I see it all the time: Kids are brought into the bookshop and told to choose a book. They choose a book. The parent/grandparent takes one look and says Oh no, not that. Arguing ensues.

Why? Often it’s a graphic novel. Phrases like “real book” and “reading book” are bandied about. (Yes, “reading book” is what we have come to.)

I stand in the background biting my tongue and pretending not to listen and when the kid finally makes it successfully to the till I gush about how great a book it is and how much I love it and how much they’re going to love it and how well they’ve chosen. The parents always seem a little chastened at that point, and looking for reassurance – which I provide, explaining that words are art, yes, and pictures are art, and when they get too close together they do not create some kind of matter/anti-matter situation.

My favorite was the mum who kicked up an enormous fuss but finally gave in, saying on her way to the till, Well just don’t bring it to school, I can’t imagine what your English teacher would say if she saw you reading that. The book in question? Maus. I told her it was required reading in my high school.

The only real objection the adults can raise is that graphic novels take a lot less time to read. This is true. This is also why they get read again and again and again and again. They become known, deeply. They become loved. They are, if you like, investment pieces. Anyway, macarons take a lot less time to eat than a slice of chocolate cake, so what’s your point?

But graphic novels don’t need my defense; they don’t need any defense. They are what the kid wants to read. Let them. A kid who grows up reading comics has three possible paths in front of them:

1. They read comics for a while, then move on to books without pictures. Graphic novels are absolutely wonderful for overcoming a kid’s hesitance when faced with a large block of text. They transform – I have seen this over and over, including with Rowan – reluctant readers into avid ones.
2. They read comics for a while, add in books without pictures, and continue to enjoy both. It me, my dad, Richard…
3. They only ever read graphic novels.

The last is the least likely – I’ve never met anyone who’s followed that path – but even if it does happen, so what? There is just as much literary and imaginative value in graphic novels as in non-graphic novels. All the same benefits continue to apply. In other words, there is no problem.

If you have any doubts, I’ll let Katherine Rundell spell it out for you:
A defense of reading for pleasure (is there another way to read?)

Every once in a great while I see the opposite problem:
First, a kid came into the shop. My favorite kind: around 11/12, able to ask for help, happy to chat a little about what he was after, a good kid. Gives me hope for the future. Anyway what he wanted was a book of crosswords. The kid ones were too kiddy, so I showed him the adult ones. He took about 10 minutes and picked one out and bought it. Success.
…Twenty minutes later he’s back, trailing his grandmother, who waves the book at me and says it’s far too advanced for him, generally acting as if I’d pushed cocaine or Portnoy’s Complaint on him. It is clear that he has no choice in this matter, and that whatever he said to her in that interval she hasn’t heard. I patiently show her the kid crosswords and walk her through his process. I suggest, gently, that the best judge of what he can do, or is prepared to do, is him. Yes, I agree, these crosswords will likely be a bit of a challenge. Is that not – again gently – a good thing? She doesn’t really hear me any more than she heard him, but we gave it our best shot. I looked at him and shrugged and smiled and did my best to indicate that I, at least, believed in him.

“Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.”¹

Parents come in for plenty of this, but grandparents often seem especially clueless. Which I can’t hold against them exactly; there have been a lot of books published since the last time they visited the children’s section, and they don’t see their grandkids that often, etc etc. I have space for their uncertainty. What I don’t have space for is the ones who ask my advice and then argue with me. Listen. You need help. I know you need help; you know you need help; that is why you asked me for help; I am very capable of providing that help. So don’t give me that look when I recommend a book with a female protagonist for your grandson. What is your bloody endgame, after all? Do you want him to turn into your husband, who only reads books by other old white men about WWII?

I am good at my job. And my job, as I see it, is to get the right book in the right hands at the right time. Simple. Some books are better than others. But the best book might not be the best book for you right now. (Or, for that matter, for your kid.) Last week I found something just right for:

• A mum with an almost-one-month old, locked out of her house on a sunny day, who had just given her husband Colson Whitehead for St. George’s Day (a sort of Spanish Valentine’s, apparently, but instead of chocolates they give books. I told her it sounded much better than the English St. George’s, where everyone just got super racist.)
• A student taking a break from their chemistry degree who needed something that would fit into their stylish bum bag.
• A man whose wife was trying to push A Little Life on him but they were renovating their house and already stressed enough as it is thank you.
• A 12-year-old boy who loved Alex Rider and Harry Potter and Naughts & Crosses and Hunger Games and all the other “kid” series and wanted more but wasn’t sure where to turn until I gave him permission to graduate to the SFF section proper.

Usually I give someone three to five books to choose from. Every once in a while it’s one-and-done and you just have to trust me. Either way, I promise, I know what I’m doing.

Sometimes, my job is to tell you to go to the library. Really. Not all books deserve to be bought. Daisy Meadows, I’m looking at you (whomever(s) you are). But at the library you don’t have to justify your purchase; the book doesn’t have to be “worth” anything. You’re allowed to try things out. You’re allowed to not finish. You’re allowed to read children’s books, and you probably should. Your kids are allowed to read whatever appeals to them and it does not cost you a dime. It’s magical. Check it out.

¹Dumbledore

Recipe: Spinach turmeric fish curry, a guaranteed crowd pleaser here.

Things I know and (therefore?) assume everyone knows:

17. You can’t just plant apple seeds and get good apples. If you want good apples, not crab apples – the same apples you started with – the only way to do it is with grafting.

17a. Tangential fact, that I can distinctly remember learning and therefore do not assume is common knowledge: Citrus fruit is also grown by grafting, because if you plant, say, lemon seeds, there’s no guarantee you won’t get grapefruits. In this case I think because they’re all hybrids, so any given genes could win.

18. Jane Austen wrote Emma. Among other things. (And here I’m talking about apparently well-educated, white, English people; the ones I feel qualified to judge. How do they not all know this? What were they doing that day?)

Recipe: I did do this with rhubarb (which I picked and roasted myself) this time, but any jam works and the shortbread is perfect. I like a sprinkly of demerara on top for crunch.

File Under: Things that Used to Be Normal

There were things that used to be normal. Because there used to be such a thing as normal. Even for me.

• Going to school. My parents went to school, my friends (a term only loosely applied some years) went to school, I went to school. (I read and loved and memorized Calvin & Hobbes, and never once did I question why he, also, went to school. I never asked why his mother, who had chosen to leave her job when he was born, neither home educated him nor returned to work. These days I look at those comics and just see the poster child for our current lifestyle.) What’s water? said one fish to the other.
• Going to the mall. Need new clothes? Go to the mall. Want to see a movie? Go to the mall. Your parents need to drop you off for a few hours with your friend? Go to the mall. Bored? Go to the mall. Eat at the food court; browse Waldenbooks (where I stole bookmarks by shoving them down my underpants); KB Toys; the music store (where I bought my first album, on tape, which I had to scrape the Explicit Lyrics sticker off before I showed it to my parents); the pet store, which was mostly just cages of puppies and kittens that we found adorable and not at all problematic; Radio Shack if someone needed a floppy disk; Friendly’s if your parents were in an expansive mood (clamwich and a clown sundae). I can still remember where in the mall they all were, first or second floor; I can tell you that the Chinese place was on the leftmost edge of the food court, Baskin Robbins on the far right. Piercing Pagoda was not for the likes of me; my mom took me to the pediatrician to get my ears pierced, and not until I hit some arbitrary age.
• Eating less healthy foods at your friend’s house without their mom consulting yours. (See, most notably: macaroni & cheese from a box; cereals that were not Cheerios and did not advertise a high fiber content.) The reverse was also the case: My friend Jen has never gotten over the dinner where my father served lamb burgers with goat cheese hidden inside.
• Mowing the lawn, raking leaves, shoveling snow. All acceptable kid jobs, blisters included. (And what did we do with the grass and leaves? Of course I piled the leaves under the swing that hung from the tree in our front yard, but what then?)
• Riding a bicycle without a helmet. Riding it to your friend’s house, and just… around. Because we were kids, and we had to come up with some way to entertain ourselves; we never expected entertainment as a sort of baseline.
• Toy commercials. How else could we learn what to want? Micromachines, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Barbie… My father taped, on VHS, the shows I wanted to watch so I could fast-forward through the commercials. Still, somehow, I knew. Another American I know referenced Gushers the other day and though I don’t think I ever managed to consume one, yeah, I knew.
• Sleepovers. At which I got ear infections, or dreaded playing Truth or Dare, or was peer-pressured into watching Carrie and the Exorcist at far too tender an age. (School years went by calendar-year-of-birth, so I was almost always the youngest.)
• Telephones. It was possible, once upon a time, to be unreachable. It was possible to leave your house and if anyone wanted to talk to you they had to damn well wait til you returned. And if you wanted to talk to your friend you had to be prepared to talk to their mom or dad, and you had to check it wasn’t too late or too early, and not hog the line because nobody had call waiting (except one kid; there’s always one). And then later there was the modem, and AOL CDs, and that very particular sound that we can all call up in a heartbeat despite not having heard it since 1998.

Recipe: Kate doesn't like bok choi but it keeps showing up in her dinner boxes so we made Ginger Scallion Noodles.