The Birth and Life of an Avid Reader
Image by Sofía López Olalde from Pixabay
By Mark W.F. Condon, Unite for Literacy vice president
Avid reading children are as varied as everybody else, but what all these kids do is continually grow—faster and farther than non-avid readers do, and in any direction they choose to go. Avid readers adopt a delightful path forward in their lives that leads to lifelong growth in their understanding about and the love of books. That, in turn, leads to an appreciation of the world, and everything and everybody in it.
It’s personal
It’s not like school, where somebody else decides what children learn and when they should learn it. Each avid reader has a unique learning journey that they choose for themselves, climbing on their memories of the growing personal library of books they have chosen to read and enjoy. Every book leaves an impression of how language and stories and descriptions of anything in the world work. It’s almost magical in how it expands the reader’s language mastery.
The wonderful thing about avid reading is that all readers head out into the world on their own, following the paths laid by the books they have chosen to follow and the sense they have made of them. With a library card in one hand and their current “read” in the other, they are headed off into their lives, growing expressively stronger and smarter with every page they turn.
If children do not learn anything else in school, they should learn the joy of self-selecting books that capture their attention and the anticipation of the next book they pick, which collectively will help determine the direction and measure of their life’s success.
Avid readers see books as a joyful part of a fulfilling life. They may read book after book, perhaps a series written by the same person or many books about the same topic. Those books may have characters that these children see as friends, mentally inviting them along in their next adventures and challenges. Or they may jump around from one subject to another. Many avid readers have several books going at once. Regardless of the patterns of any one avid reader’s daily reading, every time that child picks up a book, they are transported into the world that the author created for them.
Journey over pace
Due to some of their school experiences, some avid readers are compelled to finish any book they start. Others will abandon one book for another, only to return later—or not. What avid readers know is that there will always be another wonderful choice of books, new or old, from which they may pick their “reads” for each day.
All this reading is done at the reader’s comfortable pace, on the reader’s schedule or whenever a few minutes of free time is dropped into their laps. Similarly, avid readers may discover a new book quite by accident or spend a generous amount of time searching the shelves of their favorite library or bookstore. While waiting in line to check out or buy books, avid readers may ask each other, “Whatcha got there?” and offer up short “commercials” about their favorite series, authors or books.
Finally, avid readers, having filled themselves up with the rich, ever-expanding use of powerful language and imaginative ideas they have taken from their reading, are likely to be comfortable and effective writers for schoolwork or personal reasons.
Avid readers are cultivated
Such avid readers aren’t born, they are created by caring parents and teachers who have shown them that books are like delectable treats to be hungrily consumed for themselves, and eagerly shared with friends and family.
Many avid readers are invited to choose their own books when they’re wee toddlers. They learn to inspect cover art, randomly paging through whatever they find. With every book read they grow more eager to continue their hunt for the next book or author, genre or source. They are encouraged by loving parents and teachers to “taste” new books and to embrace them slowly or reject them quickly as suits their fancies. The key to bringing up avid readers is to ensure that they have available a stock of old favorites and exciting new arrivals that flow into their homes from the local library, or as gifts from relatives and friends. It’s also important for their fully consumed books to flow out again to others.
What interrupts or “snuffs out” a developing avid reader is the intrusion of usually well-meaning adults, librarians or educators who insist that certain books are read, that borrowed books must be returned on a strict schedule, or that chosen books are too easy or hard. Young readers will figure that out on their own if they are left alone, free to be the reader they are destined to become.