Young readers need freedom of choice

The other day, in a bookshop, I saw a kid browsing eagerly through the comic and fantasy fiction sections, after which he picked a few of the books, when his mother came upto him and replaced them in the rack saying he should read "real books". She tried to draw his attention to the non-fiction section, chose an autobiography and read something off the dust jacket, with the kid all the while gazing at it with as much distaste as if it were a jug of bitter gourd juice. 

This instantly reminded me of the time during my pre-teen years when one of the adult guests at our house read the back-cover blurb of a Robin Cook thriller I had borrowed from the library, and advised me not to read "such books". 

It also brought forward several other such trivial memories to my mind, including the time when my son was six, when he had found an old book of mine on black holes. He became very curious to know what it was all about, had flipped through it and read some of the beautifully illustrated pages. He had left it lying around, open at the page where the authors had tried to imagine what it would be like to be an astronaut trying to enter a black hole. A lady of our acquaintance who had dropped by, noticed that and asked me why I let my child "read these things".

All of it got me thinking - in this day and age, when it has become increasingly difficult for kids to cultivate an interest in reading - if they have somehow managed to wade through the labyrinth of alluring video games, streaming platforms and TV programmes pulling their attention every which way, and have been fortunate enough to acquire a taste for reading, is it not essential for them to have the freedom of choice?

Where is this exacting, marvellous discretion of these people hiding, when they watch daily soaps on TV while having a meal with their kids? The serials with ridiculously twisted, unrealistically melodramatic, unbearably cringeworthy plotlines that run for eternity, where every single dialogue is followed by a superfast camera zoom into the petrified face of every human on the set?! If you ask me, I would say the sight of the enlarged nostrils on the evil face of the Machiavellian serial mother-in-law filling the TV screen, spewing bitterness, is a lot more terrifying than a mere illustration in the glossy page of a black hole book showing the spaghettification of an astronaut entering the event horizon.

They seem to be fine with the kids watching some movies that freely glorify the use of  derogatory language, smoking, drinking and violence - movies that plant dangerous notions into the kids' minds that all this is somehow "cool". But they draw the line at books that offer some harmless entertainment.

If we let the kids be, let them explore genres, let them read whatever offers them enjoyment at that particular phase of their lives, they must surely continue to grow as readers and develop an everlasting bond with books, so that reading becomes an integral and enchanting part of their daily routine.

Thrusting a book into their hands when they couldn't be less interested in it, and forcing them to read it, will scare them away and push them further towards the screens showing young leading ladies being wooed by ancient actors old enough to be their grandfathers.