Section 3: Books, magazines and comics
Surveys of children’s out-of-school reading habits invariably identify popular cultural texts as being central to children’s reading choices (Hall and Coles, 1999). Children’s interests in popular culture do impact upon their reading choices and practices. In the ‘Digital Beginnings’ project (Marsh et al., 2005), in which 1,852 parents of children aged from birth to six were surveyed about their children’s media-related literacy practices, a total of 82% of all children spent time with books at home on a typical day. Eighty-one per cent of children owned books related to their favourite television programmes or characters. Sixty per cent of parents in the survey felt that these books motivated their child to read or write, and this was supported by data from the interviews with parents, in which many parents felt that this was the case for their child:
He’s got the monsters book, he’s got the ‘Bug’s Life’ book, ‘Toy Story’ book and they are the ones he always goes for. If I say, “Go and choose a book”, he will choose generally one of his favourite films. It motivates him to pick a book up in the first place, certainly.
(Marsh et al., 2005:42)
Some parents noted that children deliberately related the books to the film/ television programme, drawing on the language experienced with the moving image to retell the stories:
I mean, he’ll sit there and he’ll watch the ‘Jungle Book’ on the DVD and then maybe the next couple of days he’ll get his books and he’ll look at the pictures and say, “Oh, I’ve seen that bit on the telly”. He does sit there and he makes up his own words, do you know what I mean, like he’s reading the book.
(Marsh et al., 2005:43)
However, in some schools, these popular titles rarely appear on shelves. Student teachers could be asked to reflect on their own popular out-of-school book, magazine and comic reading and consider how far these titles found their way into work in classrooms. Table 1 outlines a number of ways these texts have been used in schools:
Table 1: Using popular fiction, magazines and comics in schools
| Media |
Ways in which they have been used in schools |
| Popular fiction |
- Used as texts for whole class/ group reading
- Children have written ‘fan fiction’ texts for ‘fan fiction’ websites (websites on which fans write in the style of favourite texts)
- Databases have been collated of favourite texts
- ‘Authographies’ of popular authors have been developed (biographies of authors)
|
| Magazines |
- Children have identified (and then replicated) particular features of magazines e.g. agony columns, regular features, letter from the editor, letters pages
- Advertisements have been analysed in order to determine specific features e.g. the way in which text/ image attempt to position the reader
|
| Comics |
- Children have developed their own comic strips
- Collections of onomatopoeic words have been made
- Teachers have set up home-school comic lending libraries, in which children have been able to borrow comics to take home and share with families
|
Student teachers could be asked to develop this table further, adding ways in which these texts can be utilised in the literacy curriculum.
 
|
