Better Than Life. Rev. ed.

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Born in Casablanca during World War II, Daniel Pennac now lives in
Paris, where he has carved out a very respectable writing career in a
variety of genres. Yet whether he is writing a children’s book, a
mystery novel, or even a tome of literary philosophy, his prose startles
the reader with a constant barrage of outrageous images and deliciously
dark humor.

First published in English in 1994, the book’s theme is simple: how
can a child not love reading? Pennac, an unabashed literature junkie, is
trying to understand how his own child seems indifferent to the printed
word. Pennac describes his own childhood, in which reading was a
pleasure but also a rebellion against authority. Each night, with a
flashlight, he’d skulk under the tent of his blankets reading while
his parents wanted him to be sleeping. But Pennac also reveals the other
side of the argument. What is it like being a child trying to measure up
to the standards of a father who confesses that as a preteen, his only
complaint about Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was that it was too short?

Using humor and insight like two mental tugboats, Pennac gently nudges
the reader through a verbal labyrinth of arguments and counterarguments
about the need for literacy in a modern world. The work culminates in
his “Reader’s Bill of Rights”—a ten-point declaration that
guarantees individuals the right to read for their own ends and not just
to please other people. Yet Pennac does not advocate that parents
totally abdicate responsibility for tending to their children’s
reading needs. He offers many creative suggestions on how one can
encourage the love of reading in others without becoming an oppressive
bore.

Better Than Life is both a book lover’s book and a how-to manual for
those who hope to instil this same passion in others.