Sunday, March 13, 2011

Picture books

A sad little piece from the NY Times about languishing picture book publishing and sales, and the pressure some parents feel to rush through picture books to get to the chapter book fiction and the "real reading" including this sorry tale :

"Some parents say they just want to advance their children’s skills. Amanda Gignac, a stay-at-home mother in San Antonio who writes The Zen Leaf, a book blog, said her youngest son, Laurence, started reading chapter books when he was 4. Now Laurence is 6 ½, and while he regularly tackles 80-page chapter books, he is still a “reluctant reader,” Ms. Gignac said. Sometimes, she said, he tries to go back to picture books. “He would still read picture books now if we let him, because he doesn’t want to work to read,” she said, adding that she and her husband have kept him reading chapter books."

Oh, dear.

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