Pennac’s ‘Rights of a Reader’
In a highly entertaining and quirky book, the French writer Daniel Pennac (2006) lists ten rights of a reader. In the Foreword to the book, which he illustrated, Quentin Blake points out that when the book was first published in French (1992) ‘… most of us thought something like that already, didn’t we?’ But he continues by looking the rights of a reader in the current context of testing and narrowed arts curricula:
…we are now in an era of tests and targets. There is nothing wrong with accountability; properly understood, we need it. What is disturbing is the withering effect of its demands when they are not properly understood.
(Blake in Pennac, 2006: 7)
Pennac explains his thinking about the ten rights, some of which may seem controversial.
The right not to read
On the face of it, this sounds contradictory to what teachers try to do: that is, encourage children to read. But Pennac argues:
… Most readers exercise the right not to read on a daily basis. Given the choice between a good book and a bad TV film, the latter wins out more often than we care to admit. Nor do we read all the time… What our duty as educators really amounts to is teaching children to read by introducing them to the world of literature, and providing them with the means to judge freely whether they feel a need for books or not.
(Pennac, 2006: 149 and 151)
The right to skip
Writing about his own experience of skipping large passages of War and Peace when he was young so that he could concentrate on the love story, Pennac argues that skipping is something all children should be encouraged to do, but that the reader should do the skipping, rather than being given simplified summaries ‘mutilated, stunted, mummified, rewritten in some kind of bare-bones language thought to be for young people’ (ibid.: 155).
The right not to finish a book
Pennac suggests that there are many reasons for not wanting to finish a book and that it is a matter of personal choice or taste, an idea he admits is controversial, but that it can lead readers to draw up their own lists of what they do and do not like – and give reasons for their preferences.
The right to read it again
This is a recognisable pleasure, although in schools, it may not often be encouraged. It is worth considering this right as part of routine classroom reading provision:
… we have the right to read a book again just for the sake of it, for the pleasure of experiencing it all over again, the joy of being reunited with it, to test how close to it we really were…. To be enchanted by something that never changes, and to find fresh wonders every time.
(ibid.: 159)
The right to read anything
Pennac asserts that there are ‘good and bad novels’. This in itself, as a value judgement about reading may seem to run counter to his view that readers have the right to read anything. It is worth considering whether you agree with his view that the bad ones are:
‘a literature of quick fixes and cheap thrills cast in a mould and trying to make us fit that mould’ (ibid., 160) But that one day, without being aware of how it has happened, ‘we want to keep company with good books. We seek out writers and writing styles. We don’t just want friends to play with any more, we’re looking for life companions.’
(ibid.: 162)
The right to mistake a book for real life (A Textually Transmitted Disease)
Using this play on words, Pennac suggests that readers may become so immersed in the world of the book that they cannot distinguish between that and the real world:
There’s a kind of reading that is all about the instant and total gratification of the senses. Your imagination swells, nerves quiver, heart races, you get an adrenaline rush, you identify with anything and everything, as your brain momentarily loses the ability to distinguish between the world of novel and reality.
For all of us, this is our first reading state.
Divine.
But it can be mildly alarming for the adult observer who, on seeing the impressionable young readers devouring trash, hurries to wave a ‘good book’ under their nose…(ibid.: 163)
The right to read anywhere
Pennac tells an anecdote of a soldier who regularly volunteers to clean the latrines:
The hours go by. Perhaps he has got lost? They’ve almost forgotten about him. They do forget him. But he re-appears at the end of the morning, clicking his heels to report to the company warrant officer, ‘Latrines spotless, sir.’…. The soldier salutes him, turns on his heels and withdraws, taking his secret with him.
(ibid.: 165–166)
His secret was the complete works of a classic author. In exchange for a fifteen minutes’ cleaning, he spent a morning locked in the lavatory reading. As part of considering your own reading experiences, you may want to recall times and places you have found to hide away to be able to continue reading.
The right to dip in
Pennac sees it as a right to be able to grab a book off a shelf and dip in to it, even for a very short time, although he acknowledges that although some books lend themselves more readily to dipping, it’s worth trying with all favourite books.
The right to read out loud
There can be disputes about whether children should be required to read aloud to the whole class, but this was not what Pennac envisaged. For him, the idea is to feel the words as they enter the ears, rather than the eyes:
Me: ‘Did your parents read out loud to you when you were a little girl?’
Her: ‘Never. My father travelled a lot and my mother was much too busy.’
Me: ‘So how come you like reading out loud?’
Her: ‘School.’
Delighted that someone’s got something positive to say about school, I burst out: ‘A-ha! You see!’
Her: ‘it’s not what you’re thinking. School banned us from reading out loud. They made us read silently, even then. Direct from the eye to the brain was the theory… with a comprehension test every ten lines.’(ibid.: 169)
Pennac describes the act of reading out loud as laying oneself open. But if someone reads with the author and the audience in mind ‘then the book will open wide’ (ibid.: 173).
The right to be quiet
Many classrooms try to create the conditions for quiet reading, but Pennac takes the idea further, suggesting that not only should young readers have the chance to read silently but that they also have the right not to be questioned about what they have been reading. This may seem controversial in terms of ‘reading comprehension’ and assessing how much children have understood, but there may be other times when it is more appropriate just to encourage children to enjoy the experience of reading for a reasonable amount of time on their own without having to explain or justify their reading. Pennac explains:
We live in groups because we’re sociable, but we read because we know we’re alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that rakes no-one’s place, but that no-one can replace either… The rare adults who gave me the gift of reading have always stepped back and refrained from asking what I understood. And of course I talked to those people about what I’d read.
(ibid.: 174)
Reference
Pennac, D. (trans. Sarah Adams, illustrated by Quentin Blake) (2006) The Rights of a Reader. London: Walker Books.
See: Rights of the reader poster (adelebateseducation.co.uk) for a poster by Quentin Blake.
Selecting books for teaching reading
Case study, upper primary: Teaching Chaucer
As part of an extended teaching sequence using classic fiction as a basis for narrative writing, Corinne decided to tackle a really challenging text with her ten and eleven year olds. This case study describes phase one, particularly ‘reading and investigation’ and ‘capturing ideas’. The writing was to be a story about a dilemma, written from the point of view of two characters, and the text she chose was Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale– a story about the effects of greed. Before she started the first session, Corinne pinned up part of the Middle English version of the story, but made no comment about it. The section begins:
Thise ryotors three, of whiche I telle,
Long erste er pryme rong of any belle,
Were set hem in a taverne for to drinke;
And as they satte, they herde a belle clinke
Biforn a cors, was carried to his grave;
(Roughly translated: These three ruffians that I’m talking about, early in the day were sitting drinking in a tavern. And as they sat there they heard a bell being rung before a corpse that was being taken to be buried.)
Corinne began the session by asking the class what they knew about pilgrimages and there was some discussion about Mecca and the Kumbh Mela of 2013. She explained that The Canterbury Tales was a collection of stories told to while away the time while pilgrims were travelling by foot and horseback to Canterbury over 700 years ago. She told the children the story of The Pardoner’s Tale, using artefacts such as drinking vessels, a phial of ‘poison’ and gold coins as hooks for memory. After telling the story, Corinne asked the children if they had any pictures in their minds of any parts of the story. Encouraging them to explain what they visualised as still images or illustrations in a book, she used these as the basis for groups to freeze frame a chosen episode from the tale and produce a caption to describe the events depicted. The class took photographs of the freeze frames and uploaded them onto the smartboard to use in a later session.
The following session began with a recap of the story followed by watching an animated version of the tale available on YouTube (see reference below). On re-watching, Corinne asked them to notice how the filmmakers emphasised themes in the tale, such as the greed of the different characters and after discussion of camera angle and close-ups, the class watched again with the task of noticing the setting. They did a quick-write describing the village and the tavern and kept these as notes for their later writing.
For the third session, Corinne asked the class to watch the video again but to choose to follow one of the ruffians and note anything about his emotions and reactions to events. Volunteers were hot-seated and asked about their feelings and motivations as a basis for the final point of view writing. To end this session, Corinne finally turned to the original Middle English text. She had noticed that several children had been browsing the passage on display but had not commented. She read the first part of the tale and gave the children copies in their groups, inviting them to ask questions about anything that interested or puzzled them. The questions were written on paper strips and put on the wall for others to think about ready to answer in the next session.
The invitation to become text interpreters engaged even the least assured readers and in the fourth session Corinne asked volunteers to give answers to the questions. There were plenty of people wanting to elucidate, so after a few whole class answers, the children moved into groups to make sure that all their queries had been answered. This session ended with Corinne reading the middle section of the tale and asking the children to discuss what had happened in that section.
In the final session of the week, Corinne read the end of the tale and giving the groups copies of this section in the original language, asked them to make group summaries. There was plenty of talk and excitement when it came to sharing each group’s version of the ending of the tale. In the following week the class re-read the Middle English text, relishing reading it aloud and began their own versions in modern English. Corinne had also bought several versions of Marcia Williams’ graphic/comic book version Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (2008), which encouraged the class to read more of Chaucer’s tales.
Find The Pardoner’s Tale animation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=.
(See Chapter 3 for definitions and examples of hot seating and other drama strategies which can be used to support reading.)