This Valentine’s Day, Encourage A Love Of Reading

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, and to help parents nurture their child’s reading abilities, we are offering grade-specific tips for reading at home. Children who read regularly at home do better in school and become enthusiastic life-long readers. By encouraging children to read at home, parents can help their children establish an enduring love of books, transforming reading from a basic skill to a pleasurable activity.

We recommend parents spend at least one hour per week – 10 to 15 minutes a day – reading with their children.  And chances are your child’s teacher is recommending the same thing!  Reading is an adventure that begins early in a child’s life and should extend beyond the classroom.  Children exhibit certain reading behaviors at a young age and by understanding and nurturing these behaviors, parents can make reading fun and motivate their child to develop a lifelong friendship with books.

Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten

• Make cookies together. Read the recipe aloud to your child.
• Read directions to your child when completing a project.
• Subscribe to a magazine (Ladybug, Your Big Backyard, Zoobooks, etc.) to learn about topics of interest to your child They will be excited to have their own reading materials.
• Pick a storybook character (Arthur, Strega Nona, etc.) and pretend that character is coming for dinner. Help your child plan activities that character would enjoy.
• Help your child relate read-aloud stories to events in her life.
• Read stories aloud and act them out.

Grades One through Three

• Subscribe to a magazine for your child (Spider, Ranger Rick, etc.) to learn about topics of interest to them. Make its arrival an event.
• After reading a nonfiction story, ask why your child thinks the author wrote the story.
• Help your child create charts and posters about topics of interest .
• Read picture books by the same author (Tomie DePaola, Bill Martin, Jr., etc.) and compare and contrast them: How are they the same? How are they different?
• After reading a book, discuss it with your child – identify the characters, setting and problems in the book.
• Help your child recognize how stories are similar to or different from their life.
• Encourage your child to read various types of texts - non-fiction, plays, stories, comics and/or magazines. Ask your child to explain which type they like best.
• Introduce your child to the library and plan special library visits together.

Grades Four through Eight

• Help your child with the latest experiment in their science book. Talk through each step and discuss what you’re going to do next.
• Pick a different country each week, and challenge your child to learn a bit more about that country by visiting the library or researching it online.
• Research and select books about your child’s interests – such as a sport or hobby.
• Make a trip to the library a weekly “date” with your child.
• Read the newspaper with your child. Elicit his opinion about current events.
• Encourage your child to read series books (Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, The Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie).
• Create a family book club where you and your child read the same book and discuss it.
• Help your child find a favorite author. Have them create alternate stories for the author’s repetitive characters.
• Read your child’s favorite books.

Grades Nine through Twelve

• Read various types of directions (recipes, technical instructions, experiments) and determine the usefulness of the instructions to the reader’s life.
• Purchase a set of reference books, software for home use.
• Read newspaper editorials with your child and discuss them.
• Quiz your child when he has a test. This not only reinforces his note-taking skills and study habits, but also helps reading comprehension.
• Encourage your child to talk about the latest book they are reading. Ask them to share their favorite scenes with the rest of the family.
• Read classic works (novels, plays, myths, etc.) and compare the plot, characters, setting to today’s world.
• Read books by the same author, comparing and contrasting styles across the various books.

Valentine’s Day Reading List

The Amelia Bedelia books.  Children love the irrepressible Amelia, who takes everything literally. 

Books by Beverly Cleary.  Whether it’s the Ralph books (that’s Ralph S. Mouse), or Socks the Cat, elementary-age kids enjoy Cleary’s books.  They’re fun to read, appeal to kids’ imaginations, allow kids to see themselves and their friends in the plots, and make for great free-reading experiences.  The Ramona Quimby – age eight – books are particularly popular.

A Wrinkle in Time.  Madeleine L’Engle’s book isn’t exactly science fiction, but it’s not exactly realistic either.  It’s a bit of an adventure, a comedy, a growing-up story, and a great study of child and adolescent characters.  It appeals to late elementary, middle school and even high school ages. 

The books of Judy Blume.  She’s a classic, and kids still love reading her stories.  Parents like to read with their kids, especially the books that deal with self-esteem and other growing-up issues.  A particularly popular one with kids is Tales of a 4^th Grade Nothing.

The books of Jerdine Nolen.  A favorite children’s author, Ms. Nolen writes about imaginative kids in imaginative settings.  Her trilogy of tall tales – Thunder Rose, Big Jabe, and Hewitt Anderson’s Great Big Life – is special, not only for the compelling stories, but for the artwork of Kadir Nelson.  Her newest book, her first novel for kids ages 8-12, is Eliza’s Freedom Road.

To Kill a Mockingbird.  This wonderful book is always on the top of any book list for older kids.  It’s about heroism, tolerance, good parenting, friendship, family, and the values to which good people aspire.  There’s also a great story that involves a courtroom drama, mischievous kids, scary scenes, and a Halloween ham costume. 

The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield’s experiences, thoughts, anxieties, sarcasm, and wry humor are equally relevant today as they were when this book was first published.  Some of the scenes are laugh-out-loud funny. 

Huckleberry Finn.  Mark Twain captures the spirit of boyhood, friendship, good versus evil, and, yes, America.

The Harry Potter books. Kudos to Harry for making reading okay again for youngsters.

Shakespeare.  Because every reading list should include at least one item that stretches you, we suggest Shakespeare.  Great stories of love, murder, slapstick comedy, history, revenge, witchcraft, ambition, jealousy, mistaken identity, and outsized personalities.  The language alone will awe you   Don’t forget the sonnets.

Poems of Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost.  The spare language of poetry cuts to the heart of our thoughts and emotions, our fears and dreams, our public lives and our private ones.  Poetry can be difficult, but you’ll know your favorite poet when you read him or her.

Myths and legends.  From Beowulf to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, set in Greece, Italy, Africa, or Scandinavia, these stories form the foundations of societies and cultures.  They’re always exciting and insightful, letting us recognize the roots of behavior, attitudes and identity.

Children’s fairy tales.  These stories have fascinated, frightened, and entertained us for generations.  They are as close to an oral tradition we have, and children love to have them read aloud.

Night and The Diary of Anne Frank. Because we should never forget.

Religious readings.  Whether it’s the Old Testament or New, the Koran, Buddhist, Shinto, or Hindu readings, these are part of our universal culture.  For example, the Bible’s Old Testament is full of amazing stories (the creation, the flood) and poems (psalms) that form the basis of beliefs and cultural references.

Biographies and autobiographies.  You can’t go wrong reading about cultural, social, athletic, or popular heroes and heroines.  What accomplishments did they achieve?  What challenges did they face?  What can you learn from their experiences?  John Hope Franklin’s autobiography, Mirror to America, is riveting and a testament to perseverance, integrity and hard work.

Great American plays. Read, see, or perform in some timeless American plays like Death of a Salesman, Our Town, The Matchmaker, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Glass Menagerie.  Think about and discuss how play-reading is different from book-reading.

Books that teach us about people in other lands.  There are so many, but the one that immediately comes  to mind for older teens is The Kite Runner.  It portrays Afghanistan as you don’t see it on the nightly news.

Your favorite books.  Talk to your kids about the books you found appealing when you were their age.  Share these with them, tell why you liked them, and talk about the pleasant memories.  Let them see that reading is for everyone.

There are so many others.  Jane Austen, the romantic poets, Zora Neale Hurston, Beatrix Potter, Bram Stoker, and Aesop’s Fables.  

Happy Valentine’s Day, readers!