I had an interaction with a customer the other day (I'm a bookseller) that reminded me of Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise by Katherine Rundell. I had a few problems with that book that I put in my review, but there was a particular section that was brought to mind by this customer's comments and I thought was general enough to be included in the Club Forum instead of that book's forum. I was making a display of Super Readable books today (Hi-Lo books) that made me think of it all again.

The customer was asking if we had any books written for over a 12th grade reading level, and said that she'd heard many of the most popular books even for adults are written at a 6th-8th grade level so she was looking for something more "appropriate" for her literate mind. (Note that this customer did not in fact end up buying a single book).

This made me think of how children's books, sometimes including YA, are often disregarded as not "challenging enough" or "smart enough" for older readers. There seems to be a catch 22 as it were of stigmatizing accessible literature among the overall decline of literacy. The average person does struggle with reading period, with literary complexity, vocabulary/spelling, understanding concepts and themes, and extrapolating your own conclusion based on presented information. And I think the stigma of children's literature filters down from what's a "real" book, eg the "classics," and ends up affecting many different subsets like the romance genre, graphic novels, and women writers, but children's books often end up suffering the most imo. There's this idea that we should only be reading "real" books, whatever those are.

This also leads into a very alienating concept of reading as work instead of as enjoyment. That we should only be reading to challenge and improve ourselves instead of as a hobby or entertainment. I think this mindset also ignores that most reading, including reading for fun, tends to improve or maintain literacy more than not reading at all, and that many books meant for entertainment can still challenge us and teach us things. I personally use reading for both learning and entertainment, but for people who aren't already readers, who are trying to get back into reading, or who struggle to read, framing reading only as a form of mental exercise is just going to push even more people away, especially in this era of overwork and political survival. And in our current literacy crisis (at least in the US), that's the last thing we need.

Anyway, when this customer asked for books above 12th grade reading level, I tried to explain that 12th graders are often 17-19 so that's already an adult, and that most students in that grade are usually reading pretty complex classics like Shakespeare or Faulkner or Austen, and to get something more complex in writing you'd probably need to look at something academic. She wasn't looking for more complex maturity ie adult books over YA books. It was just such an odd and kind of off base question that brought up a lot of thoughts. I don't really have a question or anything, just musings and am curious to see what other people think about all of this.

Edit that from reading the comments, I think a lot of people are interpreting this post as "people shouldn't read challenging literature" or "challenging literature can't also be fun" and that was not my meaning at all! The catch 22 I'm trying to describe about accessibility during an overall decline in literacy and ability to read complex literature is that it can be an incredibly complex situation to both provide and de-stigmatize literature that is accessible and a "gateway to reading" for those who cannot (yet) or will not read at a complex level, but also that we must still somehow raise literacy so that people can read those challenging books if they so choose (and to also de-stigmatize challenging books). I think there's been some good discussion on these points!

Also, I am a firm believer that challenging books can be fun! I am not putting fun and challenging books in mutually exclusive categories, just trying to put thoughts into words around the idea that certain books or genres are inherently better than others or that certain mindsets around reading are better than others, and how this customer's attitude of "only things at this reading level are worthy of my time" can be damaging and dismissive and elitist. For context on the Rundell book I mentioned (which I only now realize I never included, whoops), the section I was referring to is one where she discusses "a sense among most adults that we should only read in one direction, because to do otherwise would be to regress or retreat: to de-mature," and that were we to continue in that singularly linear fashion, "turning always to books of obvious increasing complexity, you’d be left ultimately with nothing but Finnegans Wake and the complete works of the French deconstructionist theorist Jacques Derrida to cheer your deathbed." (quoted from Rundell's book). I didn't have any deep analysis of that section for this post, only that the request for complex literature, and manner in which it was made, brought it to mind.