What does a typical teen reader look like? Jonathan Douglas, director of the U.K.-based nonprofit National Literacy Trust, posed that question to more than 1,600 U.K. middle and high school students in a 2007 study called “Young People’s Self Perceptions as Readers.” Their answers included everything from intelligent and happy to boring and lacking experience or social skills. Despite these contradictions, the answers are pretty typical of teens who often associate reading with both personal intelligence and social suicide.
The surprising thing about this study isn’t how teens define a reader, but that 71 percent of those surveyed classified themselves as readers. Those who said they were nonreaders did read, but they read magazines, Web sites, and social networking sites—things they felt weren’t sanctioned as “real reading material” by teachers, parents, and librarians. Even those who consider themselves readers thought there was a difference between what they like to read (magazines, Web sites, and email) and what traditional readers like to read (fiction, poetry, and nonfiction).
The implications of this study are twofold: first, the image of a reader is so deeply entrenched that both librarians and teens have to ask for clarification between the stereotype of a reader and the characteristics of an actual reader. And, secondly, teens do read, they just have doubts about what’s considered “real reading.”
What reading really needs is an extreme makeover. We need to redefine the act of reading so that the focus isn’t entirely on developing skills and fulfilling requirements, but also on enjoying the process, learning new things, and taking pleasure in new information.
As we move toward redefining reading, the negative social stigma often associated with it will likely diminish. How will we know when we’ve succeeded in contributing to a more literate society? When teens no longer equate reading with social suicide. Here are some ways you can contribute to the reading revolution makeover:
Redefine reading so that it’s more than an activity with a book. Include magazines, online news, blogs, Web sites, email, video games, and print and online gaming guides when you talk about reading as an extracurricular activity.
Encourage teachers to incorporate newer, more modern YA fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels into their existing curriculum. Share the Young Adult Library Services Association’s librarian-selected awards and lists for popular paperbacks, quick picks, audiobooks, and graphic novels with the teachers in your school (ala.org/yalsa/awardsandgrants/yalsaawardsgrants).
Take a cue from Stephen Krashen and encourage free voluntary reading. Krashen’s research proves that teens who select their own reading materials often have better reading comprehension skills, writing styles, vocabulary, spelling skills, and grammatical development.
Develop an extensive collection of alternative reading materials, including teen magazines, graphic novels, comic books, newspapers, books on CD and books on MP3 (Playaways). That way teens who are interested in reading materials other than books will feel like the library is an accepting place.
In her 2008 Michael L. Printz Award acceptance speech, British author Geraldine McCaughrean captured the spirit of this reading makeover revolution when she said, “I don’t hugely mind if teenagers don’t read books, if books are not their thing. So long as they maintain an inner world of the imagination.” Books are great, but reading happens all around us. Our job is to make sure teens know that reading is making meaning out of words, wherever those words exist, whether online, in print, or surrounded by moving or still imagery.
Michele Gorman is the teen services manager of ImaginOn, with the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte in North Carolina.We are currently offering this content for free. Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing
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