Building An Enthusiastic Reader

This morning, The Peanut woke up for school when her alarm went off, brushed her teeth, got dressed, fussed with her hair a little bit...and then crawled right back into bed to read for another half an hour.

Her father, thinking she hadn't gotten up at all, rushed upstairs to get her moving only to find her nose completely buried in the Percy Jackson series.  Which is how she was last night, too, when we had to make her turn her lights out and go to sleep.

It really is every parent's dream to build an enthusiastic reader, isn't it?  But how do you do it?

I don't have the answer for every child, but in terms of my own child I do think this was key:  we have been reading to her and with her since she was tiny.  We never went anywhere without a book -- in the diaper bag, in the back seat of the car within reach of her car seat when she was younger, all over our house in every room, fairy tales on my kindle, good stories crammed on her bookshelves in her own room...first in board books and later in regular books and then on her own kindle.

We wanted her to know that reading is important to us, so that it will also be important to her...and from the earliest age. 

Both of us are big readers -- we read every night before bedtime, and have made it a point to let The Peanut crawl in bed and read with us fairly often.  Also, during the summer on hot and humid afternoons when being outside in the sweltering haze is miserable, she and I will crawl onto the king-sized master bed and enjoy some reading time in the air conditioned splendor together.

Also, each summer, The Peanut and I pick out a book to read together -- something that might have been a big reach for her when she was smaller, but that was a wonderful story.  One summer it was The Cricket in Times Square -- we happened to be taking a trip to New York City that summer, to tag along with daddy to a conference, and I wanted to introduce her to the hum and rattle of the city and the subways before we got there. She loved it, and we spent the time in New York periodically looking for lost crickets, which was very fun indeed for wee girlies.

Another year, it was The Borrowers, a story that I highly recommend reading aloud together. At the time we read it, the vocabulary would have been well past where The Peanut was, but by reading it together she got a wonderful story and a built-in personal dictionary and context explainer right there in the chair next to her, and that was both handy and cozy.


This last summer, it was Storybound. Thus far, it is quite good -- but we haven't finished it yet because The Peanut was reading so many other books for her own reading this summer -- and we had so many other activities going on day in and day out -- that we barely got in our "read together" time.

It's hard to complain when your child spent the summer reading Charlotte's Web, The Secret Garden, The Wrinkle in Time series, and lots more...about 27 books in all last summer or thereabouts, I think. But I did miss our cozy together reading time, nonetheless.

As an aside, our babies growing up is hard on mommas, isn't it?  And yet, I am so thrilled about how independent and self-sufficient she's becoming -- it is awesome to watch her get so sure on her own feet.

Also, I do have a lot of experience with coaxing kids into cracking open a book and finding one they love.  After spending time as the librarian at my child's school, I can tell you that one size does not fit all in terms of books and what each, individual child wants to read.

The key is to find out what they really like.  Some kids love mysteries -- some hate them.  Some kids adore fantasy novels filled with dragons and elves, and some would rather not read at all instead of slogging through a big, fat fantasy.

In my experience, every kid has a subject that makes them light up, a type of book that pulls them in and won't let them go.  The key is figuring out what that subject is for each child -- and then selecting a book that will light them up like a Christmas tree once they begin to read it.

At the library, I have the kids fill out a Reader Interest Inventory at the beginning of each school year, which I use to give each child in 2nd through 6th grades a personalized reading recommendation list based on the books we have in the library.  The difficult thing for me is that there are so many more books I'd like to be able to recommend, but we don't yet have them in our little library at school -- but I'm working on it.  (Say it with me:  Rome wasn't built in a day.  One step at a time and you'll get there...it's my new mantra.) 

What the inventory does is gives me an opportunity to see where the kids are -- a snapshot, if you will, of their individual interests and preferences and that gives me a chance to help them find what I like to think of as their "gateway book."  Reading can be a little like crack, except it's better for your brain and getting addicted to reading doesn't get you arrested or worse.

For The Peanut, it was the Junie B. Jones series.  Between kindergarten and the first grade, The Peanut discovered Junie B., began to giggle hysterically, and has been an avid reader ever since.

Don't get me wrong, before this, The Peanut could already read.  But she preferred to have someone else read to her rather than picking up the book and reading on her own, which wasn't exactly where we wanted her to be at that point.

She enjoyed listening to stories before that, absolutely.  She would toddle over from the time she was tiny, climb into your lap with a selected book, and wait patiently (or sometimes not so patiently) for reading to commence.  She even would sit and walk through individual words and sounds with me, sitting on my lap with some Dr. Seuss or Eric Carle.  The Peanut has always, always loved a good story.

But it wasn't until Junie B. that she wanted to sit with her very own book and "I can read this myself" style devour a chapter book on her own.  I am so very grateful to Barbara Park and Junie B. for that reason.

Finding that gateway book for your own child can truly make all the difference.  It did for our Peanut, and it has for countless kids at the school library where I work, too.  The key is to pay attention to what they really love in the moment.

Find the book that hits that personal interest sweet spot, and you will hit a home run.  Also, talk with the librarian at your child's school -- or in your town, speak with the children's section librarian at your local library.  Often they will have a lot of information about what kids just like yours are enjoying from their stacks, and that can be seriously valuable info.

Finally, you have to actually get your kids reading the books.  Mr. ReddHedd's father did something with him when he was a boy that was really successful -- he took a copy of Treasure Island one rainy, boring, no baseball today kind of day, put it in his son's hands and told him to read for half an hour and then come back to him after that if he didn't want to read any longer.  Treasure Island is an exceptional story...and Mr.. ReddHedd has been hooked as a reader ever since.  Now that was a dad who knew just where to pitch to the sweet spot of his own son's interests.

Try it with your kids -- less time, obviously, for smaller kids may be necessary, as well as reading with them.  The reward is a child who is a lifetime reader, with the higher test scores and more rich vocabulary and well-fed imagination to show for it.  Worth every minute you spend on it, isn't it?

Blogger disclosure:  Links in this post may include links to my Amazon account.  Purchases made through these links on this blog contributes a few pennies to me, which are then used for purchases for the school library.  Thanks so much for all of your support!

(Photo of The Peanut with some of her summer reading by Christy Hardin Smith.)