Are you choosing for your child?

We often make assumptions about what our kids will like or not like; instead, we should let children pick a book for themselves.

The other day, we met new neighbours with a seven-year-old, who was excited to meet a children’s author.

I asked her if she’d like to take some of my books home to read. She was enthusiastic, and her parents said she could choose two. I have written four books for children of that age. I picked two among them that I thought she’d be interested in, and turned around to give them to her. Then I reconsidered and decided to put all four of them in front of her and let her choose. To my surprise, she took the ones I hadn’t expected her to choose.

How many times have I said that we cannot assume what kids will like or not like, and to let them choose! And yet, I tried to choose for her.

This incident reminded me of another. My sister wondered why my niece never picks up nonfiction books. Her contention was that if she doesn’t try reading nonfiction at all, how will she know whether or not she likes it? We wondered what topic might induce her to pick up a nonfiction book. Space? Animals? Dinosaurs? Let’s see, said my sister, and took my niece to the library. She told her she could choose any number of fiction books, but she would have to choose a nonfiction book too.

My niece spent time going through the shelves, and finally chose one about how clothes are made. She brought it back home, read it cover to cover and gave my sister a detailed account of everything she learned in the book. Who knew it would be a book on something as unusual as garment-making that would get her to read a nonfiction book with interest!

As an aside — not only does this tell us that we should never assume what a child will or will not be interested in, but it also shows that authors, publishers, educators, librarians, and bookstore owners should all recognise that children need a wide variety of topics to choose from!

Similarly, I’ve heard librarians and book store owners lament that parents go in and ask for “girl books” and “boy books” and say “Oh, my son will not like a unicorn book” only to see the boy engrossed in the same unicorn book a minute later! Never assume!

Having said all this, even as I was congratulating myself on not choosing on behalf of the child in the anecdote at the beginning of this piece, I realised that I had, after all, indeed made a choice on her behalf — I had not offered my other books to her. So what if those books are for older kids, many of them are nonfiction — may be the topics would have interested her. She might have flipped through the pages and picked up a tidbit that might have sparked some kind of curiosity in her, leading her to want to learn more. Who knows!

Well, next time.

The author has written 14 books for children and can be reached at www.shruthi-rao.com

GobbledyBook is a fortnightly column that gives a peek into the wondrous world of children’s books. Hop on! Or as Alice did, plunge into the rabbit hole.