Mandatory reading? Yes! No!

When they are little, we read or tell them stories (and we buy them; this is the time when we buy the most books) because they like it, because we like to do it, because that's how it was done with us. We give them textured books, suitable for getting dirty, modern books that talk about farts, butts, fear monsters, or classic stories turned upside down, like the legend of Sant Jordi with an empowered princess and a vegetarian dragon. When they are seven or eight years old, we encourage them to read illustrated stories (with little text) and they do.

If we are lucky, they move from these to young adult books. Now, the Hollysters of our childhood (I remember reading them when I was ten, because Pam, the eldest daughter, was ten) are too saccharine. The pleasure I felt with The Famous Five can no longer be the same for them. That shed where they met, drinking lemonade (the mother always prepared liters and liters) and writing things in narrow spiral notebooks that aroused maximum envy in me... Maybe, if we are very lucky, they will move on to Harry Potter. It's a read that hooks them and seems like a small miracle to me.

And then comes an age, thirteen, fourteen, when they already have screens. This means they are interested in social media, YouTubers, and TikTok. They don't go to the bathroom with a book or a comic, as we did, but with their phone. And surely, when they are older, they will complain that "nowadays" there are computer screens in bathrooms and that at least before you had to go with your own phone. Just as before we criticized TV, which we called "the idiot box," and now we envy that scene of the The Simpsons mask, where the whole family sits on the sofa, alienated, watching ---oh, wonder--- the same program.

At this age, they like series, they watch them, they comment on them with friends. Therefore, they are interested in fiction. Like most of us, who also dedicate more time to series than to books. And at that age, still ---later they will move on from us--- they can be "made to read" some well-chosen adult book. What doesn't interest them about books is the supplementary effort of the system. Reading is archaic. You have to pick up a paper object and fix your gaze. Rudimentarily, turn pages. It's less tiring to watch than to read. In fact, when a series is subtitled, they already grumble.

But just as we limit screen time, which is so addictive for all of us, and just as we limit the times we order pizza (which is so good) and just as we send them to sleep, because otherwise they would never go, that we force them to eat salad (because it's very good) or that we limit their budget, we must give them books and make them read them. Mandatory reading? Well, I wouldn't call it "mandatory vegetables" or "mandatory eight hours of sleep."

I find it very practical to start a book (not "young adult," but for adults) aloud, with them. It will amaze us, first of all, to see how poorly they read. It will amaze us, immediately, to see how they get used to it and improve right away. Why make them read, if they don't want to? Because with two or three days of doing it, like with two or three days of doing sports, they improve, open their minds, internalize the system. They might like "experiential" books, based on real events, like The Diary of Anne Frank. Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell, for example, is perfect to read halfway with a child aged thirteen and up. Commenting on it, like when we comment on series. Being honest and, if we don't like it, saying so. Not picking things that are too complicated or archaic, at first. I, at thirteen, would not give them Oliver Twist. Why force them? Because reading, like sports, may not end up being a pleasure, but it will end up not being a torture. And it will make them better. As my dear friend Emili Teixidor used to say, young people who read "are more handsome."