Children's Literature: Very Good News and Very Bad News

Stephen Krashen
Presented at The Children's Literature Council of Southern California
October 9, 2004^*

This is a very strange time for children's literature, with powerful positive and powerful negative forces at work. A strong positive force is the obvious fact that we are living in a Golden Age of children's and adolescent literature. Despite claims to the contrary, children and teenagers still like to read, and are reading a lot (Krashen, 2001; Krashen and Von Sprecken, 2002), which is undoubtedly due to the phenomenally high quality of literature available.

In fact, the books are so good that they cross-over; adults read them too. I agree with most people and think that the Harry Potter series is wonderful. It has provided me with a genuine role model, a person after whom I have decided to model my entire career, Gildaroy Lockheart. And in The Order of the Phoenix, Rowling has demonstrated her keen understanding of the field of education with her character Dolores Umbridge. Ms. Umbridge, I am told, is a leading candidate to be appointed to the next vacancy on the California Board of Education.

I have lots of evidence that adults like current children's and adolescent literature. I was visiting my son a few years ago when he was a graduate student at the University of Texas. He reads Kant and Shakespeare for pleasure. I was reading Animorphs. I left my copy of Animorphs number one in his apartment. He not only read it, he read the next five, and bought extra copies of number one to give to friends who had children who might enjoy it.

Here is more good news: It appears to be very easy to get children interested in reading, and the best way is the most obvious: Exposure to good books. Jim Trelease has done a heroic job in informing the public about reading aloud to children (Trelease, 2001). Trelease also has suggested that one very positive reading experience can create a reader, one "home run" book experience (Trelease, 2001). My colleagues and I confirmed that Trelease's idea was right: We found that more than half of the middle school children we interviewed agreed that there was one book that started them off reading (Von Sprecken and Krashen, 2000; Von Sprecken, Kim, and Krashen, 2000; Ujiie and Krashen, 2002).

And finally, the rest of the good news: We know that the more children read, the better their literacy development. There is now overwhelming research showing that free voluntary reading is the primary source of our reading ability, our writing style, much of our vocabulary and spelling knowledge, and our ability to handle complex grammatical constructions. It has also been confirmed that those who read more know more: They know more about history, literature, and even have more "practical knowledge" (research reviewed in Krashen, 2004).