: her situations, characters and plot are just an amalgamation of best-sellers, which really feels like cold-hearted exploitation of other people’s success and imagination.

What does anyone gain from reading this? Exposure to language? Re-hashing of clichés? (more on that later).

More to the point, if ‘Anything goes’, texts are equated with the act of deciphering black marks on white pages, and that mechanical act is in itself good. I don’t deny that learning to read, and then getting used to reading, to then acquire a facility in doing so, is a good thing, but I’m asking why it would have to be done through fiction, if all you expect from fiction is mechanical reading material? Any other text would do, surely, if it’s only about the reading skills, or the language. Martin Amis, when explaining how he wrote his magnificent, unique and profound ‘Time’s Arrow’, talks of ‘reading by the yard’: yes, but he means reading-for-research, reading-to-learn, reading-to-understand – reading-to-think, really. He certainly doesn’t mean ’reading just so that you’re doing it’.

On the other hand of course, if not all texts are adequate (in class, for the youth, from a teacher’s perspective), that also raises interesting questions: why exclude one and not the other? Is it because of the language of the text (too easy, too difficult, too plain?), the situations (too derivative, too obvious?), the narration (too linear, too unstructured?), the characters (too cliché, too smooth, too…simple)?

Let’s get back to Red Queen I mentioned above: what do we do with that?

One school would say: Well, she sold millions of copies of that book, so do not compare it to what you know, take it as is – obviously, many people loved it, and if they loved it, that means they read it, and that, really, is the only thing that counts. And forget about the paucity of language, and the absence of style (or at least of anything idiosyncratic): the very fact that readers are exposed to language is enough.

The other school would say: Well, it’s bad, really bad, and if you like that kind of genre, you might as well go to the source, or, in this case, sources – from Ursula Leguin (herself an obvious influence on Harry Potter) to Narnia to whatever contributed to creating a sub-genre. There’s nothing in this text, even the language is poor. Why read a poor copy when there are so many good originals?

What I think is missing here is to consider what we – teachers – are for, what our role is (or could be, or should be perhaps), and also to think about what reading is for.

I would like to suggest first of all that texts should offer some measure of complexity: not complexity of language, narration or style, but complexity of situations. Another word we could use instead of ‘complexity’ is ‘nuances’: does the text you selected contain enough ‘nuances’ to get you thinking?

Consider Harry Potter: where is the complexity, where are the real nuances? Where are questions like ‘Why is someone bad?’, ‘when does someone become bad and why’? ‘What is to be good’? Too often the Harry Potter books posit a good vs evil situation where both are clearly identified. Harry may be presented as being tempted to become bad, but is he really? In fact, he’s a solidly moral boy, surrounded by turgidly moral characters (his friends), and opposed to so obviously immoral people he becomes virtue incarnate.

It’s a nice read, no doubt about that (or at least in the first three or four volumes, then it’s all downhill), but does it lead to more, other readings?

Now you will say to me: ah, come on, millions of kids read Harry Potter and loved it, they still do, surely that’s all that matters? Do you remember that Clive James quote: ‘Almost any teacher, no matter how intransigent his or her views, can be moved to tears by the sight of a student voluntarily purchasing a book’. Don’t you agree? (and yes I do, but I want more - we need to want more)

And I will say to you: what else have they read then? Have they gone on to read, and if so, what? Reading figures, here, in the UK, everywhere, show a marked decline in reading – surely that would point towards Harry Potter being a one-off phenomenon, not a profound trend. If so: what have we gained?

If we want reading – and books, novels, short stories, poems, whatever – to matter, we need to find A USE for it: a profound, personal but ultimately applicable USE, something that can be reproduced, that can be applied, that can help, that can illuminate the world around you and reveal yourself to yourself.

‘Literature is an axe to break the frozen sea within us’, Kafka (is said to have) said. We cannot reduce reading fiction to a mechanical, language-focused operation, and most of all to a moral stance: moral admonitions only go so far. Nor can we reduce reading to a magical operation where inexperienced, unprepared readers would somehow absorb whatever ‘goodness’ a text is supposed to contain. WE, the teachers, must mediate; we must be the conduit, the precipitator, the revealing agent.

Ultimately, the text (and its nature, its genre) will matter less than what you, the teacher, can and want to do with it. Thinking that a ‘great novel’ will have a great effect is like believing in the trickle-down economic theory: it sounds good, but it’s just a way of not attending to the reality of things. Money has never trickled down, but the excuse has legitimized the absence of a structural approach. Thinking that ‘just reading’ is enough is simply not realistic.

If we want to put fiction to good use in education, we need to have a systematic, structured and guiding approach: with YAL, children’s poetry or Borges, what matters is our intent, our goals, and our guidance.

 

• Martin Amis’ ‘Time’s arrow’ is substantially different from Amis’ other work, stylistically and thematically as well. Its extremely original narration makes it pretty unique, but in the end it is the combination of that narrative approach, the contents and theme that mark it out as a Great novel. Should you be prejudiced against Amis, give that one a chance: you’ll be blown away 😊

• The Kafka quote is to be found in both Manguel’s book on Reading and in the – often accused of being apocryphal – Janouch book of reminiscences about Kafka ('Conversations with Kafka').

  ·       The Clive James quote is from his ‘When May week was in June’, a (rather unreliable but very funny) memoirs of his time studying in at Cambridge.