Live data from Hacker News

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

slate.com

111–120 of 504 posts

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

#111
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the argument is quite subtle. There is a lot of book banning occurring and the rate seems to be increasing fast (see links below). There are penalties in some jurisdictions and zero teachers want to face the kind of shit that has gone on with parents and politicians, churches and local body meetings. So rather than search out each book they have and keep track of its status, then recheck a few weeks later, ju…

> So rather than search out each book they have and keep track of its status, then recheck a few weeks later, just remove the lot.

That doesn't pass the smell test. The only way I can see that being even remotely true is if the teacher's goal is mainly to push up against someone's line, politically.

Even in the most hostile environment, I doubt you'd run afoul of anyone with a well-stocked library of widely beloved classic children's books.

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

#112

> 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…

If you don’t need TikTok to find good books, how would you recommend finding good books? Even if you’re at a library that doesn’t narrow things down all that much, I’ve been to libraries with several floors filled with bookshelves.

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

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[flagged]

I'd like to propose an update to Godwin's law; call it NPC's Law or maybe just Trump's Law if we're being literal: "As an online discussion of a problem grows longer, the probability of assigning blame to Donald Trump approaches 1."

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

#114

> 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…

> 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.

At 9 I had no idea how to go into a massive thing like a library and make a selection for myself. "Word of mouth" made a lot of choices for me when I was young.

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

#115
post #72

> 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. They need a library stocked with "books that kids will enjoy," recently published doesn't have anything to do with it. It's not like filling the school library…

> It's not like filling the school library up with stuff only published in the last 3 years is what we need to get kids reading.

I’ve heard newer English literature evangelized quite a lot since older English literature gets more and more Eurocentric the further back you go. Usually on political grounds, but also with the claim that newer literature is better and more relevant to especially diverse children’s lives.

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

#116

> 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…

It's interesting that all problems in America are due to "funding". It's actually quite curious because funding was a problem for electric vehicles, funding was a problem for space, funding was a problem for literally everything. But then sometimes people come up and succeed at things that others have described as a funding problem for ages.

I think I can conclude reasonably from this is that the lowest efficiency lever one can pull is funding. Schools with the highest funding have the worst performance. That's because the people there only know one answer to every problem: "funding".

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

#117
When I was in high school, I was a voracious reader of Star Trek novels. I'm now 47 years old, and as a birthday treat, I decided to go into Barnes and Nobel to find one to read (I haven't read anything other than technology books in many years, and rarely even then, since most good information is online)

I found like 2 or 3 (back in the day, there were at least a dozen or two to pick from at any time). The sci-fi section was a bit smaller, to replace the huge manga and other graphic novels section, which was absolutely huge. Many of the sci-fi titles that were there were taken up by novels that have been made into movies.

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

#118

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…

I do. I've given my son who's an avid swimmer a non-fiction book about a group training to try and make the Olympics. I've given my nephew interested in space 'The Right Stuff'. Both devoured the books and went off on their own reading journeys from there.

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

#119

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…

This is good advice. My 9yr old reads adult fiction, so long as I have read it and don't think there's anything too "adult" in there. I'm saving Heinlein for his teen years lol.

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

#120
I had a teacher in school who decided the best thing for people to read is to simply have the students choose the book they wanted to read for the month.

She'd then read the book and make a short quiz about it. She had several classes so she'd have to read a lot of books every month. But after a while books start to repeat, after all, kids will mostly get together and form groups to read certain novels they're interested in. And most of my classmates would all choose a sort of "minimal effort" book.

All in all, this is an experience I still remember to this day; even though it's been 15 years.

If we want children to read then you need a similar approach, a big part of the fun in reading is actually finding a book to read. The children should be motivated to find books they want to read and then share it with their peers; then perhaps the class can decide which of the books they will be reading together.

Post reply on HN