Guest Post: Tom Mitchell

Author of How to Stop the End of the World

Humour and Reading for Pleasure

At a recent school visit, following the customary twenty minutes of attempting to get the PowerPoint working, I introduced myself to the hall of Year 7s.

‘Hello, Lincoln! I’m Tom Mitchell.’

At this, a girl in the front row screamed. Not in a Beatles at Shea Stadium way, I’ve not reached that level of stardom, not yet, but in absolute terror.

It was off-putting, a challenge even to the most confident public speaker, which I’m very much not.

‘There’s a spider!’ explained the girl, pointing.

The hall laughed.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ I replied. ‘He’s a big fan of my books.’

The hall laughed again. Not quite as enthusiastically this time, fine, but there was a definite response.

And as soon as my executive assistant had exterminated the spider, we continued. The kids saw I had a sense of humour, they recognised I was happy to not take an arachnid attack too seriously. And so they were on board.

The Most Powerful Tool

Humour is the most powerful tool for engaging kids. As a parent, a teacher, and a children’s author (triple threat?), it’s something I’ve learnt through experience. Although, clearly, a teacher’s job is to educate, rather than entertain, you need your students engaged. If they’re having fun, they’re more likely to learn.

And the same is true of books, despite the level of earnestness that often accompanies children’s literature and school visits. I once experienced a book talk in which the author discussed how important their Cambridge degree was to writing a novel about magical hedgehogs.

Choice is Key

We adults often lecture children on how vital it is for them to read but, in doing so, run the risk of putting them off yet further. On this year’s World Book Day, the organising body published the results of a survey that reported that more than a third of children aren’t able to choose what they read, and one in five feel judged for what they do.

Clearly, this isn’t great.

What Do Children Want to Read?

It reminds me of my dad and, back when I was a kid, his mania for giving me cod liver oil. He’d obviously read somewhere of its health benefits, and I’m sure it’s wonderful, but the more he explained, the less I wanted it.

Kids aren’t rational agents. They exist in the moment. And they’re definitely reluctant to swallow medicine made from fish insides just because an adult says it’s good for their brains. If you’ve a well-meaning English teacher demanding your class read your favourite novel because it’s educative, well, this is similarly problematic.

How to Stop the End of the World

That’s not to say that I don’t think my new book, How to Stop the End of the World, doesn’t have value in addition to its humour. That’s the whole point. You can have both. The protagonists, Col and Lucy, are active. They haven’t yet succumbed to the pessimism of adulthood, the throwing up of arms in grumpy surrender. They try to prevent the end of the world. As we should be.

(Admittedly, in the real world, it’s not as simple as returning a stolen sword.)

I don’t care if kids don’t engage with this idea, though. I only want them to enjoy reading the book. Because too often when we encourage reading for pleasure, we forget an important element …

… those last two words: ‘for pleasure’.