James Patterson Has Given $10 Million to Make Teenagers Read. Here’s Why That’s More Complicated Than It Sounds.

The statistic that prompted James Patterson to donate $10 million to Vanderbilt University is the sort of number that sounds alarming until you realize it has sounded alarming for thirty years. Reading proficiency among American fourth and eighth graders has dropped measurably. Patterson, whose name appears on approximately one novel per month, has decided to do something about this.

The Patterson Institute of Early Adolescent Literacy will fund academic research, provide student tutoring, and offer professional development for teachers. The target is grades four through eight—a demographic Patterson describes, with the frank pragmatism of a man who has sold 400 million books, as contending with «a lot of distractions» and finding reading «uncool.» He previously funded a literacy program for younger children at the University of Florida. This is the sequel.

One suspects Patterson would appreciate that framing. His career is built on the premise that reading should be fast, addictive, and unapologetically entertaining. His critics in literary circles—and there are many—would argue that this is precisely the problem: that the culture which produced Patterson also produced the distracted non-reader, and that what adolescents lack is not access to thrillers but time, stillness, and the slightly uncomfortable experience of a book that demands something of them.

But this is perhaps where the literary snob’s argument collapses. Research on adolescent reading consistently shows the gateway is rarely a canonical text. It is almost always a book someone loved and pressed into your hands, saying: this one. Patterson’s critics read, presumably, because someone once made them feel that reading was worth doing. The mechanism matters less than the outcome.

There is also the question of what $10 million actually purchases. Vanderbilt will have a research institute with Patterson’s name on it. His stated goal—to get middle schoolers «reading and give them books to turn them on»—is admirable and somewhat imprecise. Literacy, as a field, does not lack for research. What it often lacks is political will, adequate school funding, and teachers paid enough to feel something other than exhausted. A named institute at a private university rarely resolves these things.

And yet. Ten million dollars spent on encouraging young people to read is ten million not spent on something considerably worse. Jade Wexler, a professor of special education, called the gift significant, noting that «middle school is a tough transitional time for kids and teachers.» It is difficult to argue with that.

If it takes a man whose books critics dismiss as compulsively readable to remind a culture that reading is worth compulsively doing, perhaps the irony is precisely the point. Patterson has always understood that the first book is the hardest. Everything after that is habit.