When I was in 7th grade, my school began to implement a thirty minute “Fun Reading” period to promote recreational reading. The entire class would read the same book and then we would have a book club style discussion about the chapter(s). The book that I most clearly remember reading is Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. I remember all of us being enthralled by the YA novel just as everyone at the time was. The Twilight movie was about to premiere and we felt so smart as we thought about walking into the movie theater with head to toe knowledge about what was gonna happen in the movie. Our teacher arranged for us to go on a field trip to watch the film together as part of our “book club” experience giving us an assignment to note he changes between the movie and the book.
While this was meant to promote reading as a leisurely activity, I think it also promoted the idea that this book was fun to read because it was low culture. Unconsciously our teacher made a case for this being a low culture book because it was about teenagers, vampires, and love. She did not necessarily claim this was a bad thing, but she did separate it from the scheduled curriculum readings as something that was supposed to be enjoyable as opposed to the other which were solely educational. While this introduction to the Twilight saga did get me to read and purchase the rest of the books, I stayed convinced that there was nothing to learn from these books. I still have that idea that liking YA novels is a guilty pleasure. But shouldn’t all types of reading be appreciated? We are practicing our literacy skills nonetheless.
