| From
the May/June 2009 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Editorial
Monsters and Readers
 aniel
Pennac’s The Rights of the Reader (reviewed on page
331) closes with a series of brief expositions of those ten rights
(ten because “it’s the number of the Commandments, and
it’s gratifying, for once, to see them used to authorize rather
than prohibit”) that begins, most startlingly, with “the
right not to read.”
It’s an elegant argument. Pennac first points
out the pitfalls of turning reading into a “moral obligation,”
in itself stultifying and necessarily labeling nonreaders as immoral
“monsters.” He then follows that logic to an eloquent
defense of intellectual freedom: “in no time this slippery
slope has you judging the ‘morality’ of the books themselves
according to criteria that violate another inalienable right: the
freedom to create. At this point, ‘readers’ though we
may be, we become the monsters.”
He knows the secret. Only those who can read can
choose not to read, a choice ineluctably bound to its opposite,
the right to read anything. While we glibly speak of the freedom
to read, Pennac’s book articulates like no other
the freedom of reading and how the choice to do so can
immeasurably broaden the world.
• • •
Note: the July/August Horn Book will not
be mailed until mid-month in order to accommodate the unusually
late date (July 9th to the 15th) of the ALA annual conference. In
addition to the Newbery, Caldecott, and Wilder speeches and accompanying
profiles of the winners, the issue (with a cover by Caldecott Medalist
Beth Krommes) will include speeches by the winners of the Coretta
Scott King Awards, which celebrate their fortieth anniversary this
year. It will be worth the wait, and you could pass the time by
reading the Pennac — if you so choose. r.s.
From the May/June 2009 issue of The
Horn Book Magazine |
