Some “Myth-stakes” and “Myth-conceptions” about Books and Reading

MYTH #1:  Kids must read only “good” books and not be allowed to wallow in popular fiction.  WRONG!  We all have an appetite for some food that is not good for us.  We all share some guilty pleasure when it comes to reading and books, some book that is not literary.  We must extend the same courtesy to our student and patrons. There is another myth generally that follows from this one:  it is not quantity but quality that matters in reading.    How much we read does matter.  Take these statistics from NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Achievement               Amount of outside reading in minutes/day                Word

Percentile                                                                                                        Gain/Yr

90^th %ile                      40+ min/day                                                                2.3 million

MYTH #2:  Readers are easy to spot as they always have their noses in books.  WRONG!  Readers go dormant from time to time.  Weeks pass without me picking up a book due to my schedule or my level of fatigue.  Kids are no different.  And not all readers select books to read, either.  Sometimes it is tough to spot the readers.  Occasionally, someone who presents as a nonreader is actually a reader between books.

MYTH #3:  Readability (reading level, lexiles, etc.) is a good way to match books to kids.   WRONG!  Many of the adult bestsellers I have enjoyed recently are well below my reading level.  LIFE OF PI hovers around the fifth grade level, by the way.  LEMONY SNICKET has a higher readability.  Scientific formulae applied to the artistic process just do not yield consistent results.  If we limit kids to zones of reading or certain levels of books, we might just miss the chance to make the match.

MYTH #4:  Canned reading programs can create readers.  WRONG, so wrong!  There is nothing you can buy that will create a reader except the right book for that child.  Canned reading programs are management tools at best.  They do little or nothing to motivate readers or to create an extrinsic value for reading in kids.

MYTH #5:  Once kids are independent readers, reading aloud and shared and paired reading should become activities and strategies of the past.  WRONG again!  See the research conducted by Giles (2005) and Gibbs (2004) for a nice counter to this myth. 

MYTH #6:  Kids can automatically distinguish between good and bad literature.  WRONG in so many ways.  Oh, were this true for adults as well!  If this were so, we would not be plagued with “celebrity” books by the likes of Madonna, Katie Couric, Maria Shriver, Dom Deluise, Michael Bolton, Jerry Seinfeld, and others.  I prefer to use books by famous people who write these celeb books to teach kids and adults how to tell the good from the bad.

MYTH #7:  Reading is a science that can be broken down into component parts easily for quick consumption.  Hello……wrong-o!  If reading were a simple act with simple component parts, all of us would learn to read in the same way at the same time with the same level of skill.  Hence, any legislation that begins with the phrase, “All children will,” needs to be considered suspect.  If teachers or librarians wrote the same phrase it would read more along the lines of, “Some children might.”

MYTH #8:  Reading is the same no matter what we are reading or why.  So wrong that it is almost laughable.  Content area reading requires specialized content skills.  Reading a poem demands a different set of skills from reading directions on programming your cell phone. 

MYTH #9:   Having grade level lists is a good idea.  Where do I begin with the wrongness here?  There is no such creature as a 4^th grade book.  There are books that might appeal to some 4^th graders, but might be just as likely to appeal to some 3^rd or even 6^th graders.  As a middle school teacher I recall almost open warfare when we dared introduce kids in 8^th grade to Shakespeare.  High school teachers were quick to inform us that  Shakespeare belonged to them.  Bah, humbug, as Dickens might retort.

MYTH #10:  One size does fit all and the corollary:  one book is good for all kids.  Yes, this, too, is wrong.  The phenomenon of Harry Potter might lead some of us to conclude that there can be one book that will appeal equally to all kids.  However, there are some esthetes, though few, who do not care for Rowling’s magical tales.  Ditto folks who never watch reality shows.  Tastes differ and we need to offer a variety of reading fare for all tastes.  Books need to be sweet, frothy desserts as well as hearty, meaty main courses.