La lecture à l’épreuve de l’adolescence : le rôle des CDI des collèges et lycées

Abstract

The increased time spent at school has promoted access to books and reading for youngsters from social backgrounds that used to keep them away from it. In the mean time, it is reported a decrease in teenage reading at least in terms of the amount of time spent reading and the number of books read. This paradoxical conjunction tackles the issue of what part reading plays, what are the different ways to read, what reading means to teenagers. The assumption based on a questionnaire survey done to 956 middle school and high school students is to show that reading follows the inflexions of the construction of their identities within their juvenile sociabilities and, as such, it is subjected to reappropriation and commitment in a way specific to adolescence and its differences. The rearrangement that is taking place changes the way they get to books and particularly the relations they have with their school library resource centres. Those centres make a perfect place to promote reading by supplying books that can reduce disparities in public library attendance or in their individual choices of books.