Child-To-Child Sharing

I've been hearing some muttering about something happening at The Guardian website relating to children's books and finally checked it out. To make a long story short, The Guardian has set up a space on its website at which children will be reviewing books and interviewing authors. The people behind it want to "encourage child-to-child sharing with older children discussing their favourite books and authors with the younger ones."

Guardian Books Editor, Claire Armitstead says, "When you think of the resource that older friends or siblings represent, it seems astonishing that child-to-child reading gets so little attention." I've never even heard the expression, but I definitely like it.

I've often written about my concerns regarding the fact that adults in publishing and education can only guess at what children are interested in reading. Adults function as gatekeepers for child readers, and gatekeepers can be both good and bad. The Guardian website could help kid readers get around the adults who want the best for them in terms of improving literature so that they can find juicie reads that children really do enjoy.

We'll see how this thing works out.