Raising a Reader

Someone recently told me a story about giving a book to the mother of a toddler; the young woman gave it back, saying "oh, we don't need this; she doesn't know how to read yet." Come to think of it, maybe it was in the letter from the editor in the most recent Parents magazine, which features an article called "Raising a Reader."

With a two-reader-parent household, that's one article full of tips we did not need: books have been a big part of Clio's life from the beginning, and we've been given dozens of them as gifts and hand-me-downs. There's a shelf in her room of Shel Silverstein, C.S. Lewis, Harry Potter, the Adrian Mole books, and countless other adolescent and "young adult" books saved from my childhood, and waiting to unfold their myriad worlds to Clio as she grows up.

I've written here before about her phases in books; right now, she loves touch-and-feel books that introduce new textures and the corresponding adjectives to add to her growing list of nouns and verbs ("soft" is a favorite), but even more than that, she loves books with more complex stories, especially when there are pictures that allow us to create our own narratives. The Berenstain Bears New Baby is one such book. Not only does it tell the whole story of Small Bear outgrowing his baby bed just in time for the arrival of his new sister, there is also a two page spread of "wonderful things to do growing up in Bear country." Clio likes to identify the various actions: "swimming, fish!" "flying kite!" "chase butterfly!" and it seems like a great way to encourage subject-object connections, and get those sentence bases going.

Even better is Good Night Gorilla, where the text is mostly a series of "good nights," but the pictures depict a whole narrative that Clio likes to describe: "gorilla keys, open lion" (i.e. the gorilla takes the keys and opens the lion's cage) or "lady, gorilla, bed!" (i.e. there's a gorilla in the lady's bed, and he's not supposed to be there!). Both books were gifts, and in their framework for imagination and language development, both keep on giving.

My favorite thing of all is when Clio "reads" books herself. Sometimes there are entire, recognizable phrases correctly associated with the pictures she has essentially memorized, and often she gets the cadence of the story, based on our repeated readings (again!).

And here she is, reading to her animals.

I love the way she lined them up, and holds the book open to them so they can all see the pictures, just like a teacher would. (I'm sure Rosa must do this at Day Care.)

In going back through some old photos, I found a ton of Clio with books. Granted, sometimes she is eating them, but mostly, she's "reading." A brief retrospective:







When I tried to capture Clio on video reading a book, she had other ideas in mind. Let's just say, these are some of the best words a book-loving parent can hear!