Monday, May 24, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Children benefit from an early start with books

"Frog and Toad Together" is part of a collection of books by Arnold Lobel. Click image for enlargement.

Annie Amoia doesn't equivocate on the subject of how kids should spend all that free time during the next few months.

"I would say, first of all, that we all believe in the importance of summertime reading," said Amoia, coordinator of literacy innovative programs for the Clark County School District. "We are always telling kids the more you read, the better you're going to become at being a reader. By continuing reading and being exposed to lots of different texts, they have the ability to improve their vocabulary as well.

"It's such a great pastime."

That's all well and good, but how do parents encourage their offspring to read when other things may seem like more fun? Partly by remembering kids' penchant for variety.

"The first thing they can do is make regular trips to the library, so that kids have a wealth of books to choose from," said Nancy Ledeboer, deputy director of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District and a former children's librarian.

Reading lists abound; most schools have summer-reading programs, and children and parents can get lists of recommended books from such programs or from their children's teachers, Amoia said. But since parents know their children best, a smart thing to do is play to the child's interests. If he or she is interested in bugs, find a book on bugs.

"They may gravitate just toward books that have pictures of horses on them," Ledeboer said. "That's OK, because eventually they're going to run out of those. Sometimes because they picked it out themselves, it'll have special meaning."

If in doubt, ask a children's librarian, she advised. If, for example, you know that your child really enjoyed the Harry Potter books, tell the librarian that and ask for suggestions for similar books.

Dee Higgs, manager of the Barnes & Noble on West Charleston Boulevard, said recommended summer reading for kids in grades 1 and 2 includes "Helen Keller: Courage in the Dark" by Johanna Hurwitz, "Frog and Toad Are Friends" by Arnold Lobel and "Corduroy Writes a Letter" by Alison Inches. For kids in grades 3 and 4, suggestions include "A Rat's Tale" by Tor Seidler and The A to Z Mystery Series by Ron Roy. For grades 5 and 6, they include "A Week in the Woods" by Andrew Clements and "Loser" by Jerry Spinelli.

"One thing we're expecting that's going to be big this year is a whole series of `Spider-Man 2' books coming out by Harper-Collins and Scholastic," Higgs said. Other books likely to interest kids, she said, are linked to movies such as "Ella Enchanted" and "Clifford."

Another way to encourage kids to read, Ledeboer said, is to make reading material readily available around the house. Even a cereal box on the breakfast table may prompt them to read, she said. So will subscribing to a magazine that may interest the child. Consider reading to your children -- even if they're pretty good readers themselves.

"Parents can read books that may be a little bit beyond their children's reading level," Ledeboer said, because their auditory comprehension level usually is much higher.

"So they get the language and they get to enjoy the sound of the language and the stories," she said. "If you read a chapter every night, especially in the summer, that can be kind of a good bonding experience."

TV can even encourage kids to read, if parents turn on the closed-captioning, she said. So can subtly rewarding them for reading -- for instance, letting them read in bed for a half-hour or so; getting to stay up late to read will be seen as a big deal.

One of the biggest encouragements? Parents who read. Kids like to mimic their parents by playing house; "they should also be saying, `It's my turn to stay home and read a book,' " Ledeboer said. "If they see their parents read, they're more likely to see that as something adults do, and that it's a lifelong activity."

"I think when they don't see that, they're probably less likely to go to a book or magazine," Amoia said, "because that's not something that they're familiar with."

And remember that they may not be too jazzed with what their parents read decades ago.

"I hate to go back to the things we loved as kids," Ledeboer said. "We tend to look at the things we enjoyed as a child without realizing that there's this whole wonderful body of children's literature that's come out in the past 10 or 12 years. We're missing out on a lot of wonderful things that are out now. They may be a little more relevant, and the techniques for art work is just stunning."

However parents encourage reading, they should be ever mindful of its importance.

"It just expands the world for children," Ledeboer said, because they can read about experiences other children have.

"It also can validate some feelings they may be having," she said. "They can maybe learn to understand feelings. It's also just the intellectual stimulation. Watching television doesn't stimulate the imagination like reading does, because in reading, you're having to create all the mental images and pictures yourself."