I [Heart] My Life

Seven Tips For Raising a Reader

Peter Pan ran away the day he was born because he overheard his mother and father discussing what he would be when he was a man.

I kind of agree with his wanting to flee. Who wants someone else deciding their fate for them, especially when they are just a baby?

Except I've done just that for my own child.

From the moment she was born -- maybe even before -- I decided that she would be a Reader.

And I don't just mean one who knows how to read. I mean someone with a voracious appetite for reading. Someone who finds tremendous pleasure in books. Someone who curls their toes with pleasure at the sound of a new binding cracking open, or closes their eyes to savor the smell of ink & paper.

I've decided it & now I'm going about making it so. Here's how.

A lot of this has to do with Jim Trelease & his Read-Aloud Handbook. I've mentioned it on this blog before. It is my Bible. When new parents ask me for my top ten parenting books, it's on there. It is two books in one: The first half of the book is evidence and tips for reading aloud. The second half is treasury of invaluable book recommendations, cataloged by "listening ability."

Here are Trelease & my tips for raising a reader:

• Read aloud daily. Read everything from cereal boxes to picture books to novels. Start your day by reading together in bed.You might have to set your alarm a little earlier to do this, but I promise it will quickly become something you both look forward to (so long as you are choosing books you want to read, too). Read throughout the day (waiting for your order at a restaurant, sitting in the car, at the park), and read again at bedtime. Combine reading with other pleasurable activities, like reading while enjoying a scoop of ice cream. (For older kids -- because being read to isn't just for those who can't read -- try reading to them while they are doing a chore, such as washing dishes. More on this here, plus a wonderful photo of Jim & his teen son.)

• Book baskets. Trelease says raising a reader is as simple as making books available throughout the house. He suggests a basket in the bathroom, and another where your child eats. (Ever notice that people dining alone prefer to be reading?) I have book baskets in the living room and Nia's room as well as the bathroom.

• Reading lamp. This is another Trelease trick. He recommends putting a reading lamp beside your child's bed and telling them. "You can go to bed now, or you can stay up another 10 minutes to read." Most kids will choose to stay up reading.

• Fill your home with print. The literal number of books you have in your home matters (but you don't have to buy them -- don't forget the library!). It is hard to get good at reading if you're short of books. As Trelease puts it, "Giving phonics lessons to kids who don't have any print in their lives is like giving oars to people who don't have a boat -- you won't get very far." (More here with a graph showing the average print climate in three California communities.)

• Model reading. Children want to do what their parents do, so Nia sees a lot of reading in our house from novels to cookbooks to the newspaper. (I know a lot of people read on devices these days. While I do a lot of reading on the computer, too, I don't do this in front of Nia. I prefer her to see me reading real books so that she will want to do it, too.)

• Limit screen time, but say "Yes!" audio books. I don't believe a child will fall in love with books if they are already involved in a love affair with video games or the TV. But that doesn't mean that there aren't others who read aloud much better than me (actors, for example). Nia frequently enjoys "driveway moments" -- times when Joe or I have long since parked the car and her car seat buckles have been undone but she lingers in the car to listen to an audio book just a bit longer. (Next on my list is to get this one.)

• Take your child to the library -- and get them their own library card. Who doesn't love a new book? Or a whole stack of new books? Libraries have audio books, too.

And what of Peter Pan and his running away to avoid his parents' fate for him? Well, he came back looking for a mother, which to him was someone to tell him and the Lost Boys stories. Everyone, it seems, loves a good story.

You may have a tangible wealth untold:

Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.

Richer than I you can never be --

I had a mother who read to me.

-- Strickland Gillilan, "The Reading Mother"

Our Read-Alouds Lately

It's been a long time since I posted about what books we are reading aloud to Nia, so I thought I'd try to catch up. I always love to hear what others are reading so be sure to leave a comment on what books you & your kiddos are enjoying these days.

• Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl - our version is one from Joe's childhood, published in 1978 and illustrated by Jill Bennett (most of the Dahl books are now illustrated by Quentin Blake). Bennett's illustrations are sweet and tender and accompany the story well. 
• The Moomintroll series by Tove Jannson -- here is a link to the first in the series
• The Cobble Street Cousins series by Cynthia Rylant -- here is a link to the first in the series. I picked these originally for their very sweet pencil illustrations but found the stories equally as sweet and entertaining. 
• The Mercy Watson series by Kate DiCamillo -- here is a link to the first in the series.
• The Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne -- here is a link to the first in the series. I read a handful of these and while I think the storyline is clever and really captures children's imaginations, I found reading them myself to be boring and tedious. So after reading a few, we checked some more out of the library on CD. They are good audio books, read by the author.
• The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner -- here is a link to the first in the series. This is one of those series that has 100+ books in it. I think have read the first 12 to Nia. The first book was our absolute favorite, but many in the 12 we read were good. I think the illustrations in the first are the best, and then are pretty lacking after that. That is my only complaint. 
• Beatrix Potter The Complete Tails by Beatrix Potter
• Stuart Little by E.B. White

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A Sick Day for Bug: Little House Paper Dolls

Mud Season!

Our winters may not be white...

... but brown can be just as fun!

Each evening lately, Nia and I have been out biking together. Yesterday we ended up at "our" Gulch for a sunset puddle walk.

How nice to say, "Hey, how deep is that puddle?" instead of "Please don't get your shoes wet!" Gooshy, sticky, slippery mud is play for her.

Shooting it all on my camera is play enough for me.

And just being out there, despite the cold snap we're having.

The illustrations at the start of this post are from Holly Hobbie's Toot & Puddle, a really lovely, simple book about all the fun things to do in the different seasons (whether you're a kid or a piglet) -- and how the seasons are happening opposite one another in the different hemispheres.

Puddle was having mud season. Yay!

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Recipe: Almond & Cream Cheese Holiday Scones

A Sick Day for Bug: Little House Paper Dolls

If you have a small child, you know the middle-of-the-night drill: Loud snoring, lots of tossing and turning, mumbling in her sleep, clammy sheets, violently kicking those sheets off, migrating to your bed and then kicking you in the back all night... When she's finally awake, it turns out she's sick; so congested she is honking.

My little one has been sick before, of course. But the notion of a "sick day" -- a day home from school -- is a new one. 

What do you do? Luckily for us, Monday is the day when Joe doesn't have to report to work till 4p. So he and Nia hung out -- played some board games & indoor hopscotch, watched a movie, and dressed up some Laura Ingalls Wilder-inspired paper dolls.

A couple of months ago, we decided to embark on the the epic journey that is the Little House books. We actually started them a year ago or so, with the "My First Little House Books," which are picture book versions of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. They are great; I'd recommend them to anyone.

The illustrations are gorgeous and the stories are sweet.

After reading many of these picture books, we decided to try some of the novels. We read Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, and On the Banks of Plum Creek. We even listened to a few of these as audio books.

So, yeah, we invested some real time in the Little House books.

I was excited to lose ourselves in some historical fiction, to give her a glimpse of how life was for little girls a hundred years plus years ago.

I wanted to like these books, I really did.

But, to be honest, I felt the novels had a little too much... well, detail.

There was more corporal punishment that I remembered from hearing them when I was a kid, there was the whole "kids should be seen and not heard" theme not to mention strict gender roles -- girls in the kitchen, guys outside (and Pa never includes Ma in decision-making), Pa's songs were more often then not racist (and inescapable on the audio version). And there was a lot of fear about Native Americans that was down right uncomfortable to read aloud. (Christine at The Aums blog wrote a great post about her misgivings about the Little House stories a few months back here.)

Nia enjoyed the books, for the most part. She asked a lot of questions and so we had some good discussions, but  one of the things that Nia seemed to like the most about the Little House books was any mention of clothing. She poured over the illustrations, analyzing what Laura, Mary & Ma were wearing and how they fixed their hair. It was nice to read about the girls selecting new cloth for party dresses on a special occasion & Ma sewing their clothes, or Ma twisting their hair in rags to create curls over night.

So one day I searched for a book about the fashions of the time. What I came up with were Little House Paper Dolls -- brilliant!

Yesterday, when Nia stayed home from school, these got a lot of play time. For us, this seems to be the perfect solution to the Little House books having some good ideas but being a little undesirable in the full novel format. This way she could make her own stories with the dolls -- some of it from bits she remembered from the books, and some of it just out of her own imagination. And of course, here were the wonderful clothes we'd read about!

These are our first paper dolls & I'm impressed with them. They are really very well done: Beautifully crafted, colorful, high-quality. The dolls themselves are on thick card stock and the clothes are on fairly heavy-weight paper, too. The only thing that takes some patience is cutting everything out: Each doll has a variety of clothing and there are also props for each of the scenes (one outdoor and one inside the cabin).

What's nice is that you don't have to cut everything out at once: You can cut out an outfit for each member of the family one day, and then cut some more another day to extend the life of the toy.

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On Our Nightstands: Books, Books, Books

On Our Nightstands: Books, Books, Books

This is the post in which I cheat a little.

See, it's been awhile since I talked about what we are reading around here (Books for 4 Year Olds), and I'm not prepared to do it today either (sheesh, I know!).

BUT I wanted to quickly point you to a new feature I added to the blog that will let you know what we are all reading, even if I don't have time to do a book review at the moment. (See what I did there?)

Here is a nifty thing:

You can find the same graphic in the right-hand sidebar of the blog, but over there the book pictures are click-able. :)

(Now, in the interest of full-disclosure, I should tell you, that if you end up clicking on a title and buying it, say for a Christmas present, I get a few cents. Just so you know.)

Anyway. This one I'm especially excited about:

We've gotten VERY into audio books around here. In fact, that's pretty much all that is playing in the car when Nia is in the car. But that's ok, cuz it wasn't that long ago that we couldn't go anywhere without a crying baby (shudder! Remember this??).

So audio books are a-ok.

And this Dr. Seuss one is especially fun because of all the great readers on it. Our favorite story on here is Horton Hears a Who (which is actually a pretty good movie, too).

Joe and I listen to audio books, too -- he on his long commute, and me on my walks in the morning. (Our secret? We get 'em from the library!)

Books for 4 Year Olds: Getting Into Chapter Books

As always, we are doing lots of reading around here. With suggestions from The Read-Aloud Handbook, we have been plowing our way through a bunch of short chapter books lately. These are designed for younger children and so have some illustrations.

I've read each of these aloud to Nia at least three times each, so I feel very confident in recommending them.

My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett is a great book for the 3-going-on-4/newly-4 set because it has a lot of adventure without anything really scary or overly dramatic. Elmer Elevator is eleven years old. After bringing home a stray cat who tells him about a place called Wild Island, Elmer sets off to rescue a baby dragon named Boris who is being held captive by the wild animals of Wild Island. Elmer backs in his backpack many strange items that end up coming in very handy on Wild Island when he outsmarts the fierce animals. The book is a three-in-one, with two sequels included: Elmer & the Dragon, and The Dragons of Blueland. (The book starts with a map -- don't you find that these are often the best books?)

The Water Horse by Dick King-Smith is a little more advanced than My Father's Dragon but held Nia's attention equally well. This is a historical fiction about the possible origins of Nessy, the Loch Ness Monster. Eight-year-old Kristie finds a strange egg on the beach near her Scottish home, so she brings it home and she and her brother hatch a baby sea monster in the bathtub. The children's grandfather helps them care for the "water horse" which soon outgrows the backyard pond they put it in. This book starts off a little slowly with a lot of big words describing a storm, but stick with it; it gets much easier to read very quickly.

Two Times the Fun by Beverly Cleary is about 4-year-old twins, Jimmy and Janet. It is a very simply written book, with 4 stories broken into 4 chapters. I didn't enjoy this book as much as some others we've read that are a little more complex, but Nia seemed to really enjoy it, especially the last chapter in which the twins transition from their toddler beds to "big kid" beds.

Mimmy & Sophie: All Around Town by Miriam Cohen is a great book. It is actually the second in a series -- the first is a picture book with chapters, while this one is more of an easy-reader style with illustrations. Both are good books. Mimmy and Sophie are sisters, growing up in Brooklyn during the Depression. Sophie is really into dolls while Mimmy is interested in cars. I liked that with this series Nia got a glimpse of growing up in a different time with a lot less than we have now.

The Stories Julian Tells by Ann Cameron is another great book. Julian has a big imagination and often tells his little brother Huey tall tales -- which occasionally get him in some trouble. It is interesting to read how he gets out of the trouble with help from his father. I also liked that the subjects of the chapters were a little different from some of the other books we'd read in the easy-reader style, but closely mirrored events Nia could actually relate to: cooking, gardening, cats, fig trees, making new friends... Well-written with beautiful illustrations.

Rip-Roaring Russell by Johanna Hurwitz is kind of similar to Two Times the Fun: Not necessarily my favorite, but Nia really liked it because it was about a 4 year old who was just starting preschool. So the subject matter was perfect for us. Something I did like about this book: Sometimes Russell was disappointed and that's just the way it was -- the chapters didn't necessarily always end with everything magically working out, the way things often are in other books.

And we completed the Poppy series by Avi with Poppy and Ereth. This was a very well done conclusion to a long series with many well-loved characters. This whole series is much more complex than the other books in this post. You might want to preview it before you launch into it with your child. As I've mentioned on this blog before, we started with Poppy and did some light editing on page 2, but other than that, we've read them all all the way through and Nia hung on every word. But I think she will also enjoy re-reading them for years to come as she matures. With Poppy & Ereth, I thought Avi did a wonderful job of enabling the reader to say good-bye to the characters without it being too overly sad. I can't recommend the whole series enough. The illustrations by Brian Floca are worth it alone.