This thread is fucking depressing so I wanted to add an example of what can happen when the RIGHT approach is taken.
My best friend is a school librarian. But for a few years, she taught 7th and 8th grade. This was right around 2010.
She assigned a book report. You could do any book you wanted, but she had to approve your choice.
Some girl chose Twilight.
Alicia called me and said “I don’t know what to do. Her other teachers said it was a miracle she picked a book at all. She won’t even read two paragraphs for homework. But…it’s TWILIGHT.” Which, yes, Alicia had read, because it was popular with her students and she felt like she had to keep abreast of their likes and dislikes to be effective. (For those who weren’t around for this, or don’t remember: a lot of schools and teachers were banning Twilight more or less on the basis of finding it trashy.)
I said: “tell her yes. But tell her that if she wants to read Twilight, there are some questions you want her to keep in mind while she reads.” And advised her to tailor those questions around things that bothered her about the books (for example, Edward’s stalking of Bella).
A few weeks later she called me again.
The girl decided to read the whole series, got halfway through Breaking Dawn, took her the book, and said “Mrs. [name], I just don’t LIKE any of these people.” Normally, Alicia would’ve recommended Harry Potter, but again: these were the only books the girl had been known to pick up in YEARS, and the final Potter book was just barely three years old. If she’d wanted to read it, she already would have. Alicia’s preferred genre is one I call Tudor-lite (Jane Austen, Philippa Gregory, that stuff), and she was pretty sure the stuff she was really into wouldn’t pass muster with her student.
I was still living in the same area as Alicia at the time, so I told her to ask the girl what she HAD liked about Twilight, give me the answers, and my creepy-loving ass would make a recommendation and give her a book. Based on her answers, I gave her my copy of ‘Salem’s Lot and told her to tell the girl she could keep it as long as she liked.
This girl went from ‘Salem’s Lot to Dracula. And from Dracula to Frankenstein. And from Frankenstein into the wider world of gothic literature. By the end of the school year she’d plowed through almost fifty books—which meant ALMOST THREE PER WEEK.
All it took was being told “sure, you can like Twilight” and then “it’s okay, you don’t have to like Twilight.”
A little sun, a little rain, a little love—that’s all it takes to make a flower grow.
(And sometimes, a copy of a book you will have to accept it was time to lose, because it will bear more fruit in different soil.)
