How to Raise Kids Who Love to Read

Novelists Stephen and Tabitha King raised a family of wordsmiths. Their sons Joe and Owen are both published novelists, and their daughter Naomi, a Unitarian minister, writes daily prayers.

When Joe (Hill) published his first novel Heart Shaped Box, he explained why he wanted to join his parents in the storytelling vocation: “It sounds very Victorian, but we would sit around and read aloud nightly, in the living room or on the porch. This was something we kept on doing until I was in high school, at least.”

Gathering the entire family to read aloud probably sounds quaint in an era when some families communicate mostly via text message and others can hardly find time to eat together once a week. But like the King’s our family enjoys read together as a family a few times a week. Here’s why. Reading together has tremendous benefits for both kids and parents. It can:

• Create lifelong readers

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has surveyed adult reading every year since 1982. In 2012, they reported that only 54 percent of adults in the U.S. had read a book that wasn’t required for work or school during the year.

Kids may learn how to read and write in school, but schools clearly aren’t creating lifelong readers. Books compete with an ever-growing contingent of television shows, video games, and hand-held devices for attention, and the sad reality is, books are losing.

The good news? It’s easy for parents to encourage kids to read for leisure. All we have to do is read! Jim Trelease, author of The Read Aloud Handbook, calls it the “sponge-factor” of education.

“Parents can encourage reading by keeping print books in the home, reading themselves, and setting aside time daily for their children to read,” advises Common Sense Media.

Reading aloud as a family is an excellent way to foster a lifelong love for the written word.

• Develop focus and listening skills in both parents and kids

“Is Google making us stupid?” Nicholas Carr asked in an Atlantic Monthly article. “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. . . . Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do.” 

We’re probably all a little too familiar with Carr’s sentiment.

Concentration is a powerful tool. It enables us to work efficiently, stay task-oriented, and enjoy our leisure time. But modern life encourages distraction—from the running news feeds on cable news, to the always-beckoning sirens of email, Facebook, and Twitter, to the skimming paradise that is the Internet.

Don’t be surprised if you find it hard to sit and focus on a story for even a half an hour a day. But practice makes perfect. Reading and listening to others read is a fun way to develop  listening and concentration skills. Our kids, who don’t remember life before the Internet, need to develop and practice these skills even more than we do.

• Build kids’ literacy skills

Reading with parents exposes kids to materials they might not be able to tackle on their own yet. It helps kids increase vocabulary, work on pronunciation, speak confidently, and gives them a chance to ask questions and build comprehension skills. Reading well is also the foundation of writing well, which might explain why all those King kids are professional writers.

• Provide more reading and bonding time for families

A family reading tradition allows you to spend more of your day cuddling with the people you love the most and reading.

• Fuel the imagination

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. . . . Imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution,” Albert Einstein wrote.

Unlike television or video games, reading forces us to paint pictures in our minds. Kids are naturally imaginative and creative, and they’re masters of make-believe.

But a lot of adults are so swamped with the details of daily life that we don’t have time for creativity. Nearly everything around us is the result of someone’s imagination – desks, computers, houses, skyscrapers, sewing machines, novels, clothes, etc. An active imagination is perhaps the most powerful tool we have as humans. Reading every day is a great way to exercise our imagination muscles.

• Encourage relaxation and restful sleep
  

In just six minutes, reading can reduce stress levels by 68 percent, according to one study. It’s more relaxing than listening to music or drinking a cup of tea.

Some sleep experts warn that using any electronic device before bed can rob us of a good night’s sleep because the light from the screen halts production of sleep-producing melatonin. They recommend shutting TVs, laptops, PDAs, and cell phones off an hour before bed. Reading together by lamplight is a perfect, relaxing, sleep-friendly pre-bedtime activity.

• Allow parents to reread favorites and explore new titles

It’s been fun to revisit many of my favorite children’s books with my kids and to discover new titles. Our kids explore the world through books, so we’re especially excited to read more diverse books.

Here are some popular kids’ book series to read aloud as a family:

• Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis
• Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and its sequels by Judy Blume
• Henry Huggins or Ramona Quimby series by Beverly Cleary
• The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R Tolkein
• The Mysterious Benedict Society trilogy by Trenton Lee Stewart
• Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull
• Magic series by Edgar Eager

And here are some diverse, contemporary middle-grade books to read aloud as a family:

• George by Alex Nino
• Front Desk by Kelly Yang
• Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish by Pablo Cartaya
• Charlie and Frog: A Mystery by Karen Kane
• Ana Maria Reyes Does Not Live in a Castle by Hilda Eunice Burgos
• Zoe in Wonderland by Brenda Woods
• Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart
• Eagle Song by Joseph Bruchac
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio
• The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Alison Levy

Tips for creating a family reading tradition

1. Get comfortable. Pull out the pillows, drop into your sofa, or stretch out on your porch swing or Adirondack chairs. Make some snacks and cuddle. Family reading time shouldn’t be a chore. It should be a fun, relaxing leisure activity that everyone in the family looks forward to.
2. Choose fun books with engaging story lines. Don’t feel like you need to plow through the classics. If you’re struggling to find a good book, go talk to your local children’s librarians. They read a lot, and they have loads of resources to help you find the perfect book. They can help you discover new authors who write like your favorite authors, find books in a particular genre, and access lists of award-winning books.
3. Be dramatic – Create voices, read expressively, and practice your pacing. Show your kids that books can be even more entertaining than TV. If you need some inspiration, pick up some audio books at your local library and learn from experts at reading aloud.
4. Give everyone a turn reading. When kids are old enough, let them take turns running the show.
5. Get creative. Incorporate crafts, drama, or puppetry into what you’re reading. When I was in third grade, my dad read Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey aloud to my sister and me. Those may sound like ambitious books for elementary school kids. But we followed along and loved every second of it, partly because he encouraged us to make costumes and act out scenes. For the Iliad, I played Hector and my sister played Achilles, and we spent weeks making swords and armor for the big battle scene. (I wish someone had told me how that ended before I chose to be Hector.) I still have an intimate connection with those two books. Years later, I aced the grueling exam on the Iliad in my freshman college literature class.
6. Entertain younger kids. One of the challenges of reading as a family is appealing to different age groups. Pick a book that engages most of the family, and provide special toys for younger kids to play with just during reading time. Babies and younger kids benefit from seeing and hearing parents and siblings having fun reading, even if the story line eludes them. (Of course, they’ll need some additional one-on-one time to read books at their own level too.)
7. Read together because it’s fun, not because it’s good for you. Resist the temptation to make everything into a lesson for your kids. Talk about what you read, but don’t drill them with questions.
8. You don’t need kids to have fun reading aloud. My husband and I read aloud to each other long before we had a baby. Some couples read books on marriage or tackle religious texts. We stuck mostly to short stories and novels. Reading aloud is an entertaining way to spend time with anyone you love.

If you liked this post, you may enjoy these related posts:

• The Magic of Storytelling
• Want Healthy, Happy Kids? Walk with Them.
• Out of the Wild
• 5 Simple (and Free) Ways to Entertain a Young Child

[Editor’s note: This is a revamped and updated version of a post originally published on July 21, 2009.]

Does your family have a reading tradition? When and what do you like to read aloud together?

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