'Permission to read imperfectly'

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This isn’t the post I’d intended to write in answer to the question I asked a couple weeks ago, “Why don’t kids read more?”

I researched. I collected quotes. I thought my thoughts. I was almost ready to start writing.

Then I read a post by children’s librarian Rachel Bachman that said everything I wanted to say. And better.

So do yourself a kindness and read her post “Gen Z Parents Don’t Hate Books”. It overflows with wisdom and empathy.

Here are some quotes, to get you started:

Most parents know reading is good. That is not the gap. The gap is between knowing something is good and feeling able to do it. The gap is between importance and invitation.

So perhaps the work is not to make reading seem more important.

Perhaps the work is to make reading feel less impossible.

The point was never perfect reading. The point was shared attention.

Start small. Start badly. Start tonight, or start again tomorrow. Stop after two pages if two pages are all anyone can bear. Let the book be imperfectly read, briefly held, interrupted, abandoned, and returned to.

If libraries have anything precious to offer in this moment, maybe it is not only access to books, though access matters deeply. Maybe it is not only programming, though storytime matters too. Maybe it is permission.

Permission to read imperfectly. To choose the ridiculous book. To count three minutes as real. To begin again after weeks of not beginning. To let the child interrupt, wander, return, and interrupt again. To stop treating every page as preparation for something else.

I’ll stop there, otherwise I’ll just end up quoting the whole article.

Happy reading,

Jeff

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Illustration credit: Bekeen, via Unsplash.