Fostering a Fascination with Books

Fostering a Fascination with Books
Books have been powerful teachers in my family. When I was a little girl, I loved many picture books. My two favorites were Zachary Zween, always last in line at the London school for boys with its penchant for alphabetical order and Katerina and the refrigerator box that was a ball room floor, a clubhouse, a ship. As I grew older, children’s classics took the place of those picture books: Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, The Secret Garden, The Chronicles of Narnia, Anne of Green Gables. As an adult, I majored in English literature and ended up an English teacher.
But not until I had children of my own did I truly begin to realize what a powerful tool books—picture books to begin with—are for a parent. Kids question parental authority from babyhood. A story has significantly more sway with them than Mom or Dad’s instructions, so it’s important to pick the right stories. They can benefit parents tremendously. A Little Critters book has helped us with potty training. It worked well for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s told from the perspective of the seasoned potty pro big brother who relates his little sister’s potty journey just a bit condescendingly. Secondly, it talks through the process, getting comfortable with the idea of the potty, sitting on it and using it, having an accident without making an effort to get the potty, having an accident while trying to get to the potty, getting to the potty on time and being successful, all without being instructions per say, as it’s all part of a narrative. My kids developed their idea of what they needed to do from this book more than from me, though I spent hours working with them. At least that’s what my son articulated to my daughter. “You’ve got to yell potty and then go to the potty,” Lukas said. “That’s just what the little sister does in the book.
Richard Scarry’s stories about “Pig Will” and “Pig Won’t” are great for encouraging kids to do assigned tasks. Lukas often says “I will,” when I ask him to do something, and in his words I heard the echo of “Pig Will” who has so much for fun than his brother because he helps out and finds out that work can be fun, a lot more fun than doing nothing, anyway.
So when the kids are bored, I often suggest they entertain themselves with books and I read to them quite a bit during the day, every day. My husband also reads to them daily. It doesn’t take a lot of time to read a couple picture books. When we read, we talk about the characters, point out things going on in the pictures that aren’t in the text, name characters without names, wonder about what happens after the story is over. Sometimes we just look at the pictures and give the illustrations our names, I’m the mommy, Liam is the little boy, or I’m Red Riding Hood and he’s the wood cutter. I often paraphrase the story when we don’t have enough time to read the whole thing or he begins to lose interest. Sometimes I change the story to make it more effectively convey ideas I want my children to be exposed to or to remove elements I don’t want them to be exposed to, such as violence. My husband likes to let them fill in the blanks in familiar books or read the opposite of what is written and wait for the kids to correct him.
My oldest two are now reading themselves, but as beginning readers they still most enjoy being read to. I read my three-year-old easy to read books and point to words as I read, sometimes asking him to identify a letter and its sound, as he knows letters and sounds. We talk about rhyming words. I’ll repeat words that rhyme and tell him they rhyme or mention that two words mean pretty much the same thing or are opposites. We sometimes make up songs about the stories.
Books always foster questions, why doesn’t Peter Rabbit get to have blackberries with Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail? Why does the itsy bitsy spider have a shadow on some pages and not on others? What sound does a camel make?
Each person in our family has books that are his or her own. We give books for gifts and let them buy books with money from Grandpa and Grandma. We go to the library at least every other week.
Even my one-year-old studies picture books solemnly, turning the pages one at a time, though sometimes she holds the books upside down. Books are fun. Books are a game. Books are wonderful teachers, of things mundane and profound.