My eight-and-a-half-year-old son is a voracious reader and budding writer. I am very happy that he enjoys reading and want to help him find the next good read. Unfortunately he’s extremely easily influenced by cover art. He will unwrap a gift book and immediately dismiss it and refuse to give it a go if he doesn’t like the cover. He doesn’t even read the blurb. When I was still reading to him, we had a pact that he had to listen to at least one page, and that’s how he was introduced to many of his favourite books despite initial reluctance. I completely understand the appeal of great illustration, but now that he reads chapter books, I wish he could get over the two least important pages. How can I help him not to judge a book by its cover?
Eleanor says: I totally appreciate the virtue of getting him to see beyond the cover, but on the other hand … could you just change the cover?
What’s he attracted to in a cover? Iridescence? A dragon? A cool dude? He could make a new cover! A collage, even a collage from other books. He could make a dozen all-purpose covers, ready to be stuck on to whatever book you’d like to give him next. Or he could redo a particular cover after saying why he doesn’t like the one they gave it; or you could cover books in brown paper so he never sees the cover, and have him design one once he knows what the book is about. Coloured foils! Laser eyes! Give him a director’s chair.
When I was a kid my mum and I used to make exercise book covers together, colourful crayon and watercolour, that got contact-papered on to my homework books. That way school work wasn’t so unbelievably tedious. Among a slew of other belongings left carelessly at the bottom of the school bag to accrue crumbs and creases, the homework books always looked kind of special to me. They didn’t seem standard issue or severe. They looked like me, like the care other people invested in me. If your son understands the appeal of illustration, he could make his books feel more like him.
Maybe that doesn’t feel right to you. Maybe you’d prefer to guide him away from this sensibility rather than cater to it. You might not want flame decals on Aslan. You might want him to love the serifs of a publisher’s setting. Believe me, I totally get the instinct to improve a kid’s aesthetic judgments. Just the other day I went to see some Van Gogh and as (terribly aesthetically sophisticated) tears rolled down my face, a nearby kid said: “This is the boringest thing I’ve ever seen.” I completely understand wanting to shriek: “You’re missing something! This is so much better than whatever you think you’d prefer!”
But when you make art proof of virtue, you can make it feel like a drag. It’s such good news that he’s reading for joy. It’s not, so far, something he does because he “should”.
Many things will try to capture his taste in the next few years – algorithms, TV, peers, all saying “people like you should like this”. Of course, you don’t want your voracious reader’s taste to be captured by the iPad-algorithm-AI event horizon of bad kid’s art. But the reaction doesn’t need to be adding another “should” – “you should like this cover”. Instead, the reaction might be to encourage him to develop his own sensibility. Why does he like this one more than that? Can he design something he’d be happy to put on any book? Or if he thinks some covers only make sense with some books – why is that?
Allowing and working with his emphasis on covers doesn’t have to be a capitulation. It could be a way to deepen his relationship with the books you’d love him to love.
