D Day, Teens and Books

D Day, teens and books. OK, what is Sarah on about I hear you ask. Well, this morning I’d like to be writing but I have twenty minutes before I have to take Amy (6) to the dentist so it will have to wait. I find it very hard to climb in and out of my writing in short bursts – it interrupts the flow and for me it’s best to wait until I have a decent chunk of time – at least 40 minutes. So I’m scribbling this down instead.

Yesterday the teenager brought home his school project – D Day – with his grade, A-.

Now I’m delighted with this as:
a/ in the end he spent hours on it – OK, he only admitted he had to do the project a few days before it was supposed to be handed in. And at first it was a hard slog. More on this in a mo.
b/ he’s not the best at spelling or writing. He has a spelling exemption for exams but we don’t make a big deal of this. He knows he has to work just as hard as every other student in his year. Harder in fact.
c/ after a false start he used books and not the internet to do his research.

Like most teen boys he’s not all that library-aware. I tend to borrow books for him and hope he’ll enjoy them. He sees the library as geeky. So his first port of call for project info was the intent. Herein lay the problem – the sites he looked up were all ‘boring’. The information was laid out in a very ‘facts and figures’ way, there was no colour to the writing. Maybe he just didn’t find the right sites. I looked for others but again on the ones I found the information wasn’t delivered with any sort of style.

So he struggled to rewrite the information and add his own mark to the project at first. Then I went to the local library and found three books – one on World War II (Dorling Kindersley) and two on D Day itself. The DK one was particularly good – lots of photos, maps, personal accounts – it really brought the whole thing alive. On the way back from the library I read up on D Day and found out dozens of things I’d never known.

Sam flicked through the books, decided they looked ‘OK’ and that he’d give reading them a go. Twenty minutes later I stuck my head around the door and he said ‘Omaha Beach, all those soldiers dead, man! And those Mulberry yokes, mad. And some of the soldiers were my age, and . . .’ He’d started to really take the information in and think about the war in personal terms. Result!

Sam had every chance to be a book loving child. He was read to from birth, our house and his bedroom have always been over flowing with books, I read the books he reads (to review and out of choice – they are far better than most adult books) and we talk about which Skulduggery Pleasant is the best (book 3), what we liked most about Crocodile Tears (the scenes in Africa), when the new Eoin Colfer is out. We fight over my proof copies – especially the Derek Landy ones!

I’m by no means a perfect parent, but when I saw the interest, the spark in Sam’s eyes pouring over the D Day books it made me smile. At least I’ve done something right.

If you have a baby or toddler in your house – especially a boy – please do read to them as often as you can. As they get older – please never stop talking about books with them, leaving books around the house, using the library, visiting your local bookshop, listening to audio books in the car, encouraging your friends and rellies to give him/her book tokens for Christmas. It really can make the difference between a reluctant reader and a book lover.

It’s a true gift for life. I’m not sure I could get through even one day without reading something. For me books are lifesavers. And our teens need them too . . . it’s as simple as that.

Happy December!

Sarah XXX