My bookworm daughter has stopped reading (aged nearly 15)

[Avocets]

Frankly i am the one who feels bereft. No more excuses to search the charity shops for stuff she might love, great piles of unread books relegated to her wardrobe - they used to live in a massive organic "bookshelves" type construction built with boxes that grew up the wall of her bedroom over time once the bookshelves overflowed - but no longer cool apparently, no more smug self deprecating moans by me about how my child won't get her nose out of Jane Austen, or whatever, multiple copies of Vogue stacking up in bedroom (what is that about), scornful tales at the dinner table of the geeky girls at her new school who "read all the time" (and come out with stuff like "reading is my world - I live in my imagination" etc apparently - I can quite see how that can be off-putting), and ...Facebook. Is this permanent? And does it matter (except to me and my love of book buying!?). She writes brilliantly - but rarely seems to write for pleasure any more (or if she does she (more likely?) keeps it very well hidden. This is a child who, when she won a £250 academic prize aged 11, decided to spend it on a £250 Waterstones card.

I feel you pain! My DD who will be fifteen next month is exactly the same. In fact her book worm tendancies tailed off during last school year.

In her case i think she is having difficulty moving to adult fiction.

Are you encouraging her or suggesting books Avocets or just leaving the issue?

My gut feeling is that I should stand back and let her get on with growing up - I try and resist (not always successfully) asking her what she is reading - knowing she has been "reading" the same book since about the start of the Summer. At one stage, I even stooped to buying her "Mini Shopaholic" - which she of course devoured - it is pure drivel though - although instructive, in the sense that the author has made squillions. She still loves great films and threatre though, so I try and encourage those - she told me she wants to find a voluntary job backstage with an amateur theatre group for her DofE, and that really cheered me up. It takes supreme patience not to say anything. Her problem isn't to do with the transition to adult fiction - I think it has more to do with searching for an identity and wanting to fit in - all of a sudden it is all about navigating the Top Shop website and checking out (unduly optimistically) the Jack Wills catalogue. She is an amazing cook though, and she still loves great cookbooks, so to some extent, I have managed to assuage my own book buying addiction with a new shared cookbook habit.

I think your dd has had a fantastic grounding in enjoying reading and that she will definately return to it at some point - at the moment, she obviously just wants to be a teenager . It does sound like it is a 'wanting to fit in' thing, you probably remember yourself the terrible urge to be the same as your peers? With her interest in film and theatre etc, it doesn't sound as if she going to metamorphosise into one of the TOWIE lot just yet!

I'm not actively suggesting book ideas to her - with the exception of my brief foray into chiclit - it doesn't feel the right thing to do.

I think there is nothing to do except stand back. Partly because there is no intervention that you can make that won't send the message that reading is a duty rather than a joy. Partly because 15 is an age at which you absolutely have to leave them to make their own decisions, however daft. Partly because you can I guess feel confident that she has stored up enough joy in fiction to come back to it readily in future.

DS1 was a huge bookworm until about 13, then read nothing much for years. He has just started his first 6th form year and is reading Gatsby and Othello with pleasure and sensitivity, as well as talking of reviewing The Third Policeman for the school mag (admittedly partly in pursuit of copntent for the dreaded univ admission Personal Statement).

What peggotty said. She's still got the passion for reading, it's just going to lie dormant for a while whilst she get on with the important stuff of teendom, i.e. boys, fashion, make-up and music. It may take a few years but it will never leave her.

I can remember being exactly the same at that age. The problem was, I had to read such dry books in school that I didn't want to read anything that stretched my brain at home. I'm afraid that Sweet Valley High became my reading matter of choice.

However, I'm now a total bookworm, I live in a house made of books and am a self-confessed anorak. I also get to live through the same problems with my own daughter .....

Madame Hooch that's comforting - thanks! I'm also a bit of an anorak. In the spirit of sharing, and in full anorak-mode, did you notice this?

www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/sep/25/bodleian-library-shows-treasures-shakespeare?INTCMP=SRCH

It is a new "three month only" exhibition of some of the secret stuff in the Bodieian library - just until December. Sounds fab.Assuming you are in England, of course!

I'm going to persuade my daughter to come with me, using the carrot of a whirlwind shopping trip in Oxford. I suspect ratio of time spent shopping to time spent perusing rare literary treasures will be less than satisfactory, but it will be better than nothing, and I love her company.

My sister had this issue with her DS 15. She decided to quietly create a forbidden book shelf where the books were "a bit too grown up for you..."which is of course a red rag to a 15 year old. She put some properly pretensious philosophy books on it (which are cool to be seen with at school), One flew over the cukoos nest, Catch 22, a few Kurt Vonneguts and Ian Banks (which just have cool covers and titles) and before long he was a moody sulking teenager - but with a book again.
Her vibe was (along with madamehooch) that reading at school was dry, required and full of "remember this for the exam" and so reading generally went out the window. But a bit of spice and a realisation that books could always be a thrill, take you somewhere new (and perhaps forbidden) was exciting enough to keep the interest in books as recreation separate from books as exam fodder.
Trouble was, that as exams loomed he was more interested in Catch 22 (and by that time Jean Paul Satre as only a bright and literate 16 year old can be) than Physics and French revision so recreational reading had to be almost banned !

I like my sisters Machiavellian approach but I remember being turned off reading for a few years from about 15 to 18 because there is so much other stuff going on and you feel as a teenagaer that you just know everything anyway. I wouldn't worry (or try to do anything). The love of reading is already there and it will reappear when she needs it.

She will come back to it OP. I went through a stage where I didnt read for about 3 years. Think it was because I was reading so much for GCSE, then college then Uni that it was not a hobby anymore it was forced on me so much I got sick and tired of looking at books.

Now I go in spurts... on holiday from work this week already read two books. Prior to this I hadnt read since June. I cant read a book chapter by chapter I pick it up. I read it. Its done. So I like to have a bit of time. Have another 4 I have my eye on to get read before Im back at work

She will come back to it. I remember (as other posters have said) being so exhausted from school work that I just binged on books that, frankly, I might as well have not bothered with (rereading my Saddle Club books from when I was 10, because I knew I could whizz through them quickly in a break).

Might it also be that, at 15, you're in a funny limbo with books? Children's books feel too babyish, but most "grown up" books are just a bit...irrelevant? I know you say it's not the transition, but I just felt like reading the "wrong" books was pointless, so might as well not bother.

I used to write stories the whole time, and stopped when I was about 14 because I was worried people would find them. Except I didn't stop, I just pretended to. Even when I lived alone last year, I would write for ten minutes at bedtime then tear the pages out of my notebook, cut them up and bin them, in case anyone came back to my flat unexpectedly and they saw it by mistake (because my friends clearly have nothing better to do than flick through my notebooks)

Also, for what it's worth, I always think Vogue has a surprisingly high words to pictures ratio

I too went through a similar stage. Theres just so much cramming, reading revising at this age that its nice to give your eyes a rest.

Have you tried with more modern texts suchas the Twilight series for example which apart from the ridiculous hype around them are actually quite good books although the last book may not be too suitable as there are a couple of sexual references it draws modern parrallels to many of the great romances of history.