Guest blog for National Reading Day (March 2nd)
For me, very few things are better than getting lost in a good book – although a day on the beach and really good guacamole are definitely high on my list. A day at the beach with snacks AND a really good book? Heaven.
So, when I had a child, fostering a love of reading was super important to me. My husband and I worked hard to make sure our son (aka The Boy) had not only support to learn to read, but also access to different types of reading material. Because, honestly, you never know what’s going to click and when.
For The Boy, it was The Beano, a British comic book that comes out weekly and features a kid and his friends who like to play pranks and tell cringe-worthy jokes. (E.g., Why didn’t the strawberry save his friends? He got stuck in a jam.) We started buying it occasionally when we stopped at the local convenience store and then got him a subscription for his birthday.
It was a HUGE hit. The magazine would come through the mail slot on a Saturday morning and sometimes The Boy wouldn’t even make it out of the hallway. He’d just lie down on the floor right there and tear into it, never to be heard from again until he’d read every word. For two working parents, that hour of Saturday morning quiet was a gift.
But, the bigger gift was hearing him giggle and seeing him so completely absorbed that the sky could have fallen and he wouldn’t have noticed. Reading The Beano was pure pleasure. There was no thought about reading levels or curriculum standards, critical thinking or comprehension. It was all about the book – or, the comic book, as the case may be.
In our achievement-focused society, it’s easy to overlook the importance of encouraging kids to read for pleasure, but if we make reading goal-oriented only, it becomes another thing they HAVE to do, another box to tick on their way to doing what they’d rather do. It never becomes a journey in and of itself and, oh what a journey it can be!
Do you remember the first time you read a book that kept you up half the night? The first time words on a page made you cry? Do you remember the last time? Do you remember the last book you read that made you feel like maybe you’d never read anything that perfect again?
Don’t you want the same thing for your child?
The Boy is still young and, to my complete amazement, he hasn’t figured out the flashlight under the covers trick yet to keep reading. But he begs to finish his chapter almost every night and we have The Beano all over the house. Still. He reads what’s required for school, but that’s not what keeps him reading. What keeps him turning the pages are those books and comic books he chooses – regardless of what they actually teach him. Or don’t.