Chapter and verse on helping children discover the joy of books
School is where children learn they have to read but home is where they learn to read because they want to. Pamela Paul and Maria Russo of The New York Times Book Review reveal what it takes to raise a reader
Do you remember what it was like as a child to get lost in a story? The way the world around you dropped away, except perhaps for the musty smell of a good book or the warm presence of your father on the beanbag chair next to you?
Maybe you once hid out in the stacks of the local library, immersed in the first Harry Potter novel, desperately turning the pages to find out the meaning of the Philosopher’s Stone. Or maybe you can recall being curled up in your mother’s lap, imagining what it would be like to eat all the berries you could on Blueberry Hill. Do you remember your first visit to where the wild things are? Did you think that maybe you could somehow one day go there yourself?
Whatever image jumps to mind, it’s probably rich with pleasurable associations: a child – you – experiencing the comfort and fascination of a private world, the joy of total absorption in an activity, the bliss of feeling like time has stopped.
Now that you’re an adult watching the next generation of kids grow up, does it sometimes feel like that sensation of lost time has itself been lost? Or like it might be harder for kids today to find those empty pockets of time, to be able to dive headlong into a book? Is reading for pleasure still the carefree pastime it once was, as much a part of the timeline of growing up as climbing a tree or learning to ride a bike?
Chances are, if you’re interested in a feature like this, you want your child to experience all the natural, timeless, time-stopping joys of reading. You care about your child’s relationship to books and want to be sure the written word becomes an integral part of their formative years. But you wish there were some greater support system around raising a reader. Even as someone committed to fostering your child’s reading, you may still sometimes feel some nagging worries around it. They may in fact all be in your own head, but that doesn’t make them feel any less powerful.
The stress often begins when the child is still fiddling with refrigerator alphabet letters and marvelling at the letters shown on the screen during an educational cartoon. Well before school even begins, a parent’s concern about “measuring up” might kick in: Why hasn’t my child mastered the alphabet yet? And from there it can spiral: is my child reading soon enough, fast enough, in an advanced enough way? It can head into some pretty dire territory: Will they get into a good college, get a good job, become economically self-sufficient? Then, of course, there’s that growing fear for the future of humanity: will the next generation even read books at all or will they spend the hours robotically scrolling down on electronic devices, as helpless and co-opted as players at a casino slot machine? Will our own children be contributing to that apocalyptic vision? (Don’t worry; the answer is no.)
Amid all this, it can seem hard to conjure up simple, happy images of kids with books, reading in some pure, unpressured way, just for the joy of it. But that is the starting point of our book. Keep those pictures in mind as your beacons, because it turns out that many of the life goals we have for our children flow naturally out of the experience of reading for pleasure when they’re young. Children who read are, yes, likely to excel academically, but there’s much more to the picture. The latest research shows that children who read at home are also better at self-regulation and executive function – those life skills that make us happier and well adjusted: controlling impulses, paying attention, setting goals and figuring out how to achieve them.
Think of this as “life readiness.” By being part of your child’s reading life – by setting out purposefully to raise a reader – you’re helping them become someone who controls their own destiny.
School is where children learn that they have to read. Home is where kids learn to read because they want to. It’s where they learn to love to read. It’s always amazing to register the difference when a child freely chooses any activity. Somehow, their mood is lighter. A sense of purpose seems to emanate from a genuine, happy place. There’s
By being part of your child’s reading life – by setting out purposefully to raise a reader – you’re helping them become someone who controls their own destiny