Help New Readers Enjoy Good Books

Avid readers are leaders, even when very young, sharing their books with loved ones and engaging them in conversations. These youngsters virtually always succeed in school and then predictably in life.

But how do we get young children started on the path to becoming truly avid readers?

Access

The key is to provide new readers with ready access to abundant, relevant, potentially enjoyable books, and then offering encouragement, conversation about the book, and guidance about next steps. Fortunately, the power of books is that for those who continue to seek their very own “home run” books, they are eventually rewarded with a “find” that will set them on the road to being avid readers.

Organizing a small book shelf with a few dozen known, excellent titles provides plenty of options without being overwhelming for little ones. A reader’s book options could productively include stories, jokes, poems, science, pictures, adventure, sports, biographies, how-to, and every other type of genre. While kids may not yet be ready to independently read books, a varied collection can convey the amazing range of possibilities the world of books offers.

Guidance

Serving as guides for new readers, caring adults will naturally wish to include books that they have enjoyed in the past or that other new readers they know have found to be delightful. However, adults must fight the urge to impose their favorites and instead be attentive to new readers’ early efforts to choose their own books.

How to make good personal book choices in books (like how to make good choices about anything else) will take a while to learn. At first, children’s choices may not end up to be particularly appealing to them. In that case, kids need to have permission and understand that if they don’t enjoy a book they’ve chosen or have been offered, they should simply put it down and find another one.

Developing avid readers also need to learn to select, enjoy, and sometimes reject their own choices if they are to become independent and avid readers. The hard part for adults is just letting kids decide, even if we sense their choices will sometimes go awry.

Demonstrations

One of the easiest ways to lure kids into reading is to read favorite books to and with them, especially if they can’t handle books and turn pages independently yet. Simply, we must then select a book that we really love and share it in a way that shows that love. Research recommends that we do that joyfully read with children every day, even with our babies, and continue reading with them well beyond when they can enjoyably read alone. It’s a great way to share wonderful book choices, and to demonstrate how fluent and expressive language can bring a book to life.

Another key ingredient is to have an engaging and reflective conversation about the book, its characters, ideas, issues, events, and even the words an author chose to describe something, albeit not in a quizzical way.

Above all, everyone involved needs to be relaxed and having fun!

Consultations

Neighborhood parents, teachers, and children’s librarians are invaluable in helping with what to offer readers of a particular ability, age, gender, talent, or interest. However, some newbie readers, especially those who are blessed with older siblings and adults who themselves are avid readers, may attempt to read their books that are very challenging for them. We recommend that families let them try! Children must learn to be comfortable in abandoning or forestalling books that aren’t working for them yet. Learning always proceeds from way hard to much easier.

Support

A helping hand is what a teacher, parent, or older sibling should extend. First, merely offer youngsters help with pronouncing troublesome words, and read elaborate sentences slowly and expressively. Encourage kids’ questions and requests for help. Transform expressions of interest into occasions for sharing our own insights about what we do when language in books is too hard for us, as this communicates that even experienced readers get stuck on certain words, too. We re-read, we ask questions of others, and we might consult a dictionary. Let’s be honest: some really good books are difficult to read at first, regardless of our experience as readers.

If new readers persist, they will learn that with a little hard work, much can be gleaned, even from books that seem too tough to finish. New readers need to learn that, as they suspected, books that they currently find challenging may indeed have wonderful content and those books will be available for new readers when they have sufficient experience to handle more sophisticated texts.

Such lighthearted and sincere support can leave a new reader appreciating that reading anything should always be a rewarding or delightful adventure into the world beyond the home, and that there is always much to be learned through joyful engagement with print in its many forms.

These ongoing strategies put new readers directly on the path to becoming avid, lifelong readers.