Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun • Hacker News Board

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#91

Post by BobaFloutist » Tue, May 07, 2024, 5:48 PM UTC

65 wrote: post #68

Another issue is books are too long. Especially non-fiction books. Book publishers know no one is going to buy a 50 page book, so there has to be filler and excessive detail to make a book long enough to be sellable. It ends up just being the same thing over and over again. The author explaining minute details about the day they interviewed someone, what the weather was like, extreme details of the interviewee's faci…

I mean seeing a paperback (or ebook) novella priced at $20+ hurts, even if it's what the publisher needs to charge for the economics make sense.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#92

Post by ars » Tue, May 07, 2024, 5:48 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #43

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #36

I don't particularly buy any of the explanations given in the article, or ITT for that matter. I had tons of screen time as a child, that didn't stop me from reading a ton then or now. Schools (and I) were just as test-focused back then. I wasn't getting book recs from my peers so that doesn't make sense to me either. Maybe I'm an anomaly here but I never found the books targeted at children/teens especially interest…

Do you have kids? "Give your kids books they'd be interested in" is kind of classic meaningless advice. Like, sure, of course that's what you want to do -- except, if you have a kid who doesn't have an existing strong reading habit, how do you find books they'd be interested in? Like, that's the goal! You can't just assume the solution. I have a nine-year-old daughter who definitely does read, but isn't a voracious r…

Try the Fablehaven series for her.

For the the mid-teens, Mistborn series.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#93

Post by adolph » Tue, May 07, 2024, 5:48 PM UTC

65 wrote: post #68

Another issue is books are too long. Especially non-fiction books. Book publishers know no one is going to buy a 50 page book, so there has to be filler and excessive detail to make a book long enough to be sellable. It ends up just being the same thing over and over again. The author explaining minute details about the day they interviewed someone, what the weather was like, extreme details of the interviewee's faci…

The book has a distribution challenge in that the content is the same for all people. Sort of like how every programming language book has some content about setting up ones environment, building and the basics that make the rest of the book usable for the person of least experience/knowledge.

Just skim past the umpteenth telling of Abraham Wald and the bulleted bombers and get to the meaningful parts. Even Thomas Jefferson condensed the New Testament down to 84 pages. [0]

0. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-thomas-jeffe...

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#94

Post by petercooper » Tue, May 07, 2024, 5:49 PM UTC

I read a lot when I was young and a big motivating factor for me was the natural progression to reading grown up books and works of literature with more interesting plots and subject matter. Nowadays, there seems to be more commercially-driven infantilization of entertainment where comics and books for kids are no longer a stepping stone but an end destination. My teenager only reads manga and comics which can be very deep and cover mature topics (unlike anything I could get my hands on in the 90s) but are still, ultimately, not novels. I haven't decided if this is a good or bad thing - it probably just 'is what it is' and I'm getting old.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#95

Post by bcrosby95 » Tue, May 07, 2024, 5:51 PM UTC

RecycledEle wrote: post #9

When you can read for fun, it's fun. When your teacher criticizes you for not reading the boring book he/she ordered you to read, you stop enjoying reading and stop reading. It's the teachers' faults.

At least in our school district, this is not how its done in elementary school. Teachers don't assign books. Either it's completely free choice, or fiction/non fiction, or genre (e.g. mystery).

When I last read about this, it was blamed on 4th grade being the time when you shift from reading just to read, into reading to learn.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#96

Post by tigen » Tue, May 07, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #87

tigen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defunding thing sounds like a bit of obligatory politics. "In some states, teachers can’t even keep a classroom library because they have to protect themselves from book bans" Yeah this sounds false.

> Yeah this sounds false. I have quite a few teacher friends in Georgia and NYC, and I can tell you that this is the case for them. Organizations that represent teachers have said so themselves. Hard evidence is best though. Do you have numbers to dismiss their claims?

What is the case, they literally are not allowed to have (any) books in the classroom? Can you be specific as to the mechanism here? Do you yourself have any link to any evidence? You (the article) are making the claim.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#97

Post by gffrd » Tue, May 07, 2024, 5:55 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #88

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my home…

This was my experience as well. Loved reading when I was younger, but lots of assigned reading from elementary onward poisoned the well, so to speak.

In retrospect, it's surprising how rigid the required reading was at my school: no choice in the material whatsoever, so the most important engine that drives reading (curiosity) was held out of the equation.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#98

Post by sonicanatidae » Tue, May 07, 2024, 5:58 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #80

janalsncm wrote: post #56

> Indeed, several people I spoke to mentioned that middle-graders’ lack of phones created a marketing problem in an era when no one at any publishing house has any idea how to make a book a bestseller other than to hope it blows up on TikTok. “BookTok is imperfect,” said Karen Jensen, a youth librarian and a blogger for School Library Journal, “but in teen publishing it’s generating huge bestsellers, bringing back th…

> This part of the article is very off-putting to me. You don’t need TikTok to find good books for kids. Kids don’t need to see digital advertisements to make a decision. They need access to a library stocked with recently published books that kids will enjoy. > The author mentions later on that libraries are being defunded, and this is likely to be the root cause. Rather than spending so many words on speculation it…

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Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#99

Post by bluerooibos » Tue, May 07, 2024, 5:58 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #88

Take a closer look at how much homework children have, and how much assigned, mandatory reading children have. I went to a private "college prep" high school, and the amount of assigned, mandatory reading was insane. I spent so much time reading assigned novels that I just didn't have time to read for pleasure. (And why read for pleasure if I already spent 30+ minutes reading a boring / awful novel as part of my home…

> rediscovered reading

Any tips? I didn't, somehow. After leaving high school, then university, my brain went into full on "be productive all the time" mode. My brain somehow doesn't think reading is a good use of my time, so I've settled for audiobooks when falling asleep or on long drives.

The last book I was able to devour and actually enjoyed was the Harry Potter series, which ended just before I went to university.

Re: Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun

#100

Post by allturtles » Tue, May 07, 2024, 6:00 PM UTC

65 wrote: post #68

Another issue is books are too long. Especially non-fiction books. Book publishers know no one is going to buy a 50 page book, so there has to be filler and excessive detail to make a book long enough to be sellable. It ends up just being the same thing over and over again. The author explaining minute details about the day they interviewed someone, what the weather was like, extreme details of the interviewee's faci…

It sounds like you're talking about adult non-fiction bestsellers. I don't think that has much to do with the reading habits of nine-year-olds. There are plenty of 80-150 page books being published for this age group.