Okay, the bit where they said reluctant readers are just looking at the pictures...godDAMN but that makes me angry.
I spent a good decade of my life writing and illustrating books targeted to reluctant readers. Obviously lots of other kids read them (and adults!) and I’m thrilled, but they didn’t *need* those books the same way reluctant readers do.
There’s enough wrong with education in this country to fill a hundred textbooks, but one of our great sins is so often turning reading into an instrument of torture.
Listen, I was a voracious reader. I was about as reluctant as a cheetah spotting a three-legged gazelle on the horizon. And even I got shamed for reading things that a teacher or my parents thought were too easy or too frivolous or not improving. “Garbage in, garbage out.”
It never once made me want to read anything shoved on me in the name of improvement, but it sure as hell meant I doubled down on the books I was reading. Because I was stubborn like a balked mule, a trait which, my husband assures me, persists to this day.
But what about kids who weren’t as stubborn? What about kids who didn’t have books for them, in those days, and so kept getting handed books for much younger kids? And if they found books they liked, were shamed? They didn’t learn to read, they learned reading wasn’t for them.
Reluctant readers aren’t stupid. They aren’t any more thrilled about reading Dick and Jane than you would be. To write a good book for reluctant readers, it has to be smart. It has to be on their level, same as any other reader. It just has to be something they can digest.
On the Dragonbreath books, my art director did heroic work making sure that if you opened the book anywhere, there was an illustration. Those illos act like the landings on stairs. You see one and you know you’ve got a resting point.
Kids with processing disorders, dyslexia, or who have simply been trained that a full page of text is a torture device—they see that illustration, they know they read to it and they get a break. The break is often a comic panel that moves the story along, too
I drew over a hundred illos per Dragonbreath book. My buddy Rob Harrell, who does LIFE OF ZARF? Four hundred. Because what matters is that kids find a book that works for whatever particular issue they have.
And yes! Once they’ve found that book, they will check it out over and over again! Of course they will! They found a window into reading, a book that doesn’t make them feel *less*, of course one hit isn’t enough! My god, I re-read my favorite books until they fell apart too!
And you, you miserable judgment wretch, you want to take that book away because you’re tired of Wimpy Kid?!
Honey, I assure you, you are not as tired of Wimpy Kid as I was of drawing dragons. And neither of us are as tired as those kids are of being shamed about what they read.
Honey, I assure you, you are not as tired of Wimpy Kid as I was of drawing dragons. And neither of us are as tired as those kids are of being shamed about what they read.
GAAAAAAAH
