by Evelyn J. Mocbeichel
The love of reading was instilled in me as a young child by my mother. She loved to read and we took weekly trips to the library for us both to borrow more books. At first, she’d read the picture books to me, then later when I started school, I could pick ones I liked. Do you remember being required to read books over the summer from a list given by your grade schoolteacher at the end of June? Each teacher gave us a reading list, and we had to pick ten books to read, most being well known “classics”. These stories were so engrossing that it didn’t seem like a chore to start another book on the list! Recently, I began thinking about how today’s children are more interested in electronic gadgets than discovering the pleasure they can find in a book. A while back I saw a superb documentary on television entitled The Book Whisperer, based on the book of the same title. It was about how a New Jersey school’s 5th grade teachers were getting children to love reading. The school started with a “40 book challenge”, which I thought was an extremely high number and wondered at the start of the program if the children reached that goal. They even surpassed it! What was interesting was the simple concept that adults take for granted and that is knowing what topics are available in making a book selection. Now with summer almost here and several months of recess ahead, it is the perfect time to start your child on a path of knowledge obtained through the world of reading!
To encourage these 5th graders, the teachers explained what topic choices can be found when looking through their school’s vast library selection. Most children do not know what they are looking for and either gravitated toward a brightly colored cover or have a special series they have been introduced to by a friend or parent. The TV program showed teachers explaining what topics the children could find and at the same time showed the children how they could delve further into a subject or topic they enjoyed. In a children’s section there are books about mysteries, science, adventure, historical fiction, fantasy, and animal stories, to name a few subjects. Of course, when a teacher assigns a reading topic the choices may be narrower than the child has to pick from to go with the book report due. But pleasure reading opens a whole new world of discovery as the children learned by their teacher’s vivid and inspiring detailed descriptions!
Remember the “reading explosion” that took place when the first Harry Potter book was released and families were lining up to buy a copy? J.K. Rowling wrote her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, sitting in a small café. It has sold in excess of 120 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books of all time. To date, the Potter series has sold more than 500 million copies worldwide and is the best-selling book series in history. It was amazing to see global news broadcasts of long lines of young readers, many dressed in a cape and outfit, similar to what Harry Potter would wear. They waited anxiously for the bookstore to open so the latest copy could be bought. As the series grew, even adults started to read these imaginative, engrossing stories. Naturally, a film franchise and theme part sprouted up and continued this lucrative enterprise. It all started by an author writing a children’s book. I enjoyed seeing these news broadcasts that followed a new Rowling book release because that meant children would again be reading about Harry and his friends’ latest adventure. It also meant that they were staying away from electronic games, not glued to a computer or television screen as much. Anything a parent or caregiver can do to encourage children to read is wonderful. It will almost guarantee that they are providing a lifelong educational path for the child as well as a form of entertainment.