Blogger: Rachel Kent
I just finished reading Little House in the Big Woods out loud to my daughter. This has been a dream of mine since long before she was born. She loved the book and is amazed by chapter books. I could see her imagination working while I read. She was so engaged in the story, trying to figure out anything that was beyond her understanding level. We’ve also been reading a silly series called Dino Riders by Will Dare since she is so in love with dinosaurs. She’s enjoying them, but they definitely don’t have the depth of the Little House books.
I remember my parents reading to me when I was young. My dad would always cheat and read ahead when we were supposed to be reading a chapter each night. 🙂 He was just so into the stories that he couldn’t wait! My mom and I would read the same books as I became a teenager. It was fun to go shopping for the next installment in a series and then fight over who was going to read it first. We read Christy by Catherine Marshall aloud together when I was sixteen. It was awesome mom/daughter time, and I hope my daughter wants to read with me when she’s older.
We weren’t a family that made frequent trips to the library, though I know this is a great way to introduce children to books–and lots of them–for very little money. I did participate a couple of times in summer reading contests hosted through our school.
I also think my parents encouraged us to read by insisting that we drive on family trips. We’d be in the car for weeks sometimes, driving to the different National Parks, and we didn’t have any nifty electronic devices to distract us back then. On one trip, when I was 13, I ran out of my own books so I started reading my brother’s high school summer reading for his AP class. That’s when I discovered Pride & Prejudice and LOVED it.
What about you? What inspired your love of reading? How did you pass it along to your children?
What is your earliest memory of books or reading? And, most importantly (kidding!), when did you first read Pride & Prejudice?
The Reading Mother
By Strickland Gillilan
I had a mother who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea,
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth,
“Blackbirds” stowed in the hold beneath.
I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days;
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.
I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness blent with his final breath.
I had a Mother who read me the things
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings–
Stories that stir with an upward touch,
Oh, that each mother of boys were such!
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be–
I had a Mother who read to me.
This poem is in the public domain.
I learned early on that the adults in my family couldn’t resist a smiling toddler with a book clutched to her chest. I’d be pulled into a lap and cuddled for the duration of the story. Somewhere there’s a photo of me on the couch with my school teacher aunt, a stack of Golden Books at my side.
* When I went to my first back-to-school night, the librarian asked the assembled parents. “What’s the most important thing you can do to encourage your children to read?” Read to them was the common answer. “No,” she replied, “let them see you reading for pleasure.”
Oh, I love that answer!! It’s the same with the Bible. Let them see you enjoying time in the Word.
Wanting to receive mail inspired me to read. Yes, at four years old I was made that everyone, except me, received mail. So my mom signed me up for the Dr. Seuss Book Club. Every month a new book and having that story read and re-read to me sparked my love for reading. Pre-K and kindergarten were not required at that time so I began first grade with a good handle on recognizing words and reading simple books. I feel it spurred me to the love of writing, too. Fast forward to 2015 when my granddaughter was born – books as gifts, galore! And they are her go to “toy,” by far, as a toddler. Just mailed a box of books to her in Japan. She hugs them! The gift goes on.
My parents always read to my sister and me when we were little, and I firmly believe that’s why we’re such big readers today! If we read something that sparked our interest they would help us to explore it even further.
When I fell in love with the Misty of Chincoteague books my parents took us to see the pony swim one summer. After reading the Little House on the Prairie books, my mom helped us make rag dolls like the ones Laura and Mary had. I’m so thankful for parents who encouraged us to learn through reading.
While my husband and I don’t have children of our own yet, as a former pre-k teacher I already have shelves filled with children’s books that I can’t wait to pass on 🙂
The Pony Swim!
The Little House books are the first that I have memories being read to me as a child by my mom. Also, A Little Princess. My older sister learned to read at three or four, and was in love with chapter books before I came along. What was little sister to do but to love books too?
I don’t have children, but my youngest brother is eleven years my junior, so until recently (he’s a teen and I guess having your sister read to you isn’t cool right now) we’ve read anything from The Peabody Adventure series to some of the Stonewyke Legacy books. Kind of sad that those days are over 🙁
Consider the teetering stack of 15 or 16 books leaving the library every couple of weeks, and you’ll know you have a book-loving youngster on your hands. That was me – a little gal with a book in tow, typically Debbie and her Dolls or some similar title. I recall watching my dad, reclining in the green, vinyl chair, reading automotive magazines and books each evening. Maybe that’s where the love originated? I’m not certain, but my hope to pass it on to my kids was certain.
My husband typically read an Amelia Bedelia or Hank the Cowdog book to them nightly. Oh, the beautiful giggles! When we home schooled, we set aside a 20 or 30 minute reading time each day. And goodness knows, I fought HARD to find the right genre for the two hesitant boy readers. Today? Our teen daughter’s room overflows with books. She reads lengthy stories in a day or two. Books became her oxygen. Our teenaged sons? I’m not sure I’d say they love reading, but I catch their noses in either sports or outdoorsman material from time to time. The seed has been planted. We’ll see if it grows.
Oh how we love Hank the Cowdog! You should try those as a read aloud, Rachel! So funny.
My parents read to me. We passed it on by reading to our kids, starting when they were less than 2 months old so they would hear lots of good English that wasn’t baby talk. I liked Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses for after their bottles.
*We read kids books every evening. When they were toddlers, we got children’s Bibles and started reading from those every night before prayers.
*We let them pick out and buy lots of books. My millennial son’s favorite gift is still a Barnes & Noble gift card.
Oh, Carol, you are a GEM!! Like you, I abhor baby talk. I refused to speak to my children in baby talk, and likewise refused to use “pet names” for socially taboo objects, processes and body parts. Things are what they are. Today, I love buying my daughter classics for her book shelves. My sons did not retain the love of books the way she did. For her it is an addiction. Indeed, her request for her baby shower last month – children’s books!! I love it.
Oh, Rachel. That poem just made me cry. I have certainly made mistakes as a mom, but I have definitely read to my sons! My parents read to us at bedtime, Wind in the Willows and Little House on the Prairie, and Red Wall. I fell in love with reading myself in second grade with all those black stallion books and Nancy Drew. I read to my boys at night, still, and my oldest is 13. We just read this epic fantasy from the 80s that my husband read in H.S. to them. They loved it, thought I had to skip a few parts. If your daughter is just jumping into chapter books, be sure to get the “Andrew Lost” books from the library. They are the best chapter books, besides Frog and Toad. And as for read alouds, we loved loved loved the How to Train Your Dragon Books. So silly, but even with all the overthetop crazyness, these books still made me weep. They are about being a hero when you don’t have anything special and about mercy when the only chance seems to be war. How does the author do it??? Next on my list to read to the boys–On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, The Lost Stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles, In the Hall of the Dragon King, and Murder on the Orient Express. I’m not sure how I’ll pick which one to do next. Oh, and my boys LOVED Around the World in 80 Days! We read that when my youngest was 4 or 5 and he still loved it. Amazing. Reading with your family is just amazing…even if it is a bit rowdy, like at our house.
Earliest I can remember is reading some of B.H Liddell-Hart’s military histories at six (along with “Huckleberry Finn”), and Alastair Maclean’s “HMS Ulysses” and “The Guns Of Navarone” at seven.
I don’t remember my mom reading to me when I was young, (single mom+3 kids+no time) but when I was 12, she married again and we moved to a nice neighbourhood that had an excellent public library. But I spent a lot of time in the school library. Bullies rarely went in there.
When I was 13, (1976) we took a road trip from Vancouver to San Diego, and back. I distinctly remember reading the companion novel to Star Wars on the stretch from San Francisco to Oregon. I extorted 5$ (equal to 21.75$ today!!) from my brother (because he was going insane with boredom) in order to read that book as well. It was either that, or the literary epic known as The Gnomemobile, based on the Disney “film” of the same name.
If I want to taunt my brother on Facebook, I’ll ask him if he wants to borrow my Star Wars book. 3,2,1, BOOM.
When our daughter was little, my husband would read her Big Joe’s Trailer Truck and sub-out the actual words for things like “Poor Big Joe got caught by the border police for having 500 kilos of street grade heroin in the truck. Bad Big Joe!”
Yes, we were those kind of parents.
I DID read to my kids in a normal manner, in case anyone was worried. Most of the kids are readers, although, I can’t understand why our oldest son will read a book ONCE and then never read it again.
One thing that sticks in my mind though…I’d come downstairs every Saturday and Sunday morning to find my dad reading his Bible in the armchair by the window. Every Saturday and Sunday morning. Either in English or in Arabic.
When I go visit them, he’ll be in that same chair, every morning.
His days are numbered, as are my mom’s. She’s already giving me and my brother stuff every time we visit them. Yes, that drives us nuts and makes us weepy. But one thing I should mention to them is that I want my Dad’s Bibles, both the English and the Arabic ones.
I would LOVE to film him reading his favourite verses in Arabic. But I don’t know if either of us could make it through.
I love these stories, Jennifer!
I would read to my children each night before bed. Frequently we would wrestle with “One more chapter, daddy. Just one more.” Some of my fondest memories are those of reading through the entire Chronicles of Narnia with my children. I am now getting into the practice of reading to grandchildren, and I hope to take them through that same series.
My mom read to me and my sister, and those are such happy memories. My mom also had a routine of reading one book a week – a practice she still keeps. And she shared about the books she read – interesting characters or history or fascinating facts. My dad is a great reader too, and it wasn’t uncommon to see all four of us in the living room, each lost in our own books. It was a joy to pass on that heritage to all of our kids. Our youngest son is in the Navy in Japan, and the only thing he doesn’t like – no good bookstores on base! Makes my mama-heart proud.
Such a wonderful poem. Thank you. I’m grateful to my mother for reading to us and in front of us all her long life. Also to my fourth grade teacher for reading the Little House books aloud after lunch each day. Half-pint made me want to be a reader. Christie made me want to be a writer.
I didn’t realize until I got to college how blessed I had been to have both a mom and dad who read to my siblings and I. My dad, especially, was great at giving each character a distinctive voice as he read aloud to us (I’ll never forget his Gollum impersonation, or his spine-tingling rendition of Marley’s ghost from Dicken’s Christmas Carol!). I love that my boys are reaching chapter-book age. I have both the Little House books and The Chronicles of Narnia slated on our read-aloud list for the year, and I can’t wait! As for Pride and Prejudice…I saw some Jane Austen films as a teen, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I actually began to read them for myself. Now I have read, own, and love every single Austen novel, including the unfinished ones! Still, Pride and Prejudice stands out: I truly think it’s one of the best-crafted novels of all time.
My parents bought us Ladybird history books from Blackwell’s in London and I was reading them myself by age four. This is why I still spell with British spellings too. That the teachers didn’t like the reading they did.
I love how you get me thinking. No one read books much in my house when I was a kid. My mom read her devotional/Bible every morning tho. I don’t remember anyone reading to me. Not that they didn’t. I just don’t remember it. But I remember Little Golden Books being in my room. My grandmother told stories to me though at bedtime which made me fall in love with a good short story. When did I fall in love with books? My 4th grade substitue teacher read James and the Giant Peach to our class. She was an older woman, and I was mesmerized by her … I loved watching her face as she read, as goofy as that sounds. And I loved the book. I couldn’t wait to get to her class each day to see what would happen with the story. When my girls were born, I loved to read to them. It was our daily routine, all throughout the day. The books were kept in the living room, right under the television. They’d grab one and start backing up to fall into my lap. Or anyone’s lap. They love reading today. I wasn’t really intentional about it … but I’m so thankful that they love to read. We just went to the bookstore today, because my youngest (17) read Ronie Kendig’s Nightshade and she loved it … she wants to get the rest in the series.
My parents read to me every night. As soon as I learned to read by myself I became a bookaholic. I still am, and hope never to get in recovery from that addiction. I had a bumper sticker made that says “Bookaholics Unite” and assume you all join me in loving the addiction.
I dont remember what inspired me to love reading… I just always did. I dont remember my parents reading to me, but when I read books the stories were just somehow always ‘real’ to me. I do know that in second grade I got an award for being the best reader in the class. By third grade I was no longer on the playground after school, I was in the woods with my books, reading and making up stories and looking in the woods for gypsies and fairies.
Okay so I do have a funny story about motivating my daughter to read. I read to her, and my mom read to her, but she just was never interested in reading. We tried everything, but nope. No go. Then when she was 10, Interview with the Vampire came out. I always monitored her tv/movies/etc for content, and there was no FREAKING WAY I was going to let a 10 year old watch Interview. Just Say No. But my daughter, bless her wicked lil heart, is the Queen of Nagging. Even at 10 (she’s worse now heh). She never let me alone about it. And suddenly I had Ye Olde Brilliant Idea. We frequently used negotating deals to arrive at a compromise on an issue, so I offered her a no-fail (for my side) deal. If she READ the book… she could watch the movie. And by “read” I did not mean skimming over it. But for my 10 y/o lifetime non-reader to sit down and read it, cover to cover. Mind you… lots of *adults* were not able to make it through an Anne Rice. She agreed to the deal, and I handed over the book (which naturally, I had). This was Friday evening. She started reading. She read til bedtime. She read all thrugh Saturday. Sunday at 2 pm, we were sitting on the sofa in front of the television, with Interview loaded into the VHS player, the remote in my hand as she finished the final chapter. We made a deal. She won, and we watched Interview together. However… I won too! Because then she wanted to read the two books that came before it. Then she started combing my bookshelves with their hundreds of books, and picked up the Dragonriders of Pern. Then the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Not so much longer after that, the first Harry Potter came out. About that time is also when I started writing, and she and I used to go out breakfast or lunch and brainstorm a scene or even a whole story! She’s 30 now, still a reader, and still one of my best brainstormers.
I do remember my mother reading, but never to us, and never books we were allowed to read at a young age. I read the most on those long trips between national parks. I loved camping at the National Parks as much as the adventures I had while reading on our road trips. My favorite books when my children were younger were plays. Dialog reading, we would pick characters and use funny voices. My two daughters are grown, and teaching their children the importance of reading.
I always had poblems with reading and math! An my children too. if your children cant cope with this subjects i can understand you! So we decided with my wife to search smth at internet, because a big amount of books didn’t help. So we’ve found good site and our problems were solved. There are not only Math and Readings, but others subjects .
https://baptiststoday.org/what-makes-a-good-theological-education/
Leave a comment and let us know your favorite book or author that made you fall in love with reading! Whether it’s a classic novel or a modern bestseller, share the title that ignited your passion for literature.