Literature for Adolescents

       I live in a townhouse complex that sits within a Westchester suburb close enough to the city to lure in commuters but far enough away that the city itself becomes a distant dream for all the other inhabitants. Each townhouse has at least one tree planted on the walkway to their front door, and where there are no houses, you can generally find flowers and/or trees; nature abounds—in controlled and man-made sections only, of course. The corner houses often have more of a grassy area and the one across the street from my house also happens to have a large rock that juts out from the side of a very small hill. The family that lives there consists of a white married couple, TL and SL, who have two daughters, AL and JL. AL is fourteen years old, the oldest of the two girls, and has just started her first year of high school. The large rock mentioned previously has a relatively large flat surface area that doubles as a perfect sitting area, and it is there where AL and I soaked in the sun as we talked about reading.

 

      I moved into this development when I was in third grade and I have known AL ever since. Our age difference meant we were never too close, but my childhood friend CP used to babysit AL, and eventually JL, after school. If nothing else, we knew of each other through the common link, CP, and I for one always made sure to say hi and ask how AL was doing whenever I saw her. With that in mind, I didn’t feel the need to establish a rapport because I knew that, for the purposes of this interview, she would already be comfortable enough around me to speak her mind. If you would like to know what questions I asked her, I asked her questions 1-18 from this list that I created with the help of my classmates.

    

      On the one hand, having recently read Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide, I was surprised to find that AL loved to read. On the other hand, I wasn’t surprised because when I have briefly babysat JL before she went to school, I saw that their home only had a chunky 32” screen T.V. in the living room which had plenty of toys scattered on the floor, but no other electronics that I could easily see. This is not to say that a lack of electronic games and/or entertainment system automatically means that someone will be more inclined to read, but rather, that person has less available with which to keep them entertained. AL furthered this notion of mine that the lack of other means of relaxing was at least somewhat connected to an increase in reading, when she remarked that she doesn’t really watch T.V. because she’d rather read. T.V. is admittedly nice for AL, but she doesn’t currently watch anything. In contrast to her ambivalent opinion of T.V., AL strongly dislikes movies. Even though AL intellectually knows that she can pause a movie to take a break, AL feels like she has to watch a movie in one sitting and movies are often too long for her to comfortably do that. Since she doesn’t watch a lot, if any, media, there are no characters she wants to read fanfiction of and fanfiction of celebrities weirds her out (a point we both whole-heartedly agree on). Perhaps predictably, AL has no kindle and finds reading on the computer too distracting, thereby resulting in AL reading old school paper books 99% of the time.

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       As soon as I learned that AL loved to read, I followed up with the ever important “why” question. AL freely admitted that she was forced to like reading. From AL’s perspective, her parents, TL and SL, pushed/encouraged her to read until she started to enjoy reading. AL recalls that if she had two hours to play, her parents would say she had an hour to play and an hour to read, with the hour of reading being non-negotiable. Toys were not really AL’s favorite thing, so she says she often only played for half an hour and read for the other hour and a half. TL and SL would read to AL, but when she was able to, she was encouraged to read by herself. Given the emphasis her parents put on reading, I had expected AL to say that she was always read a bedtime story, but in fact, AL does not remember there being that kind of bed time story routine. When stories were told at bedtime, they were sometimes personal narratives or memories rather than stories in a book. Regardless, SL and TL still fostered a love of reading in AL.

 

      Generally, AL obtains her books through one of two means: she borrows from the local library or buys a book from a local bookstore. AL noted that she donates the books back to the bookstore once she’s read them. I found this intriguing because I only donate the books that I’ve bought, even the ones for school, when I realize that I don’t like them anymore. AL’s favorite reading spot is the rock where the interview took place. Despite this, AL mentions that she can read anywhere because the world of her book fully captures her attention and she can ignore the people and environment around her—a classic case of excellent reading flow, if I do say so myself.  As for what AL reads, she found it easier to say what she didn’t like than say what her favorite thing to read was. AL strongly dislikes the science fiction and fantasy genres, and vastly prefers fiction over nonfiction. The exception to the last statement is a biography or autobiography, perhaps, AL speculated, because she needs the plot inherent to both fictional and biographical narratives. Graphic novels were ok, but she hasn’t read any lately and she only enjoyed poetry when it was used to tell a longer narrative. Similar to my own experience, AL also remarked that she enjoyed the escapist nature of fiction and did not need to be able to personally relate to a book to enjoy it.

    

        In what seems to be common among adolescents, AL doesn’t like the books she’s assigned at school or the classics; AL’s hatred for Bud, Not Buddy, was particularly amusing to me. Part of why classics aren’t fun for her is because they are too wordy or use too many sentences to state a seemingly simple fact. Summer reading, on the other hand, held a more ambivalent place in her mind because, prior to this past year when she started high school, she had more flexibility in what she had to read which made it more bearable. This past year, however, she had a more negative view of the summer reading, partially due to the perception that her choice was limited and partially due to the lack of follow through in the school year. What I mean is that the required reading, Lord of the Flies, which AL did not enjoy reading, has yet to be discussed in class and thus makes AL feel like reading it was a waste of her time.

 

       One thing that particularly inspired me was AL’s acknowledgement that she used to not understand or accept fat (as in the adjective, with no negative connotation attached) people, but reading books where the protagonist themselves was fat opened her mind to the idea that people are people no matter what they look like. AL also mentioned that books about people in the Queer community similarly bolstered a sense of empathy and acceptance in her which would not have otherwise been possible because she herself cannot personally relate to that lived experience. Not only was I impressed by AL’s willingness to admit when she was wrong, I fully agreed with, and enjoyed, her declaration that books help people empathize with others. Overall, I had a fun time talking to AL about reading and her own experiences—although I think they were more unique to her than I originally anticipated.