It seems to me, that each season, books for young readers get thicker and thicker. Unfortunately, my customers are often reluctant to buy these 300+ page books for the library, insisting that thick books will scare the kids and they won't read them.
While that might be true for struggling readers, the global popularity of series such as Harry Potter (Book 7 is over 600 pages), Inkheart (560 pages) and Septimus Heap (Book 1 is 576 Pages) prove that thick doesn't matter if the book is engaging enough to hold their attention.
If that's the case, then what is the real reason behind this resistance to thick books? Despite overall positive results from the EQAO reading tests in Ontario, are the reading levels of GTA students that much lower than elsewhere in the province, or even the country? Is it a lack of time? Are kids so busy with after-school and leisure activities that we are assuming that they don't have time to read these thick books? Or, could it be that they avoid these books because they lack the time to read them, and are unfamiliar with the content?
And here's an even more interesting question- as reading e-books becomes more popular with kids, will page counts still be important without a physical book to judge?
1 comments:
sorry, but i have to disagree,my child read inkheart at eight and didnt struggle, the twilight saga at 10, before i go to sleep at 10 (440 pages , adult's book), and morganville vampires omnibus, (1000 pages)and the host at ten, (652 pages), thick books dont scare her, they encourage her, so much so, she is now a self published author. sorry for disagreeing.
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