Telling children which stories are ‘for them’ risks turning them
off literature completely, suggests
Robin Stevens
T
rue story: I actually wrote
my first book before I could
read. Or write. It’s not as
crazy as it sounds; my father
and grandfather were both
academics, so I grew up with books being
created all around me. As a very little child I’d
sit next to my dad and he would scribble on
pieces of paper then give them to his secretary,
who would type it all out. I deduced from this
that the process of ‘making a book’ must be
a kind of mind reading, and I wanted to do it,
too. I got hold of a notebook and pencil, and
‘wrote’, thinking about a great story all the
while. When it was finished, I proudly handed
the ‘book’ to my mum; I wanted her to read it,
for real, and she couldn‘t. It was quite a shock
to realise that there was more I needed to do.
As it happened, I was a little late to read
– at least, compared with what the school
thought should be happening. I was born in
California and we moved to London when I
was three. When I was about five and a half,
my teacher suggested to my mother that
my American accent was holding me back!
Of course, my mother took no notice – and
shortly after that, something suddenly clicked
in my head, and all those squiggles started
to make sense. I remember looking at street
signs, realising that I could understand them,
and getting incredibly excited about making
that connection. And then I went mad; with
nothing stopping me, I read everything.
One of the earliest books I remember
(it feels like it can’t be true, but it is) was
The
Hobbit
. I was lucky, as a kid who wanted to
read, to have parents who valued that. We
moved to Oxford when I was five, and the
Murder Most
Unladylike is the
book I wish I’d been
able to read when I
was younger.
I really want my books to
be accessible to any kid who
is the right age to enjoy them.
It seems ridiculous to me that we
are increasingly splitting stories by
gender; whom a book is about has no bearing
on whom the book is for. Hazel, one of my
two main characters, is Chinese, and I love
the thought that whenever a white person
reads the book they’re identifying with
her as the narrator, not looking at her as
someone different from themselves. This is
why I believe that boys definitely should read
books about girls and vice versa: seeing the
world through someone else’s eyes is a really
powerful way of understanding them.
Schools work very hard to nurture a love
of reading in their most reluctant pupils – but
sometimes I think adults try too hard to push
particular books on children. The closest I’ve
ever come to a non-positive experience with
books was when my teacher gave a list of
‘advanced’ titles to my mother. My mother is
very rule-abiding, so she’d only allow me the
books on the list itself. I was so furious that
I refused to read
Skellig
in protest – I finally
read it as an adult and realised how stupid I’d
been. All the same, I was turned off reading
it by an well-meaning adult trying to force
a connection that wasn’t there. I think it’s
so easy to do, albeit with the best will in the
world; we need to trust children to find their
own way, in their own time.
library there was a treasure trove, where I
discovered Diana Wynne Jones, Eva
Ibbotson and Terry Pratchett. To read his
Discworld books I needed to venture into the
adults’ section and that felt amazingly cool at
the age of eight.
My mystery series, about a pair of
schoolgirl detectives, is described as Agatha
Christie meets Enid Blyton quite a lot. I’m
very happy with that – both of those are
writers I read hugely as a child. I remember
‘graduating’ from Blyton to Christie, and
wondering where the middle ground was; the
books about kids solving murders. In a way,
“Boys definitely should
read books about girls
– and vice versa”
MY LIFE IN BOOKS
Robin Stevens
TEACH READING & WRITING
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