Need For The Availability Of Age-Appropriate Reading Material

Speaking is natural to humans. Our brains are naturally wired to the spoken language, reading is not. As per studies, reading is an acquired skill for which the human brain is not yet fully evolved. Children who learn to read well is critical, especially in today’s digital world where knowledge is constantly evolving and expanding with a continuous inflow of information. However, reading needs to go beyond the ‘perceptual learning function’ with a sole cognitive focus on visual recognition, text decoding and automaticity. Meaning is central to the process of reading, and reading with meaning-making is a core requirement in foundational years. 

For children to ‘read well’, with meaning-making to its fullest and deepest level, there is a need for a stronger focus on effective reading processes – motivation, enjoyment and engagement with the text. Children’s literature provides children motivation and reason to engage with the text. Motivation being the key factor in developing lifelong readers. 

A comprehensive literacy experience, throughout a child's literacy journey, should, therefore, involve enough reading comprehension opportunities that they can enjoy. Hence, developing a culture of reading within the school, at home and in the community becomes imperative. Reading skills and habits are more likely to be sustained when they are fostered continuously within the immediate environment of the child.

One of the key components is easy access to vibrant children’s literature collection at home, in school, as well as, in the community, in the language with which children are most comfortable. These books should also appeal to children's diverse interests.

As Saktibrata Sen, Director Programs, Room to Read says- “We must realize, reading is a unique experience for the human civilization. However, reading is something that needs to be learnt explicitly. Schools need to build high-quality, vibrant, diverse and culturally relevant collections of books that can cater to a wide variety of reading tastes across a broad range of reading levels. Books that are easy to read to ones that give children an opportunity to dive into unfamiliar and uncharted territory, to carefully nurture the skill of reading.”

The moot question is, are there enough good quality, authentic, diverse, and age-appropriate books available for early readers, especially in local and regional languages? 

The book publishing has been growing, as per Nielsen report published in 2016. In the report, the Indian publishing industry was estimated at $6.76 billion, but the children’s book segment is only 1/4th of this. Based on the last decade trends, the report also suggested, that this segment is largely dominated by academic/school publishers. Non-academic publishing or trade publishing, for children,  is even smaller in comparison. 

Focus on trade books for primary grades gets further reduced. To add to this, more than half of the total titles published are in Hindi and English. Hindi constituting about 26 per cent, followed by English at 24 per cent and remaining portion makes for all the other local/regional languages. There are very few focused publishers in the children’s literature segment. The gap is even wider in regional publishing. Generally, the publisher publishes a small range of non-academic children’s books, as part of their entire catalogue. Most of these are slightly refined and re-packaged versions of traditional stories.

There is a need to focus, not only on generating healthy demand for quality books that are diverse and engaging but also on accessibility to affordable, developmentally appropriate and relevant literature. There is also a need to develop national recommendations and guidelines for children’s books to ensure industry standards for the quality, appropriateness and relevance of books.

Hence, it is important to address the issues that are directly or indirectly plaguing the children’s book industry, as a lack of reading culture in the country, poor understanding of the importance of reading in the foundational years, accessibility of high-quality books among a large section of the population with limited purchasing power, high publishing costs and no direct government-led investment policy in the Indian book Industry that has an impact the availability of good children books.

Children who develop a love of reading, develop a love for learning. Children who struggle with reading, struggle with learning.

Simmi Sikka

Guest Author The author is Sr Manager, Quality Reading Material, Room to Read