LAST week I shared how I discovered my love for “good reading.” This week, let me share with you my kids’ unique journeys and their individual takes on what good reading means for them.
My daughter, now 13, has always loved visual books. Ever since she was a baby, when I read her a book, her eyes would be wide open roaming around the whole page. Later on, she enjoyed audio and paper books because this was what I gave her whenever she was in her car seat and I was in front driving. Her favorite book as a toddler was Found You, Little Wombat! by Angela McAllister. Meagan has always been a funny and talkative person. It was innate for her to tell me fun facts and stories, ask me a million questions, and research more on her own when a person interests her.
In one of my trips she asked me to buy her a book of jokes. She ended up really loving the whole series from National Geographic, called Weird But True. It was also lucky that I discovered the Who Was and Who Is series by Penguin Randomhouse in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in the United States. Because Meagan liked adventures, she enjoyed Geronimo and Thea Stilton books. When she got into basketball, my husband introduced her to the biographies of basketball players. The first book she read was Yao Ming’s, because of our last name. Her most favorite basketball biography to date is Shaq Uncut by Shaquille O’Neal with Jackie MacMullan, It was in middle school that she discovered fiction and went through her Harry Potter stage. Today, she likes books by John Green, especially Turtles All the Way Down, as seen on the photo above.
My son, now 10, had a very different journey. As a baby, he would shove the book I was reading to him to the floor. Then one day I discovered that if I let him flip the pages himself, we got through more pages. So, I would only read one sentence of each page then let him flip the page. My son during his toddler years was a quiet and focused boy who could play with his toys alone continuously for hours.
As he grew up, he loved collecting toys. When he was at his Marvel Avengers stage, I complemented his toy collection with story books, as well as the Avengers version of Busy Books. Busy Books is a storybook box that contains the storybook, little action figures and a poster. My most successful purchase for him was actually an accidental purchase of a Dorling Kindersley (DK) Marvel Reference book from an airport bookstore, because there were no Marvel storybooks.
It was here where he started to buy reference books for the current toy he was interested in. When he reached grade school, I wanted to challenge him to expand his reading beyond facts. It was hard because no book I used for Meagan worked. So I would inject a visit to a bookstore during our weekly alone time together. After the third visit, finally he found a book he liked, Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey. This series has 12 books and he rushed to finish one installment to get to the next. I then realized he was reading books like he was collecting toys.
I discovered that each of my kids had their own purpose and comfort when they read. My daughter sees books as her window to discover new things. It is her way of getting closer to people she admired. For my son, he sees his books as his source of information and “phygital” play.
He would always have his Pokémon or Yokai book nearby. He couples his YouTube time of his favorite toys with his reference books, then draws them out with colored pens.
Below are some tips I recommend for developing your child’s love for good reading:
Create that “reading bond.” Like what I shared last week, try to have a ritual every morning and every night to read to your baby. Position your baby either near your armpit or your nape, where your body scent is strong. This gives your baby comfort and makes for a strong bonding moment.
Create a “reading surrounding.” I have always surrounded my kids with books. When they come to our room, they see the same experience. My daughter’s wish at nine was to have one big secret room of books in our house where she can go to relax. She ended up saving for a Muji beanbag and made that her reading haven.
Set time for good reading routines. Even when my children were only a few months old, I would bring them to the bookstore every chance I got. I would pick a book, find a corner and read to them. When they got older, they picked the books and I would read to them. Now, they go on their own and we meet at the counter with a pile of books. I would put a limit on the toys they buy, but I never put a cap on books no matter how many they want to get.
Maximize phygital play with books. Throw in mixed media to match interests. When both my kids turned two, I read them this DK book on dinosaurs and supplemented this with a documentary video on the same subject. Marcus’s story above is the best example of this.
More about good reading next week….