Your Child is a Capable Literary Analyst

Cultivation: Invite them into the conversation

We’re in a reading crisis, haven’t you heard? We’re trying to get people to read more. You’re already here, though, so you don’t need to hear that. You’re reading. You’re likely reading a lot, and your children probably know how to hold books and don’t try to operate them like telephones.

Because you’re already doing the work, I want to talk to you about something. I hope we can get some good conversations going in the comment section, because I’m very curious how you feel about what I’m about to say.

I’ll start by saying this: The blanket statements that reading builds empathy (yay!) are nice to hear, but they aren’t fully true if you don’t put work into it. I feel the same way about reading building critical thinkers (buzzword!). Great, I say, but how? Does just reading a book to our child before they can read and then setting a timer for twenty minutes of reading time each night once they’re independent readers really do the work to raise empathic, critical thinkers? I’m sorry to tell you that the answer is no. You might raise empathic, critical thinkers anyways. Because you are doing other things! But this kind of reading — which I’m going to call rote reading — isn’t going to get you there alone.

I feel incredibly strongly about this: we need to engage our children in the worlds of their books and trust that they are capable of reading literature like any other human.

I’ve just read Mac Barnett’s forthcoming book MAKE BELIEVE (more on this amazing book for grownups in a later newsletter!!), and he argues that children’s literature is, in fact, literature. He says that children are people (true), and that we need to take their books seriously (also true).

I give a +1 reaction to Mr. Ambassador of Children’s Literature’s argument. (I do not have a fancy title but am sure he’s on the edge of his seat waiting to get my rave review.)

Book Party is all about keeping the literature alive off the page, making it into family memories, and using it as a tool for deeper thinking and connection. We can’t do that if we don’t take the literature — and the young readers — seriously.

As I’ve been thinking, though, about taking children seriously, I realized that, by total coincidence, the books on repeat in my house right now all reinforce this idea that children are very capable humans who have their own inner lives, and who deserve to practice accessing them, expressing them, and learning that others have them, too.

I feel strongly about introducing children to great books (the ones that are great objectively, and the ones that are great for them in this moment for whatever reason) and engaging them in the kind of thinking that allows them to show the beauty of their young brains.

In my house right now, we happen to be reading books in which grownups treat children like the humans they are. I’m going to share the list, hope you’ll add to it, and invite you to read some of them with your children and ask them what they notice about the grownups in the books. You might be surprised by their answers.

Along with the books themselves, I’m going to share a question I’d think the grownup in the book — the one that best understands that children are humans — might do to engage the children in their lives with literature.

• ROBIN AND THE STICK ( E. B. Goodale )

  • As you know from last week’s interview, my toddler is loving ROBIN. Robin’s mama doesn’t tell Robin he can’t or shouldn’t pick up a stick that’s too big for him. She also doesn’t over-explain anything. I think she might ask him a question like, “Which book character would be the best at finding great sticks?”

• MRS. PIGGLE-WIGGLE’S MAGIC (Betty MacDonald)

  • Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is making my son belly laugh like nothing else, and I think she’d be the queen at getting children to think analytically, but she’d disguise the exercise as make believe games. She’s more of a prompt person: something like, “Let’s handle this situation exactly like [character] would.”

• LOTTA ON TROUBLEMAKER STREET (Astrid Lindgren)

  • Lotta’s parents let her figure things out on her own. I love this about them. Lotta feels like a 1960s Swedish Dory Fantasmagory. And I think her neighbor might be the one to ask her a question about the book she’s reading. She might say, “Now, which book character has a home you’d most like to live in? What can you do to make yours feel just like that?”

• THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS series

  • We’ve been listening to these books on audio, and, let me tell you, Ms. Frizzle does not dumb things down for her students! She doesn’t think they’re too young — I think they’re nine? — to go to space or inside a human body. No, she knows they’re ready for it. She’s a science teacher, but she can still get down with a literary question like, “Would this character be able to survive in the time of the dinosaurs?”

• BORED (Felicita Sala)

  • Grownups don’t really make an appearance in this book, but it’s obvious that Rita’s parents trust that she can entertain herself. I imagine she comes to the dinner table after the last page of this book, tells her family about what has just happened inside her brain, and then one of her grownups asks her, “What would [character] do if they were as bored as you were?”

• HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON (Crockett Johnson)

  • Zero adults in HAROLD. But, because my 2yo says every book is written by Crockett Johnson, I had to include it. Similar to Rita’s parents, I think Harold’s parents might ask him about what a certain character would do, say, if they found themselves falling off a mountain with no other side. Or, perhaps, they’d ask which book character would have been most fun as a companion on Harold’s adventure.

THE BOOK PARTY DECK

is coming.

Y’ALL— The Book Party Deck (Decks, actually. There are two of them.) is coming this summer. It’s been living in my mind for literal years, so I can’t wait to get it out into the world.

The decks include creative questions and book party ideas and permission slips for when things feel hard. And I can’t wait for you to have them in your hands.

If you’re interested in being on the list to order for the first limited print run, click on the button below and submit your email.

Any questions? Reply to this email. You know I’ll read it.

(OK, I feel like Substack added that callout box at the exact time I needed it? I’m going to choose to believe they did it for me because they knew I had something I needed to get out in the world. Thanks, Substack.)