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![]() The opposite argument-that the kind of book a child has his or her nose buried in does make a difference-has been mounted elsewhere, notably by Tim Parks, in an essay that appeared on the blog of the New York Review of Books. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.” ![]() A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn’t hackneyed and worn out to them.” Well-meaning adults, he continued, can easily kill a child’s love of reading: “Stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21 st-century equivalents of Victorian ‘improving’ literature. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. Fiction is a “gateway drug” to reading, Gaiman said. “I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children,” he argued, adding that it was “snobbery and … foolishness” to suggest that a certain author or particular genre might be a baleful influence upon young reading minds-be it comic books or the works of R. ![]() ![]() In the lecture, which was reprinted in the Guardian, Gaiman came out in favor of what might be called the “just so long as they’re reading” camp. About a year ago, the novelist Neil Gaiman delivered a lecture at the Barbican, in London, on behalf of the Reading Agency, a not-for-profit organization that promotes literacy and reading for pleasure among children and adults. ![]()
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