Reading Tricks for Kids of Any Age by Nicholas Rossis
As a dad of a 3-year-old whirlwind, I find myself already asking the question facing most parents: how can I make my child read more and spend less time in front of a screen? As an author of children books and teenfriendly fantasy books, I also ask myself this question’s flipside: how can-I make my books appealing to them? In the immortal words of Gonzo the Great, if at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again. In my case, after many trials, failures, and retrials, I have come to two main conclusions: First, every child is different; second, every age has different triggers, needs, and sensibilities. Which means that for every age, your weapons, allies, and book-loving super powers are different.
How to make toddlers love books It is a paradox, yet not a secret: for many children, the love for books emerges at an age when they cannot read for themselves. Encouraging a toddler to love books needs lots of energy on your part, so it is important to also encourage yourself! Here are a few tips that have worked for my family: • Take them to the library or bookstore. It can be scary sometimes, as it is more than certain that toddlers will be more fascinated by the library
stool and will want to climb on it rather than looking at books with you. Allow that within reasonable limits—after all it is not a bad thing for your toddler to think of the bookstore or the library as an exciting place. Then move on to the books. • Let them select some of the books. You will probably choose most of the books at that age, according to what messages you would like to pass to your little ones. However, let them also make their own choices. Sometimes, the result may surprise you. It could be that your toddler will be interested at a coffeetable book on tractors, farming, insects etc. Coffee table books are not “age appropriate” by any publisher standards, but so what? If it doesn’t break the bank for you and you find it interesting, take the chance. Your toddler will be proud to own a grown-up book, plus this one book will be an opportunity for both of you to learn something new together (it is possible that you know absolutely nothing on tractors until your 3 year old chooses a coffee-table book on the green and yellow John Deere monsters) • Read the book but do not read the book. Read to your toddler every day, as you are her anchor to books and her facilitator to reading them. That does not mean you are obliged to actually READ the book, especially if you are tired of the same rhymes bedtime after bedtime. Look at the text as an actor. Make different voices for every animal, skip boring pages, improvise dialogues, find all the ducks on the page rather than repeating the mama-duck story once more. Make the book yours and enjoy it.
-4-
