I have no idea what put that into my head, but I will probably have to write it now. Seriously, from time to time I worry that humanity is on a doomed ship, if we do not, as a species, step back and say: well, video was all very well, but if we want people to think we have to stop spoon-feeding their brains and seriously foster reading again. It spent a long time as the hallmark of intellect, of class, of being cultured. Of being something that one aspired to be: A gentleman was well-read, and society’s mirror said that one should aspire to that. Peering at slices of dead tree and being entertained by the vivid illusions one creates in one’s own head… is a noble pursuit and trains the mind to be able to do it.
It’s rather useful at times. A serious comment: The imagination is activated, made fit and lissome and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound… or, at the very least extend the logic of the framework of a story into an entire world. If you cannot see the immense value of this for the future of our species — well, I despair of you. You also should read more. It’s that inventiveness that got us out of caves and a life that was brutish, unpleasant, and mostly short.
It seems particularly true that if we don’t catch readers young, we don’t catch them at all. Yes, I know, books for young ‘uns should be fun and addictive — but I suspect why it is so hard to pick up later is that creating those illusions is quite a neurologically demanding exercise at first. Like riding a unicycle – hard to pick up (especially off the tarmac) but once you have got it you never entirely lose those skills. People who learn later, who don’t get read to as kids, will have a far higher and harder task to master. I recall some prat of a Professor pontificating that it was bad to read to your kids because it was – I forget what buzz-words ‘white privilege’ or sexisism or something silly, and it would give them an unfair advantage. Try and stop me. I WANTED my kids and now grandies to have every advantage I can find for them. And because I want them to find partners who love to read to raise their own kids with, I want everyone to do the same. It’s not a finite pie. We can all be advantaged, and kids (and their kids) likewise.
There is, however, no doubt at all that you are competing against video (which is a whole different neurological process, in which (in my opinion) much of the mental food is highly processed and easily digested (and fattening, and bad for your health – in my opinion. It seems to produce fat-heads anyway). Video requires little effort for immersion — so that is something we need to work on as writers. Hook kids fast and aggressively with your first paragraph. The demands from adult customers are easy by comparison. Don’t over-describe (at least not at first) — those illusion generating parts of the head are not overly demanding at this stage. They’ll put up with a chiaroscuro of the main elements (yes, a common ‘trick’ in video too – overused IMO).
This is a war we need to fight, and particularly with young boys, we’re rearming and conscripting very late in the game. I can make more money writing adult books, but this is something I believe in. It’s odd. I am not trying to write message fiction (mostly it is boring, any messages need to be subtle, unless you are preaching only to the converted.) but in a way my books for young readers are my message: That message is ‘reading is fun, reading is great, reading is the best’.
I must write more, and faster. I must beg you to get your children/grandchildren – any children, reading. The hour is already late.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “The doomed ship”
Wild applause!
And let them read what catches their interest when they’re young. You don’t try to force babies to talk in complete grammatical sentences. That’s not the way it works. I learned to read with comic books and Baseball Digest. Of course in those days comic books were just fun adventures with pictures and baseball writers were into writing entertaining stories about heroes of the game, as it were. Alas, colorful and entertaining writing has given way to preposterous and even more preposterous deconstruction of meaningless statistics (eg, “…hit more left-handed doubles to right field in June than any other second baseman since 2002”), but I hope there’s some equivalent out there. Eventually I progressed to the Hardy Boys and then more serious stuff.
School librarians have been known to stock only the books girls read on the grounds that the boys don’t read.
I’d press ‘like’ on your post, but that might be taken to mean I agree with the librarians rather than appreciate you exposing them. Public schools delenda est.
I’m not really wired to write books about children, but I have been thinking about how schooling changes in a world of screens and LLMs everywhere. Might do a post someday.
Apparently the non-fiction I write is attractive to kids. When my sons were in Boy Scouts at summer camp other scouts would come up to them after hearing their last name and ask them if their dad was the one that wrote ‘such-and-such’ a book (generally one of my Osprey books). When told I was, they would tell them how cool it must be to have a dad who wrote books like that.
What was really funny was although my sons had their own stash of Ospreys, none of them were ones I wrote. I think they were totally unimpressed with what I wrote. I guess that underscores the axiom that a author is not without honor except among his own kin and in his own house.
If you’re talking Osprey Military books, I’m a fan myself and curious. Just which Osprey books have you written?
Look up Mark Lardas on the Osprey website or Amazon.
A grandson lived with me for a year while his mom sorted herself out. He proclaimed that he hated reading, while watching videos on his phone. After a few days of observation and questioning, I handed him a David Gemmell Drenai novel and suggested he try it. A few days later he demanded more. His demeanor and grades improved. By the time he left, he was reading books regularly, and looking at other genres besides heroic fantasy.
Even surly teenagers can become avid readers, if given the right book. The trick is figuring out what will work.