"It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure"
About this Quote
DiCamillo lands the point with a gentle sting: the problem isn’t that parents want readers; it’s that they want compliance. “Insist” and “make” are parenting verbs, not literary ones. They frame books as medicine - good for you, begrudgingly taken - and kids, being expert translators of adult hypocrisy, learn the real lesson: reading is a chore that responsible people endure.
Her intent is quietly radical because it reroutes the power dynamic. Instead of treating reading as a skill to be enforced, she treats it as a culture to be absorbed. The subtext is about desire and imitation: children don’t “treasure” what’s assigned; they treasure what seems to matter in the private lives of adults. If a child only sees reading in the context of school, rewards, or punishment, books become another instrument of evaluation. If they see an adult reading for pleasure, reading becomes a visible form of agency - a chosen refuge, not an obligation.
The context matters: DiCamillo writes for young readers and has spent a career making books feel like places you want to live. Her comment pushes back against a modern parental panic where every habit must be optimized and tracked, even joy. She’s arguing for modeling over management, for the persuasive force of a living room where stories are normal. It’s also a reminder that cultivating readers isn’t just about the child’s behavior; it’s about the household’s values made legible, one dog-eared paperback at a time.
Her intent is quietly radical because it reroutes the power dynamic. Instead of treating reading as a skill to be enforced, she treats it as a culture to be absorbed. The subtext is about desire and imitation: children don’t “treasure” what’s assigned; they treasure what seems to matter in the private lives of adults. If a child only sees reading in the context of school, rewards, or punishment, books become another instrument of evaluation. If they see an adult reading for pleasure, reading becomes a visible form of agency - a chosen refuge, not an obligation.
The context matters: DiCamillo writes for young readers and has spent a career making books feel like places you want to live. Her comment pushes back against a modern parental panic where every habit must be optimized and tracked, even joy. She’s arguing for modeling over management, for the persuasive force of a living room where stories are normal. It’s also a reminder that cultivating readers isn’t just about the child’s behavior; it’s about the household’s values made legible, one dog-eared paperback at a time.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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