The past few weeks have brought a tidal wave of publicity for The Hunger Games and its record-breaking movie. Many of my students (and several teachers and principals) are reading it. I'm so excited to see students, adults, and the media talking about books and reading.
My reluctant readers embrace it without question and come back to me the next day, breathlessly declaring their love for the book and hungry for the next installment. However, I have encountered a few students who are hesitant to read The Hunger Games. They tend to be good students who are voracious readers. They tell me that they don't want to read it because "it's so popular right now" or they give me a scrunched up look that means "If I read it now I'll just be like one of those people who never reads anything but now they're reading The Hunger Games and I don't want to be in THAT crowd." They feel left behind, like they missed the boat. They pride themselves on reading a book before it becomes a sensation. They have bragging rights--"Oh, that book? I read that thing two years ago!" They take pride in their reading, for better or worse. They also think that just because something is popular, that it also has to be bad. Unfortunately a lot of things that are popular right now are (from a critical standpoint) terrible. Mindless reality shows. Simplistic music. Cliched literature. Cliched everything.
I read The Hunger Games about a week after it was published, way back in 2008. I had just started my career as a high school librarian, so I was eagerly snatching up any book promised to be the "next big thing." All my book review sources were raving about it, so I bought a copy for our library. The next thing I remember was coming up for air a day later. I knew this book lived up to its hype. Could I imagine it as a worldwide sensation? Not at the time, but as I saw students react to the book, I knew it would be big. I was the first to read the book in my circle of friends, both personal and professional. I told all my friends and family about it, and they told others. I admit I am prideful in that fact. Thankfully, my pleasure in seeing people fall in love with books and reading is stronger than my pride in being first. But not by much. Part of being a librarian involves being up on what's hot and what's coming soon. I'm so lucky that I have a job wherein my conscience requires me to read young adult books. It's a wonderful life, truly. Seeing how teens react to books is just icing on the cake. Thankfully, my pleasure in seeing people fall in love with books and reading is stronger than my pride in being first. But not by much.
So what do I tell my students who have missed out The Hunger Games and have to read it with the rest of the world? I've been pondering this for the past few days. This question has forced me to think about how I approach the books I read. Witnessing students' hesitancy to read a book has helped me to see that to be a fair reader of a book requires that I put aside any and all expectations. It's just me and the text. I'm sure there are a lot of literary and critical analysis people out there who have wiser and better things to say about this topic than I ever will. But for me, this experience has helped me to see that I can't let other people's expectations (or my own) cause me to give a book an unfair chance. I can be prideful about my reading and my desire to "be the first." I can't dismiss something just because it's popular. Sometimes the masses get it right. The Hunger Games and Suzanne Collins deserve every laud and honor that come their way. My deepest hopes for the phenomenon around these books and movies is that the media and teens will continue to talk about reading and question how their lives are transformed because of it. I hope that kids will read more and better books and that critics and elitist culture-types will see that young adult literature and the people who read it are a force to be reckoned with. That is something I can be proud of.
PS If you want to read a book that I think will be the next big thing....see my review below.
Great thoughts Emily. I went through a similar dilemma with Harry Potter, as I saw the first three movies before I read any of the books. I am so glad that I got Hunger Games in before the movie! I finished Catching Fire in three days and started Mockingjay tonight. On the ride home from the store, I commented to Charlie that I love reading more than most anything. And it's true. Suzanne has done an amazing job of transporting me into her world, and I love to be lost in it. These are two series that I am glad that I didn't let "being first" or "joining the bandwagon" stop me from reading!
ReplyDeleteFor young readers who consider themselves intellectuals (whether or not they use that term), the love of reading and the books chosen are such a large part of identity, I think the tendency to want choices to feel authentic and original, expressive of one's own self-hood, is understandably common. I've only recently (within the last decade) started to get over this sort of snobbery of self and begin to value gaining a broadness of reading experience. I think I owe much of this current openness to working in a public library and having friends like you. I think it was you and Melissa, after all, who first brought Hunger Games to my attention at book club round-the-room a few years ago. (That's why I miss those so much!)
ReplyDeleteYou could point out to your students that their experience of reading any book is unique to them, and that even if they don't like a certain book they've read, the act of reading it will have honed their reading noses nonetheless. Or, they might see something in a popular book that matters more to them than to anyone else. They might love it for a new reason. And if the crazed, shallow-seeming hype is what bothers them, they can ignore it, even as they give the actual text a try in some secret second basement room in their grandma's house seven states away.
I have come to see that the reading life is more fun once you embrace a giddy hope that a book is popular because, at the very least, it is highly entertaining, and at the best, it is remarkably good work.
And one more thing (because, you know, my previous comment wasn't long enough)... It is empowering to realize that even if you try a book that you end up finding dumb (whether the dumb comes in the form of sloppy writing or dull characters or implausible plot...), you are not automatically dumbed by association. Your mind is much too powerful for that, if you let it be. In fact, one of the key ways you risk your mind growing dumb is by refusing to let it try the new things of which it is a little wary.
ReplyDeleteIn my view, printed books will never loose their popularity! It's interesting to see the statistics. For example, click on http://bigessaywriter.com/blog/why-printed-books-are-losing-popularity to do so. Paper books are not disappearing, do not believe those who said it!
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