Time for a Good Book

• Have lots of books.

• Buy books at garage sales and flea markets.

• Take your children regularly to the library.

• Read books aloud, including comic books and poetry.

• Use your special talents to make reading come alive for your children. For example, give each character in the story a different voice or accent.

• Teach children to read to themselves.

• Have a special book-looking-at or story time on a regular basis.

• Treat your child as a reader; sooner or later he’ll be one.

• Make books part of the social scene (i.e., when friends come over, suggest reading stories or reading games).

• One way to help your children form a habit of reading, without trying to regiment their reading, is by encouraging series books.

• Provide reading material that is easy and fun for children. You want them to have the experience of effortlessly breezing through books.

• Increase your child’s self-confidence by treating him as a reading expert in his field. Ask your son’s opinion about the books he’s reading. Take his opinion seriously.

• Encourage daily reading by having irresistible reading material wherever your children spend a lot of time — in the kitchen, in their bedrooms, in the den.

• Find books that completely absorb your children. Find magazines and nonfiction books about their current passion or interests.

• While children often enter reading through a particular interest — they read everything they can find on sports, for example — they develop many other interests through years of reading.

—Mary Leonhardt, author of Keeping Children Reading and Parents Who Love Reading, Children Who Don’t

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On This Topic

• Introduction • Benefits of Reading • State of Reading • Teach Them to Read • Simple Tips • Cautions • Unexpected Discoveries • Q&A • Classics • Magazines