Heidemarie Brosche’s « It doesn’t have to stay that way »

The book fair opens on Thursday in Leipzig and then thousands will flock to this reading festival again. However, this should not be deceived that there are many people in Germany who can only read badly or not at all. The Children’s and youth book author Heidemarie Brosche living in Friedberg has written a book about it, one that is not only devoted to the topic of illiteracy, but is also written especially for young people who find it difficult to read.

« It doesn’t have to stay that way » is the name of Brosse’s new book, which focuses on Sina – a girl who lives alone with his mother, has gossip with her best friend because she somehow became different, and get to know Sinan, a boy who likes her straight away. Then Tom enters her life, her mother’s new friend, a personable, funny guy who has a knack for plants and with whom she gets along well. Nevertheless, she has a strange feeling: Tom has no cell phone, supposedly because it only distracts him, the cinema program can be read out because he has laid his glasses and he always orders exactly the same as Sina and her mother. Together with Sinan, Sina is tracking down the secret: Tom cannot read and write.

Author Heidemarie Brosche: « We relieve many young people who cannot read »

The author, who taught for many years as a teacher in the Augsburg Schillerschule, went around the topic in the head for a long time. “It always moved me that we released so many young people after nine years, who cannot read sufficiently“, She explains in a conversation with her new book. 6.2 million people in Germany are considered IlliterateThis also includes so -called functional illiterate, which the letters know but cannot read fluently and meaningfully.

The impetus for this book gave the encounter with the Augsburg illustrator Juliane Filep, who proposed this topic as a joint project and from which the colorful pictures of the book came. Brosche was important to take a look at this topic without prejudices. « I didn’t want a migrant as a protagonist because many say, of course, they can’t. » Tom cannot read and write because he was sick for longer in elementary school as a child and could no longer catch up, a cause that is often the basis when adolescents and adults cannot read or can not read poorly, Heidemarie Brosche knows from her experience. « Often one comes to the other, any weakness in perception, further health problems, arguments in the family, less support from the parents and then it rocks up and they hang more and more behind. »

For Brosche, it also includes presenting this to Brosche that illiterates can have deficits in reading and writing, but therefore do not have to be stupid. So in her story Tom z. B. Sina help with a biology test. « Everyone can’t do anything, but that someone cannot read is not accepted in our modern society, » Heidemarie Brosche found.

Illiterate develop strategies and tricks as not to fly

With her book, the author was concerned with understanding the situation of people who cannot read. « They are under unlikely pressure and develop strategies and tricks so as not to be easy and still manage life. » She has informed herself in interviews and reports, in which those affected also report on their problems. In addition, she worked with the Federal Association of Swhababetization and Basic Education and had the finished book read again in order to avoid mistakes.

« Stigmatization is a major personal problem for these people, but illiteracy is also a problem for the whole society, » says Heidemarie Brosche. « People who cannot read sufficiently are denied the path to certain professions, but you can also see what happens politically when there are many people who cannot read. They are easy to manipulate. » Heidemarie Brosche has been supporting reading promotion for decades, gives lectures on it and has developed concepts for it and applied in practice. However, she not only operates reading promotion in didactics, but also as an author.

Simple, but not simple: Heidemarie Brosche’s youth book « It doesn’t have to stay that way »

As a former teacher of a middle school, she has found that many of the books, the Aon the Leipzig Book Fair be introduced, walk past the skills of reading speakers. That is why there is « it doesn’t have to stay that way » in different levels of difficulty, in a light and X-light variant. This means that the story is deliberately kept in simple sentences and short chapters and is told in a youth -related language with wit and tension. Simple but not simple is the principle in brosches new work, which is also young people who find it difficult to read, Lust for reading want to do

Heidemarie Brosche: It doesn’t have to stay that way (Light and Xlight). With illustrations by Juliane Filep; Hase and hedgehog, 144 pages, 7.95 euros – from 10