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How can one get a child to love reading? There are any number of ways to do this. This can be done by sitting down with a child and reading to them at bedtime or acting the story out. Reading to a child involves sitting down with the child, taking a book with pictures, and reading the text out loud. They can hear as well as see what the text means. This way, they can absorb the text, and cognitively understand English. From books with pictures, you can easily move on to other materials. In the book, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Scout was introduced to English from her father reading the paper to her. He did this by running his finger across the words while he read. I remember being read to by both my parents and Grandfather. They would read out loud with me, moving their fingers along with each word that was being said. That way, I got the words and soon was reading to them. Voices can be useful as well. With voices, the child can imagine the characters interacting with each other. There was one person who read stories to us in daycare who would use a big booming voice for when the giants were speaking. But, the most influential way to get a child to instill a love for reading is in the presentation. There were a couple of programs I remember seeing as a child that got me interested in reading. The first one was called “Reading Rainbow.” In the program, the host would introduce the book using a topic around that book. For example, for the book Rumpelstiltskin, he was at a Renaissance Fair. The other program was “Wishbone.” In the program, a Jack Russell Terrier read classical books, and we got to see what he was imagining. The one thing the two programs shared was good leadership. They both got me interested in reading through their enthusiasm for what they read. In “Reading Rainbow,” the host would often not read the book directly, but the narrator did. Also, they included book reports from kids my age who shared what they thought of other books like the book that was just read. These kids were great role models because they liked what they read! For “Wishbone,” it was great to know that a dog could get me interested in reading. Also, when it comes to presentation, sometimes there must be a good hook in the story itself to keep the reader interested. The author R.L. Stein of “Goosebumps” knew how to do this. He was inspired by the old EC horror comics in leaving the reader wanting more. In his series, there was a main character who was placed in a dire situation. You were pulled along in the story by short chapters leading to a climax that seemed to resolve itself but would often have a twist at the end. Currently, there are the “Captain Underpants” and “Dog Man” series which get kids reading through both short chapters and “flip-book” style drawings. So, if you have a good presentation, and enthusiasm for what you are reading, and able to have the time to sit down with the child, they are bound to have a love for reading.
