阅读，是一种运动 THE SPORT OF READING

THE SPORT OF READING
阅读，是一种运动

IN A QUAINT old theatre in Falmouth, Cornwall, a tall gentleman in a top hat stands facing the stage, like a conductor. Behind him is an audience of about 100, mostly parents and teachers. Spread out on stage are seven square tables, each bearing a buzzer, each flying a national placard and each occupied by four children, in school uniform, intent, nervous, waiting to pounce. They are aged 10 to 13, which makes for a diverting variety: one of the boys is a hefty six-footer, shoe-horned into grey shorts, while a few of the others could almost be his offspring. This is the final of the Kids' Lit Quiz, the "University Challenge" of children's books. It is both a world championship and a well-kept secret.
在英国康沃尔郡法尔茅斯一间古雅的老式剧院内,一位头戴礼帽的高大绅士像指挥一样面向舞台站着，在他身后大约有一百名观众，绝大部分是家长和老师。舞台上分散摆放着七张方桌，每张桌子上装有一台抢答器，贴着一个国家的宣传标语。每张桌子旁边都边坐着四个孩子，身穿校服，专心而紧张，时刻准备扑向投票器。他们的年龄介于10岁到13岁之间，外表差异很大：其中一个男孩子足有六英尺高，壮硕的身体被硬塞进灰色短裤中，而其他孩子差不多可以做他儿子了。这是儿童文学测验的决赛，相当于儿童书籍版“大学挑战”。它既是一场世界冠军竞赛，也是一个守口如瓶的秘密。

The first round consists of film clips, the man in the hat says, and each one will have "a literary aspect to it". The children have to identify the film, swallow their nerves and hit the buzzer first. Their team will get two points for a right answer, minus one for a wrong one. A still from the first film appears on a rather hazy screen at the back of the stage. Before the picture begins to move, someone buzzes.
第一轮包括几部电影短片，戴帽子的先生说，每个片段都有“一个文学点”。孩子们必须判断这是什么影片、绞尽脑汁找出答案、率先按响抢答器。每答对一道题，他们的队可以获得两分，答错一题则扣掉一分。第一部影片的剧照出现在舞台后面朦胧的屏幕上。画面还没开始移动，就有人就按动了抢答器。

"New Zealand!" says a deep voice.
" `Shrek' !?" says a high voice.
" Shrek' is correct!" says the man in the hat.
“新西兰!”一个低沉的声音说。

“《史莱克》! ?”一个人高声说。

“《史莱克》是正确的!”戴帽子的先生说。

  The same thing happens five more times, prompting the man in the hat to turn to the audience. "Took me about 100 hours to find those clips," he says, in a tone of outraged delight. "Took the kids six seconds to spot them!"
同样的事情又发生五次，促使帽子先生转身面向观众。“我花了100小时才找到那些片段,”他说，喜悦溢于言表。“孩子们只花了六秒钟就认出了它们!”

The man is not just the ringmaster and question-setter for the Kids' Lit Quiz but its founder and driving force. His name is Wayne Mills, and he is four days into retirement from his day job as a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland. His subject was education itself, so he saw many schools. "I would go to assemblies and the prizes would be dished out for sport, sometimes maths and English and so on," he tells me. "But never ever did I see anyone being recognised for being good at reading. That was the catalyst."
这位先生不仅是儿童文学测验的表演指导者和命题人，还是该项活动的创始人和推动者。他的名字叫韦恩·米尔斯，是奥克兰大学的高级讲师，还差四天就要退休了。他关注的是教育本身，在他看来，这也是许多学校的目的所在。“我会去参加一些集体活动，看到人们为运动比赛获胜者颁奖，有时候也有数学和英语竞赛之类的,”他告诉我，“但从未见过擅长阅读的孩子受到人们的认可。因此，我发起了这项活动。”

He knew that boys were liable to lose interest in reading, and that, even for a bookworm, it could become a chore as they read less for fun and more for knowledge. "This is the age group where, round about now, reading drops off." So he targeted the under-14s and turned reading into a competition. The Kids' Lit Quiz has a telling subtitle: the sport of reading. "I talk about the quiz being a sport because the kids have to try out for the team — you may only see four kids here, but there may have been 80 or100  trying to get into that team. And they practise, and travel together, and high-five, and so on." Mills gives them a pep talk about sportsmanship, stressing that even if they finish last, they have done very well, and urging them to applaud each other. "These kids have rarely ever lost. They're clever kids and they have to learn to lose gracefully." The Singaporean team, not the best at buzzing, emerge as world-beaters when it comes to magnanimity.
他知道男孩容易失去兴趣阅读，而且，即使是书呆子，一旦读书不是出于兴趣而是为了获得更多知识，它也有可能变成一件苦差事。“基本上在这个年龄段，阅读量就下降了。”于是，他把目标锁定在14岁以下儿童，将阅读转变为竞争。儿童文学测验有一个响亮的副标题：阅读运动。“我把测验称为一种运动，是因为孩子们必须为了团队而全力以赴——在这儿你或许只看到四个孩子，但可能有80或100个孩子想方设法要进入那支队伍。而且，他们一起练习、旅行、庆祝等等。”米尔斯发表了一通关于体育精神的动员讲话，强调说，即使他们最后一个完成，也已经做得很好了，并鼓励他们互相鼓掌加油。“这些孩子很少经历失败。他们都是聪明的孩子，必须学会优雅地接受失败。”新加坡队不是成绩最好的队伍，但在宽宏大量方面，却堪称世界第一。

In Falmouth, there is plenty of high-fiving and clenchings of fists. The brainboxes are often every bit as competitive as the jocks, and here they have the chance to show it. For the spectator, the contest has the ebb and flow that a sports fan wants to see. There are enough rounds to sort the sheep from the goats and the hares from the tortoises. The boys buzz more early on — this is the first time they have outnumbered the girls in the final — and the all-male team from Australia race into the lead, with South Africa, also all-male, on their tail. The four girls representing Britain start slowly, then sneak up into third. Australia pull away, Britain stall: we think it's all over, but Australia freeze, South Africa fade, New Zealand surge, America flicker, Britain have one big round and keep going. The result is in doubt till the moment the comperes, a comedy act called The Two Steves, read it out, agonisingly slowly, as if this were a TV quiz show — which it surely should be. The winners are Team UK, City of London School for Girls, who also won in 2010. In a twist worthy of the back pages, their line-up contains two Australians, an Irish girl — and only one Briton.
在法尔茅斯，不乏举手击掌的欢呼和摩拳擦掌的对抗。绝顶聪明的天才往往也是极富竞争力的选手，在这里，他们有充分的展示机会。对观众来说，比赛大起大落，正是体育迷梦寐以求的场面，既有“羊群里跑出的黑马”，又有“与乌龟赛跑的兔子”。男队更快按响了抢答器——这是他们头一次在决赛中超过女队——来自澳大利亚、全部由男生组成的队伍遥遥领先，南非队则紧随其后。代表英国的四个女孩刚开始动作稍慢一些，后来不声不响地冲到了第三名。澳大利亚队一路绝尘，英国队止步不前：我们以为一切都结束了，但澳大利亚队不动了，南非队熄火了，新西兰队异军突起，美国队走走停停，英国队完胜一轮，继续前进。比赛难解难分，直到主持人、喜剧演员史蒂夫兄弟慢条斯理、令人恼火地宣布出来，结果才尘埃落定。整个过程貌似一场电视测验秀，当然，理所应当在电视上播出。获胜者是英国队，即英国伦敦女子学校的姑娘们，她们也是2010年的大赢家。一条令人意外的幕后信息是，在她们的阵容中，包括两名澳大利亚女孩、一名爱尔兰女孩，以及唯一一名英国女孩。

It all began in 1991, when Mills, then working at the University of Waikato, held the first Kids' Lit Quiz in Hamilton, with 14 schools taking part. It took him 15 years to reach Britain, which hosted the first world final in Oxford in 2007. How many schools take part now? "Thousands," he says. "We're in 11 countries, if you count Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as separate." He has his eye on India next. The quiz was in Shanghai for five years, but it relies on local volunteers, and the co-ordinator there pulled out. It carries on in Hong Kong, whose team couldn't come this year because they had gone home to their families in different countries. Mills feels for them: "they got the best score in the world." In every nation, the questions are Anglocentric. "In New Zealand, we publish about 125 kids' books a year. You guys publish about 15,000. Why would you want to read any other nation's books?" Kim Pickin was right about British children's books.
这一切始于1991年，当时供职于新西兰怀卡托大学的米尔斯在汉密尔顿举办了第一届儿童文学测验，有14个学校参加。他花了15年将这项活动普及到英国，最终于2007年在牛津大学举办了第一届世界级决赛。现在有多少学校参加?“数千所，”他说，“如果将苏格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰单列计算的话，总共有11个国家。”他的下一个目标是印度。测试活动已经在上海开展了五年，但只是依靠当地志愿者，那里的协调人员退出了。在香港也举办了活动，但香港队今年没有来，因为队员们的家分别在不同国家，他们要回去与家人团聚。米尔斯认为“他们取得的分数是全世界最高的”。在每一个国家，测验问题都是以盎格鲁文学为中心的。“在新西兰，我们每年出版大约125种儿童图书，你们大约发行15000种。你们为什么想读其他国家的书呢?”在这一点上，牛津故事博物馆主管金·皮金关于英国儿童读物的论述是正确的。

Any team that makes it to the final has come a long way. They will have won their regional quiz, back home in Johannesburg or Toronto, seeing off maybe a dozen other schools over ten rounds of ten questions each. At this stage the answers are written and the questions are concise: "Which novel begins, 'In a hole in the ground lived...'?"
任何一支杀入决赛的队伍都走过很长一段路。他们在家乡约翰内斯堡或多伦多必须赢得区域测验的胜利，可能已经见识过其他十几所学校，经历过十几轮测验，每轮要回答十道问题。在这个阶段，答案要写下来，问题简明扼要，例如：“哪一部小说的开头是‘在地上的洞里住着……？’”

   They meet the other regional winners in the nationals, where buzzers appear and the questions mushroom — though that may be the wrong vegetable to invoke, as Mills delights in coming up with questions of many layers. "This author was born in Victorian England," he will say, "and wrote around 40 books for children. She has been credited with pioneering a new kind of children's literature, dealing with 'tough truths'. She had five children herself and was a founder member of the Fabian Society. One of her books became a well-loved film, `The Railway Children'—" whereupon the contestants will spot the name nestling inside the onion: E. Nesbit.
在全国比赛中他们遇到了其他地区的获胜队，这时抢答器出现了，问题如雨后春笋般层出不穷——尽管用这种蔬菜来形容可能是错误的，但米尔斯喜欢设计多层次测验问题。“这位作者出生在维多利亚时期的英格兰,”他会说,“为孩子写了大约四十本书。她被誉为一种新儿童文学的开创者，喜欢描写‘艰难的真理’。她有五个孩子，是费边社的创始人之一。她的一本书被拍成电影《铁路边的孩子们》，广受欢迎……”此刻，参赛者们纷纷给出隐藏在“洋葱”内的名字：E.内斯比特。

Long, educational and demanding, the questions are designed to favour the brave or the supremely informed, of whom there seem to be plenty. "I was really impressed with the finalists' knowledge," Mills says a few days later. "The cream really rises to the top." And here is another parallel with sport: the quiz unabashedly rewards the best. At the dinner after this year's final, Mills sat next to a woman from a Toronto bank which was putting C$16m into literacy. "But it all goes to the bottom end," he says, with a twinge of envy. "We do need to support kids who can't read, but nobody is doing much for the kids at the top end." The Kids' Lit Quiz has had various sponsors over the years, but looks as if it could use a big one, and a PR: in New Zealand and South Africa, it draws TV crews and reporters, but in Britain the silence has been deafening, perhaps because the schools that have done best in it have been private, apart from Cockermouth in Cumbria.
问题被设计得很长、要求繁多、富有教育性，目的是满足那些勇敢或学识极为渊博的人，这种孩子看起来相当多。“决赛参与者的知识量给我留下了深刻的印象,”米尔斯在几天后说，“精华真的在最上面显露出来了。”与体育运动一样，测验活动毫不掩饰地向最优异者提供回报。在今年决赛后的晚餐会上，米尔斯身边坐着一位来自多伦多银行的女士，她为扫盲投入了1600万加元。“不过，所有款项都会落到最下面，”他说，带着一种嫉妒不快的口吻。“我们确实需要支持那些无法阅读的孩子，但没有人为那些处于顶端的孩子做些事。”多年来，儿童文学测验活动一直不乏赞助商，但看起来他们似乎可以利用一项更大的资助，也可以说是一种公关行动：在新西兰和南非，这项活动已吸引了电视台工作人员和记者，但在英国依然默默无闻、乏人问津，也许是因为在测验中表现最好的都是私立学校，除了从坎布里亚郡科克茅斯来的参赛队。

   We are talking at Mills's British base in Bracknell, Berkshire, the home of his son-in-law's parents. A small grand-daughter pops a quizzical blonde head round the door. She is at the stage of nursery rhymes and picture books, which form one end of the spectrum for her granddad's questions. The other end is "The Hunger Games", which just squeezes in: "I suppose you could say it's awfully violent, but it's also an indictment of society and reality shows, and there's a degree of black humour." Just beyond the pale is "The Fault in Our Stars". "John Green is one of the best teenage authors in the world, but there are instances of ***ual behaviour." The boundary was tested by Robert Muchamore's "Cherub" series, in which children are trained to spy on terrorists. It begins when the hero, James, is 11 and innocent enough. "But soon he's 17 and his girlfriend is shagging his best friend on his bed, and someone is videoing it. And kids are reading the whole series." Still, even Harry Potter gets a girlfriend in the end, doesn't he? "Yes, but we don't see him consummate it."
此刻我们谈话的地点位于米尔斯在波克郡布拉克内尔的英国总部，这是他亲家的房子。一个小孙女顶着一头古怪的金发在门边冒了出来。她正处于阅读童谣和图画书阶段，这是她爷爷的问题所涉及的一个方面。另一个方面是“饥饿游戏”，简而言之就是:“我想你可能会说这很暴力，但它也是对社会的控诉和真人秀，还有一定程度的黑色幽默，”只是灰色内容之外“我们这个星球的瑕疵”。“约翰·格林是世界上最好的青少年作家之一，但他也描写过一些性行为。”测验中最极端的问题与罗伯特·马奇莫尔的《小天使》系列有关，这些书里有孩子们被训练来监视恐怖分子的情节。起初，11岁的主人公詹姆斯非常天真无邪。“但很快他就长到了17岁,他的女朋友是他最好的朋友在床上乱搞，还有人在旁边摄像，而孩子们正在阅读整个系列。”不过，就连哈利波特最后也交了一个女朋友，对不对?“是的，但我们没有看到他圆房。”

Mills writes every question himself, charging only expenses and a fee for the rights. For his 23 years' service to reading, he has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Even more usefully, the quiz has a celebrity alumna: in the New Zealand team of 2009, which finished second, was Ella Yelich- O'Connor, better known as Lorde, who had a global hit last year with her song "Royals". The trip to the world final in Johannesburg was the first time she had been overseas.
米尔斯亲自设计每一个问题，只收取出题成本和版权费。他在阅读领域工作了23年，已获得新西兰功绩勋章。更有价值的是，该项测验拥有一批名人拥趸：2009年的新西兰队在当年夺得了亚军，队伍中包括艾拉·耶里克-奥康纳（艺名：洛德），去年，她的歌曲《皇室》成为全球热门。前往约翰内斯堡参加世界级决赛是她的第一次海外经历。

Now that he is retired, Mills wants to put the quiz on a more businesslike footing. At the 2015 world final in Connecticut, the first to be held in America, he will launch the Kids' Lit Quiz app for Apple and Android (99 cents). "It'll have 100 questions at level one, 100 at level two, and once you get through, the world-final questions. And no multiple choice. If you don't know the answer, you have to go and read the book."
尽管已经退休，米尔斯还是希望为测验活动奠定一个更加坚实的商业基础。2015年的世界级决赛将在康涅狄格州举行，这也是首次在美国举行儿童文学测验，届时，他将启动该活动的苹果和安卓应用（售价99美分）。“一级测验有100个问题，二级有100个问题，如果都过了，就可以回答世界级决赛问题。没有多项选择题。如果你不知道答案，就得去读书了。”