By JAMILA RIZVI
A 2012 survey of more than 21,000 children has reveled that almost a fifth of them would be ‘embarrassed’ if a friend saw them reading a book.
More than half said that they preferred to watch TV.
Let’s take a moment to ponder that fact, shall we?
Reading – perhaps the most truly rewarding of all private pursuits (keep it clean, friends) – is no longer an acceptable life choice.
When I was a kid, reading was absolutely my favourite thing to do. It was books that allowed my imagination to soar in a way that drama played out on a screen could never do.
This is because books don’t give you all the information. Instead, they rely on your own creativity and consciousness to fill in the blanks and interpret someone else’s imagined world, as you want it to be.
I still love books. And I’m a big believer that you have to consume some trash along with your classics. After all, how else would you know the difference?
But there is one genre that I truly hate. And that, is the stupid, stupid vampires.
I am sure that in hundreds of years’ time, anthropologists will study generations Y and Z.
In digital lectures – where the professor appears via hologram and students absorb information by scanning barcodes with the computers embedded in their wrists – and they will wonder what we were like and what made us tick.
The teacher will ask, through some kind of yet-to-be-invented digital telepathy, “students, what is distinctive about the made-for-film, reading material of these generations that sets them apart from those who came before?”
And the answer will be: vampires.
I simply do not understand why we are teaching our young women that penultimate happiness is achieved by relinquishing your humanity and hooking up with irrationally violent men, who want to suck your blood?
When you’re a pre-teen or teenage girl and navigating the terror that is puberty, desperately hoping boys will like you, trying to find a crowd you fit in with and learning to love your mum, then irrationally hate her (and then love her again) – on-screen vampires do not help.
But the characters in our books do.
The books I read as a child and as a teenager, have helped me define who I am as an adult. They taught me about real friendship, about family, about success and about loss. They taught me the power of acceptance and the importance of empathy. They taught me how to be confident. They taught me how to love.
And to think that the generation, which follows mine is ashamed to be introduced to characters like Matilda, or Josephine Alibrandi, or Elizabeth Bennett, or Scarlett O’Hara, or Jo March or Jane Eyre – is a tragedy.
Publishing giant Penguin recently released their own history in the form of a signature orange and white paperback. They introduced the little book with this brief introduction:
”This is a book about the most advanced form of entertainment ever. You can pause it at any time. Rewind and replay it if you miss a bit … It’ll fit in your pocket. It’s interactive … It’s pretty cheap. It’s completely free to share. And it lasts a lifetime. This is a book about books.”
I truly hope that the 21,000 children who are surveyed next time around, do a little reading before they answer the question about books.
This column first appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine and has been republished with full permission.
Top Comments
I'm confused, was it all children or girls only? I can't see many boys being interested in Jane Eyre, I'd rather watch TV too if your choices were thrown at me as a young teenager. I can imagine getting absolutely shit stirred by my mates if I was busted reading pride and prejudice.
I'd much rather read stuff with sex and fighting and killing. I still do.
I'm proud to say my daughter is a complete bookworm - my biggest problem is her reading at night when she should be asleep!
Re the embarrassment factor, from a very young age I've told her that many kids don't think being smart and doing well at school is cool, but never to give into peer pressure and pretend to be dumber than she is or not try hard at school. I've explained to her that she needs to think long term about her future. It is not worth sacrificing your future for a few years of popularity at school.
My message must be getting through to my daughter. She came home the other day saying that the popular kids in her class had been calling her a nerd. She looked at me with a smile and said "I don't really care what they think. I'm know going to be successful when I'm grown up." I was talking to her teacher recently, and she said my daughter knows her own mind and doesn't follow her peers like a sheep. I made me so proud.