Young readers

A few days ago, Book Moot mused on "Series Books", writing, in part:

As a reader and a librarian I have always been a huge fan of series books for kids (and grownups.) If teaching reading is the goal, then series books are the ideal material for young readers. The characters are a known quantity, the action is (usually) fast paced and the format familiar.

Kids get to be better readers by READING. As educators we want as many words as possible to pass beneath their gaze. I was always amazed at librarians who refused to have Goosebumps or Captain Underpants in their libraries. These two series especially, appeal to reluctant readers who cannot begin to handle Harry Potter.

Great stuff there. Bookmark Book Moot.

M-mv readers who have been around a while already know that this dovetails with my own philosophy of reading. The following is excerpted from our 6.12.2004 "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" entry.

[I]n other forums I visit, the conventional wisdom is that allowing young minds to indulge in the equivalent of mental M&Ms is bad parenting, capital B, capital P.

As you may have guessed by now, I am anything but conventional.

Here's my recipe for growing readers, thinkers, and autodidacts: Read to your children. Everywhere. Everything. From the moment they arrive in your life. Read. Talk. Think aloud so they can hear. Put books in their hands, under their pillows, in their knapsacks. Give books as gifts. Make a celebration out of their first library card. Let them learn to read like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. On your lap as you struggle through a difficult text. At your elbow as you read the daily newspaper. Beside you as you rediscover The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Let the words wash over them. Soak into them. And reading will be as breathing, eating, sleeping. It will be something they do simply because they are alive. And goofy mysteries and silly serial novels, movie tie-ins and horrible horror stories will more than fit into your children's reading lives because life's meals cannot all be salads and milk with apples for dessert. One must have chocolate. And cookies. And cake. And Twizzlers. And Smarties. Not too much, of course. But some. Because they taste good going down. Because the empty headachy sensation that follows a binge of Junie B. Jones reminds young readers, thinkers, and autodidacts that Ramona the Pest and Ramona the Brave are far more satisfying books.

Guide their reading.

Don't dictate it.