Maria Tartar Vicarious Reading Summary

Maria Tartar, professor of Germanic Languages and Literature at Harvard University explores other reasons for reading in The Journal of Aesthetic Education. In her article, Tartar introduces a motive that she calls “vicarious reading.” Vicarious reading is when children read to experience things that are lacking in their own lives (Tartar 22). Tartar says that this is why children’s fiction is so full of rich descriptors like “the million golden arrows pointing the way to Neverland” and how on some days Alice “imagines as many as six impossible things before breakfast” (Tartar 19). Vicarious reading allows children to go on adventures, meet incredibly interesting people, and experience danger, which Tartar maintains are often components missing

Here, many child educators meet a similar conundrum. Is reading always good? Tartar goes on in her article to suggest that reading may be a hindrance in dealing with negative situations (Tartar 31). Basically, Tartar is saying that children may in some cases read so much that they forget to live their own lives. These children read vicariously to such a degree that they experience very little of their own lives. Although none of them have ever said so directly, my parents and teachers have often given me the impression that I was one of these children who read too much. During class, I would be so engrossed in a novel that I would miss an important formula. My mother would look at me during family functions and plead with me to put down my book and “actually talk to people.” Of course, many will probably disagree with this assertion that reading is not always beneficial. Nevertheless, both followers and critics of this assertion will probably agree that reading, as all things, is only good in certain quantities. Vegetables are good for you, but you would die of malnutrition if they were the only thing you ate. Sleep is good for you, but too much has been linked to obesity and heart problems. Just as it pertains to other things, so does it pertain to reading. As Dumbledore so aptly words it in Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone,