What Should My Child Be Reading?

This morning I had an interesting conversation with a parent. I got his permission to recreate that conversation here.

He was concerned about what his son was reading. His son is a sixth grader who reads voraciously. He reads constantly. At least he did. You see, he loved reading fantasy books. You know the ones, books like The Circle of Magic Series, The Edge Chronicles, or the Pendragon series. His father grew tired of his son reading what he thought of as garbage, so his father insisted that he read the classics—William Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, George Orwell, and so on. When he caught him reading “garbage”, he would take it from him and replace it with one of the classics. Eventually, his son stopped reading altogether.

The questions he asked me were, “How do I get him reading again, and how do I get him to read the classics?” My answer was simple; let him read what he wants. I absolutely love the classics, but when I was a child, I loved garbage too. In fact, my love for the classics came much, much later when I was a college student and had the tools to really appreciate them.

So this is my advice to you. Don’t worry about what your child is reading. Just make sure they are reading. As his or her love for reading builds, pretty soon they’ll pick up the classics on their own.