I’ve encountered many people who say that it doesn’t matter what a child is reading; as long as he is reading something—anything—it will be good for him. Their reasoning holds over for adults, too: reading anything is good! Every book is equally worth reading! Read more, full stop.
Well, I’ve never much liked that school of thought.
Which is not to say that I don’t understand it, because I do. Reading can stretch you, challenge you, educate you in a way that most media we consume cannot. But books are still a form of media, and there are thousands upon thousands of books out there all clamoring for our attention. If we care about what our children watch on TV or the video games they play, then we ought also to care about what our children are reading. (And ourselves, too! Adults deserve better quality fiction than that with which we are usually presented!)
I propose that, when discerning the quality of a fictional book, we begin with three basic categories. These are the categories I myself use in determining what to check out from the library or to purchase, and they are how I determine what to recommend to others who ask for suggestions. We talk about these categories a lot in my home, to the point that when I tell my children that we are not bringing a specific book home from the library, they usually respond with, “Oh, is that because it’s twaddle?”
The three categories are:
The top tier. Good, solid literature. Classics. Fairy tale picture books with beautiful illustrations, classic compendia of fairy tales for older children fall into this category. So do: things that make youthink, really think; things that stick with you long after you’ve finished them; old books that are still relevant today because they touch on universal themes of the human condition (which is just another way of saying classic literature, but the clarification is not unwarranted, in my opinion).
The middle tier. Fluff. Escapist. Good, but not great. Books that are not inherently objectionable, but that don’t usually have much depth to them. Maybe we read them to escape, or when we want something light or easily consumed. Thrillers, mystery novels, smut-free romances, children’s adventure series, early readers, and the like fall into this category.
The bottom tier. Twaddle.1 Garbage, junk, trash. I define it, twaddle has egregiously bad writing, is condescending, insults the reader’s intelligence, or is morally objectionable–and often it has more than one of these traits. A book qualifies as twaddle if it is excessively silly or stupid, ugly (if illustrated), is filled with clichés and manufactured drama, presents morally bankrupt characters in a good light, passes off obvious (to an adult) falsehoods as truths, has a negative influence on the reader, and the like. Additionally, if the book appears to be primarily driven by an obvious agenda, it’s probably twaddle. Not necessarily because the agenda is evil, though it often is, but because it’s difficult to tell a good story with compelling characters when your starting point is The Message. (PJ Masks easy readers are garbage, but so is something like The Princess and the Kiss or Feminist Baby, which fall on opposite sides of the political/cultural spectrum but have hackneyed, ham-fisted messaging.)
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I don’t want to sound too harsh, but the majority of the contemporary fiction being published nowadays falls into the twaddle category. Libraries and bookstores are rife with it. (But, on the other hand, you won’t find any diamonds in the rough if you aren’t willing to browse, to take a chance on something, and to support contemporary authors who produce good books. Public libraries are, in general, a good thing.)
In addition to their weak style, the themes explored in contemporary fiction are often re-treads of things that were interesting or groundbreaking decades ago, but are now blasé and “politically correct” (e.g., patriarchy bad/feminism good, or characters clearly only included to meet some diversity quota).And even if the story on its own might be interesting and not full of clichés and predictable motifs, you’ll still find: horribly behaved protagonists with no respect for authority figures; authority figures who are grossly incompetent or not worthy of respect anyway; the glamorization and demystifying of evil such as vampires, dragons, and the occult; smut disguised as high fantasy or as a cutesy romance with juvenile cover art.
Listen, Helena, you may be thinking, this all seems a little extreme. If it’s entertaining and I enjoy it or my kid enjoys it, why shouldn’t we read it? It’s all in good fun! Books don’t have that kind of impact on us! I read just to escape my miserable life, okay? I don’t have it in me to read Tolstoy and Aristotle and Dickens!
Well, I’m not saying that you should only cram “the classics” into your and your children’s brains. There is a reason that I include that middle tier for fluff—everything doesn’t have to fall into “twaddle” or “living books,” Captain Underpants or War and Peace. In fact, consuming too much of the meatier work can cause a reader, especially a child, to burn out and quit reading altogether. A balanced reading diet is as good as a balanced eating diet. But I do think we should eschew twaddle, except in very rare circ*mstances. If we want to be well-rounded, virtuous people who have a positive impact in our communities (and if we want the same for our children), then we and our children should be reading material that falls into the top and middle tiers. It’s possible to give a child light reading that doesn’t also fill his head with fart jokes and snarky comments and revenge against his siblings.
Books leave their marks on us, whether we want them to or not. They influence us, whether we pretend they don’t or we acknowledge that they do. An adult may be able to roll his eyes and ignore the bratty-but-hilarious antics of a protagonist, a child still developing his will and his intellect cannot.2
This brings me back to my original thesis: it does matter that we use discernment in our reading choices, especially children. Every book is not for every person at every time (see footnote #2 again).
I am not saying that everyone should have the same standards that I do, and I’m sure there are people who would strongly disagree with my opinions on specific books. I believe there is wiggle room at the borders between the three tiers, and that one man’s must-reads might be another man’s fluff.3 But I also believe that someone who has no standards at all to guard his own mind and that of his children, someone who assumes all the books in the juvenile section are unobjectionable just because they are juvenile fiction, is setting up himself and his family for failure. Just as we cannot grow in virtue without practice, so we cannot improve our minds without reading good quality books.
Do we want to be thinkers who engage with the world or passive consumers who mindlessly accept anything that is popular or that appeals to our base passions? Answer this question honestly and you’ll be well on your way to figuring out your own standards for the three tiers of fiction and to browsing the library and the book sales with a discerning eye.
There isn’t time to read everything; wouldn’t you rather spend your time and your family’s time reading things that are engaging but that also give you beauty, goodness, and truth?
