Reading Is Funny Day

What the day is

Reading Is Funny Day is observed on April 1, pairing the date with the idea that books are allowed to be entertaining. Reading aloud is covered on the Young Readers Day entry in November, and the paper-versus-screen research on International Book Day in March; this one is about comedy.

Origin and background

Surveys of children's reading habits return the same answer with tedious regularity. Given a free choice, a large share of children pick funny books over every other kind, and the preference is strongest among the children who describe themselves as not enjoying reading, which is precisely the group for whom the choice matters most.

The mechanism is not complicated. Fluency is built by volume, meaning the number of words a child actually reads, and a book finished willingly delivers far more of that than a worthier book abandoned in the second week. Reading for pleasure is consistently associated with later attainment, and the association survives controls for family background in the large long-term studies.

Humor is also harder to write than its reputation suggests. A joke on the page has no timing supplied by a performer, no face and no voice, so it depends entirely on word order, on which word the eye lands on last, and on withholding one piece of information until exactly the right moment. Comic writing for children runs on the same machinery as comic writing for adults, without the safety net of delivery.

The awkward part is the reception. The funny books children love most are heavily represented on lists of titles challenged or pulled from schools and libraries, usually for crude humor, and they are also the books adults are quickest to dismiss as not proper reading. Both reactions push against the thing that was working.

Comics and graphic novels attract the same dismissal, and the evidence does not support it: they carry substantial vocabulary and demand real inferential work to follow.

How to take part

• Let a child choose the book, even when the choice is undignified.
• Read a funny passage aloud badly. Children enjoy that more than a polished performance.
• Try a graphic novel instead of ruling it out as not real reading.
• Reread a favorite, which builds fluency just as well as a first reading.
• Ask a librarian for the comic writers. They know exactly who they are.