How Reading Helps to Build Character (2)

This is the second part of the blog on reading written by Teacher Aimee. See the first part here.

Reading teaches liberalism, and pushes children to exist in realms other than their own.

Jacqueline Wilson prods children to navigate their way around English societal structures, promotes them to think about children unlike or like themselves. Her characters are outrageous and often unsympathetic. As in life, children cannot help but form opinions, to compare or disassociate themselves. As a result, reading lets a child build their own moral compass without being told how it should be formed.

Horrid Henry; a book about a chaotic, self-obsessed boy with barely any traceable ambition sold in its millions. Children do not condone Henry, who is as horrid as his name suggests, but through him they are able to self-assess. In those spontaneous moments of impishness, it is not impossible for every child to see flashes of themselves, and to wince at the outcomes that unfold.

A well-read child is a well-travelled child. Reading transports children across the world, to the moon and back, and to previously unimagined destinations, (think: Where the Wild Things Are’). Within these journeys, the child becomes voyeur to differing regimes and governmental set-ups, whether that be the elitist social structure in Lord of the Rings; or through the eyes of Peruvian immigrant Paddington Bears’ class orientated London.

[To be continued...]

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