Reading pleasure and e-tools
FollowIt happens all too often: as soon as we leave our early childhood behind and cross the borderline between primary and secondary education, we lose all or part of our interest in books. From the age of 12-14 children’s visits to the public library, for instance, drop dramatically, leaving those who keep reading a minority. Over the last decades, numerous researchers have analysed this phenomenon. Their conclusions are more or less the same: the leap into puberty makes boys and girls either turn much more into themselves, or it diverts their attention to the outside world. In both cases puberty changes their interests and emotional household, averting many from reading literature. The ever-broadening world of gaming, TV, internet and social media offers children a host of instant and flashy challenges with which the slow and silent world of books cannot compete. Moreover, in some schools reading education to young adolescents focuses too little on the pleasure of reading and too much on analysis. As a result children lose every (remaining) interest in reading. They get bored from the start or are insufficiently challenged. That being said, many teachers who do try to enhance reading pleasure in their classrooms, do not always succeed – “It is so difficult to bring books to life for Nintendo-children