There are people who say, If they want junk, they can buy it themselves. My library is going to have good books. Other people say, I want something that ll bring them into the library. Any reading is better than nothing. My feeling is that you can t generalize.
Librarians know the books that excite children.
You can say to a child who is in a reading rut, If you like to read about fantasies in which animals talk, here s a wonderful book called Rabbit Hill. Or Wind in the Willows. There are a lot of good books that you can recommend. That s true of almost everything. There is a lot of junky sports fiction, but there s also some very, very good stuff.