On World Book Day last Thursday all students at my daughter’s school had to go dressed up as a character from their favourite book. Which means she was up and ready in the morning even before the alarm clock went off. By 6.30am, she was kitted out – from bits and bobs we had at home – as Hetty Feather, a foundling girl from a series of Jacqueline Wilson’s books.
From the enthusiastic report I got when I picked her up after school, I gathered that children spent the day asking each other who they were, and with books in hand they chatted about their characters. The headmistress joined in too. “She had a scarf wrapped around her head; she was Malala!”
I thought this was a brilliant idea. Books, sadly, do not get much of a push these days. Even bookshops look to me like they’re having an identity crisis: most are being reinvented as stationeries or as coffee shops. Also, when was the last time you saw someone sitting on a bench reading a book? Everyone these days is on their mobile phone device.
I, too, am guilty of this. Up to a few years ago, I used to carry a book in my bag wherever I went. Not anymore. If I have a moment to spare I whip out the iPhone and catch up on the news online. Which is not the same as reading a fiction book, at all.
Keith Oatley, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto, has for the past years been studying the psychology of fiction. His latest research has concluded that reading fiction has the effect of improving our empathy, because “it is about selves interacting with other selves in the social world.
“The subject matter of fiction is constantly about why she did this… or what should he do now, and so on. By reading fiction, we get better at social thinking,” says Oatley. He says that when we’re reading fiction, we are able to understand characters’ actions from their interior point of view, by entering into their situations and minds, rather than the more exterior view of them that we usually have. And psychologically there is a big difference between how we behave and what’s going on in our mind.
In life, we usually take the exterior view of others, but that’s too limited. Reading fiction makes us realise there’s other things going on in someone’s mind.
“It improves understanding of others and this has a very basic importance in society,” he says.
How timely, I thought. Last week was marked by one of the most tragic sea accidents. Since Monday I’ve been stuck by the vision of the hundreds of men, women and children – all dreaming of a better life – locked up like cattle in the lower deck of a flimsy boat. In my mind I replay the desperation, the horrific helplessness that they – some were children as old as my daughter – went through as the boat sank and they drowned.
When I read the initial reports, I wanted to throw up. I have since been waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, with nightmares of the sheer ugliness of a death like that. This was humanity at its worst.
Yet this was a tragedy waiting to happen. EU leaders have known what is happening in Libya for years. But it was always treated as merely an annoying agenda item.
It made me very angry last week to see photos of world leaders, discussing the migrant deaths in the Mediterranean with glass wines on the table. Wine? What, pray, was the reason to celebrate? The fact that someone came up with a couple of ideas to temporarily patch up the situation until the people’s clamour dies down?
This small but significant example of bad taste shows we are in desperate need of an international culture of empathy. Which is why I believe in the power of books, especially at life’s nurturing stages. Children’s literature promoting diversity makes children realise that anyone, irrelevant of colour, race or creed, is the same and can be a hero. Books can kill stereotypes.
Moreover, when reading, children are listening to a story in their hearts. In a world where everybody wants to talk but few can really listen, this is an important lesson in life.
Reading helps children learn how to listen: they’ll grow up able to focus when someone is trying to communicate something to them. Once we listen, we can empathise. Perhaps that will, one day, bring out the best of human nature.
In memory of the migrants buried at sea, read a story to your child. So hopefully they’ll grow up in a better world than the one we are leaving them.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti