Last fall, I read a book called
The Reading Promise. It was a memoir written by a recent college graduate about a reading streak she and her father had that lasted over nine years. If you want to be inspired to raise your children to read, I recommend reading the foreword written by her father and the author's closing thoughts. I didn't need the inspiration, but their words rung very true to me.
I love books. I always have. I loved Scholastic book orders and book fairs and summer reading logs and the bookmobile in Rochester. I loved getting free pizzas from Pizza Hut for Book-It. I loved to read in the car on long trips and curling up with a good book at night. When we moved to NC, I quickly found the two warmest spots in the house to cuddle up with a good book. I would tear through books on Christmas and spring break during college. I cannot think of one single day of my post-college life that there hasn't been a book on my nightstand, ready to go. I even took a book to the hospital with me when I had both kids.
I am raising readers. It wasn't something I sought out to do, but over the last year, has evolved from quick bedtime stories to longer and longer nightly reading sessions. This is what Seth's nightstand looks like on any given day, our bedtime book, plus a stack of stuff he's reading to get his fifteen minutes in every day for school. He has recently made a big jump into the
Magic Tree House series, and he loves them.
This is Amelia's bookshelf. She will come listen to whatever I read to Seth at night, and then wants her own book. Whew!
I recently went through their bookshelves, thinking there would be a bunch I would consign this spring. I moved some preschool books from Seth's shelf to Amelia's, threw out a couple that had seen better days, and maybe had a handful I could bear to part with. We still read them all!
I am not the only good example in this house. Nathan tends to read in waves that tend to coincide with the end of sports seasons, but now that he's home more, there's a whole lot of reading going on. We are headed to B&N this afternoon so he can pick up the next book in the John Jakes series.
We both come by it naturally. We were raised by readers. Almost all our siblings and their spouses are big readers, and books get passed back and forth at almost every family event. Here is a picture, circa 1981, of me holding my dad hostage with a book. I'm sure if we only had 12 tv channels, no Wii, and no internet, there would be even more reading going on it this house!
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