Read Your Vegetables!

Reflections on reading despite its pleasure before our species goes extinct...

Last week I read a startling headline. No, it wasn’t political. I’ve unsubscribed from political melodrama. Junot Diaz posted a substack, A Song For Reading, discussing the latest National Assessment of Education Progress report. The percentage of 8th graders reading at a “Below Basic” level is the largest percentage in the exam’s history- 33%. The Percentage of 4th graders at “Below Basic” is the largest in twenty years at 40%. This is a grim projection as students in the 4th grade are making a pivotal transition. The transition from learning to read to reading to learn. 

But what concerned me the most is that reading levels for adults is illustrating a similar decline.

Dex and I visited the Museum of Natural History this week!

I’ve spent my entire life wooing people to read privately and professionally. With my young siblings I enticed them to read with sweets. In my tenure as an English Teacher for nineteen years, I weighted the grade book ruthlessly in the favor of readers. Now, as an instructional coach working for the NYC Reads Initiative, teachers comment that their students don’t want to read (or can’t), but also, that they don’t even read themselves- unless it’s summer.

No Reading for ten months?!!

Which begged the question: what about adults who don’t have summer break? And my personal question: how can one endure ten months of the year without reading a book? If someone told me I had to wait ten months for my next scoop of ice cream, I’d buy a toaster and draw myself a bath. 

I am a Literacy Evangelist:

Obsessed and fanatical, I’m your vegan friend who casually drops words like jicama into polite conversation. I can’t shut up about my reading diet. And I refuse to. Friends, I beg you, we must read. Our future depends on us. Unlike our veg-tastic friends, I’m not asking you to choose between television and books. I’m not telling you to delete youtube or abstain from Tik Tok. We can be happy omnivores. 

Currently Reading: So weird. So fun. So good!

And I’m no snob either. Gobble your airport novels in one sitting. Cross your legs and nibble every page of your bodice rippers. Formulaic courtroom dramas? Who-dun-it murder mysteries? Bon appetit! 

Perhaps your ears are starving for literature? Audio books activate the same neurotransmitters whether we read with our eyes or our ears. The parts of our brains responsible for language processing, comprehension, and emotional engagement. Listen while you work, drive, wash dishes, go for a run, sit on the subway. A veritable feast awaits!

The Sugars: A Cautionary Tale

Imagine adult friends and family members who refuse to eat vegetables. Who indulge in candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They would have severe health problems: diabetes, heart conditions, gout. I have been thinking this week. Perhaps these physical symptoms can be blessings. If a doctor tells us we have high blood pressure or are prediabetic, that helps us be more conscious of our choices. 

I’ve been working on an essay about my Uncle C who struggled with diabetes for many years. His wife, who was a nurse, put him on a strict diet but nothing worked. Why? You can’t watch a grown man all day. Every time I visited, he was missing a hunk of himself. It started with his big toe. Then an eye. Then another toe. Wheelchair bound, he would hobble to the fridge and eat jam straight from the jar. Once, he even stole a candy bar right out of my small hands. 

Dear ones, what if our minds are diabetic?

Imagine a dystopian future where those who didn’t read regularly just started falling apart physically. Fingers and toes and eyebrows just falling off into our hands like Demi Moore in The Substance. Yikes!

Is reading exercise for our minds?

I don’t run because I like it. I don’t go to the gym because it entertains me. I exercise, because I want to live longer and look better naked. That’s it. I pretty much think about cookies and pizza the whole time I’m there. I’m never going to run the New York Marathon, and I’m cool with that. I’m not asking for people to be swept up in a reading renaissance (although that would be lovely!). But maybe we have five minutes a day to read like 2 pages of a book?

Champagne Theory: We will increase our kids reading scores when we all sit around the dining room table, book in hand.

Read your broccoli. It’s good for you. But also, it’s good for all of us. 

Perhaps the entire conversation around literacy and reading for pleasure should be reframed. We don’t have to read. We get to read. Our brain is our most powerful muscle in our bodies. We don’t have to be the world’s strongest athletes. Just do a few sit ups before bed.

“Reading is in decline, and it’s up to us who love books to hold the line, to slow lexic erosion…so I stay pushing books, trying to convert the reluctant/resistant/non-readers to the reading life.” Junot Diaz

While I agree with Diaz. My aim here is even less ambitious. I’m not asking anyone to be a reader. I’m just begging you to read. With my whole heart. Let’s put these soul sucking dystopian pocket nightmares on their chargers for five minutes and read like our future depends on us. While we still have the freedom to do so. Use this space to tell readers what they should do next.

A Reader Grows in Brooklyn

Yesterday, I took Dexter to a book launch event for Broolyn writer (and former teacher) Adam Gidwitz. He has written many many children’s books using Grimm’s Fairytales and folklore from around the world to craft books these kids cannot put down. 

I watched a line of exited elementary and middle school children drag their parents out on a frigid February afternoon top The Brooklyn Library in Brooklyn Heights. They clutched his novels like they were treasures. Avid listeners of his Grimm Fairytale podcast, Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest, they sat on the edge of their seats for a full hour hanging on his every word. When he asked if they wanted the extra story he promised in his podcast, they lept out of their seats. “Do you have the secret code from my last episode?” On his count of three they all screamed the password. 

I’m telling you, this man is the Pied Piper of the five boroughs. All is not lost. Biologically, we are animals wired for story. Yesterday, my own reluctant reading son put his phone down and listened to Gidwitz tell the story of Max, a WWII spy. At the end of the presentation, he asked me to buy him both books in the series. I’m still in shock. 

Champagne Toast:

This week’s Champagne Toast is to the next generation of readers. This is no legend. I saw them with my own eyes.

We can’t let them down. They’re counting on us.