How do you choose good children’s books for your child to read? Here’s some suggestions on how to narrow it down to the books your kids will really love…
Getting kids to read can sometimes be a difficult job.
For active sporting children, the passivity of sitting down with a book is already unappealing. Moreover, with all the modern visual and aural stimulation of games and television, flat black words on a plain white page can look very uninviting. Finally, books can be associated with school and homework, not pleasure – so if reading has been a struggle to learn for whatever reason, opening a book becomes a chore and an unpleasant, difficult effort rather than being a fun, creative, inspiring opportunity.
Why Kids Read
Identifying the reading problems or anxieties your child might be experiencing can therefore be as important in book choice as knowing their interests and tastes. Start by chatting together about the art of reading:
What are the good/useful/interesting things about books?
What are the difficult/frustrating things about reading?
What kind of book would make you want to read it?
What things would put you off reading a book?
Let the answers help dictate choosing kids books. Given the option, children are likely to choose books for their cover design, their length or page layout, their current popularity among their peers, or a favourite author. Knowing what else will affect the ultimate appeal of the book for them will help you to help them explore more interesting and diverse reading options.
However, the aim first and foremost is to pick books your kids will love – not the sort of books you like to read, or would like them to read! Falling in love with books is still the best way to promote learning and self-education for children – of course you want to share special books you yourself loved as a child, but indulge the reader’s tastes first and foremost.
What Books Will Appeal to My Child?
For starters, a protagonist of the same gender and a similar age is particularly attractive to a young reader. Look for a character kids can really relate to personally as a powerful way to engage them immediately with the text.
Moreover, any book that deals with a special interest or hobby your child loves will also serve as a hook to get him interested in the story and characters from the beginning. Sports, mysteries, dinosaurs, love stories, wizards, fairies, outer space, school life: indulge all possible tastes, rather than choosing the books you prefer. The aim is to help your child find a book to love – and then branch out!
Be assured that fantasy texts stimulate the imagination and illustrate powerfully how books open up new possibilities and ways of thinking – plus, they are especially popular with children in bridging the gap between familiar fairy tales and discovering realism as older readers. Speculative fiction can still deal with important and meaningful issues, and some of the best children’s stories for style and sophistication deal with the fantastical.
If the size and word volume of the book is something your child balks at, consider buying anthologies and reading some poetry together, such as animal poetry or even some of the classics. Proving that you don’t need lots of words to say profound and thrilling things can often be immensely reassuring to kids, and poetry opens up a real joy in the sound, shape and creative possibilities of language.
Likewise, picture books and graphic novels are their own art form, and if your child responds to visual stimulation, the connection of lovely or funny illustrations to the words can actually promote the desire to read more beyond the one book, not result in reading less.
Share Your Love of Books
No matter what books you finally choose together, remember reading to kids is important at all ages. If you pick books that challenge your child’s reading abilities, beginning the reading yourself until the listener is engrossed and impatient to read further on his own can be effective. Make it a tradition to read aloud as a family event after meals at the dinner table or share some quality time before bed. Take turns reading a page each, or alternating nights – correct big mistakes to make the reading smooth and easy to listen to, but always overlook minor ones so as not to spoil the joy of the story-telling.
Remember overall that the point is NOT to teach reading, but to learn to love books together – because if your children begin to find reading fun, then they’ll go on choosing their own books and teaching themselves to read for the rest of their lives!
I agree getting kids to read from an early age is very important. There are so many fun books that can capture their interests these days. You are absolutely right making reading and loving books is the best way to gets kids hooked.
It’s so hard, all my children see me reading often and they know I read every day, as I have books everywhere, but at the ages they are now, not one of them is following in my footsteps. Mich x