Hellobee

My parents were first generation immigrants whose second language was English, and like many immigrants who were busy endlessly working, they never read books to me as a kid. Perhaps it was due to it being a simpler time with less distractions and less to do, but I was lucky to develop a love of reading anyway. Many nights I could be found reading with a flashlight under my blanket when I should have been sleeping. I have so many fond memories of going to the library as a child, rereading my favorite books over and over again, and staying up all night to finish a book because I just couldn’t put it down. Books, more than any other medium, allowed to me expand my imagination and escape to other worlds.

Charlie and Olive are now 7 1/2 and 5 1/2 years old, and I can say that they are both bookworms. They read for hours independently every day by choice, and will even choose to read new books over playing their favorite game, Minecraft! I think their love of reading developed over the years because we’ve read to them copiously daily since they were born. And even though Charlie has been reading independently for over 2 years now, we still read to him daily, and won’t be stopping any time soon.

So how did they become bookworms? It happened pretty organically, but here are the top 8 things we did to help.

Olive taking a break from reading her book to listen to Charlie read her a story from his Kindle.

– Read daily from birth. Reading books before every nap and bedtime was part of our daily routine. We read at least 3 board books before each nap when they were babies taking up to 4 naps a day, more if they didn’t seem tired. They haven’t napped in years now, but it’s still part of our bedtime routine and not a day has gone by in their lives when we haven’t read to them.

– Be patient and persistent even if they aren’t interested in reading. Olive didn’t care much for books the first two years of her life unless they were interactive, and even then she was playing with the books more than listening to the stories. I also breastfed her for over two years at nap and bedtime so she had many less books read to her as a baby than Charlie did. But we continued to read to her — in the bathtub, at mealtimes, at the library — and she eventually started loving reading.

– Read to them for long durations. As the kids got older the books got longer, and we read even more. For instance, I used to read an entire Magic Treehouse book to Charlie every night. I was so excited to introduce him to chapter books, which were much more fun for me than reading the same picture books over and over again. And when Olive finally started showing an interest in books, I would read for at least 30 minutes, up to an hour, before bedtime every night to encourage her.

– Read series. Once I started The Magic Treehouse series with Charlie, we didn’t read any other books at bedtime until we finished the entire series. Olive’s obsession for a while has been the Little Miss and Mr. Men books. We own almost the entire series, and we won’t stop until we have every single one. Series are a really great way for kids to get invested in an ongoing story.

– Go to the bookstore and library regularly. We used to go to the bookstore or library at least once a week when we lived in New York. Giving them the option to select their own books made them much more invested in reading. We don’t have bookstores or libraries locally now, but whenever we travel to the island capital (once a month) we go to the used bookstore every single day.

– Get a Kindle. Both kids have Kindles and it definitely encourages them to read much more. When we travel, we only take Kindles now (no ipads). We also use Kindle Unlimited daily (borrow up to 10 books/audiobooks at a time for $9.99/month). You can even download many e-books for free as long as you have a Kindle or the Kindle app!

– Find a topic your kids love. Charlie has always loved reading but once he discovered the world of Minecraft fan fiction, he was completely hooked. He has read hundreds of Minecraft novels through Kindle Unlimited, and they constantly release new ones. The key is to get them to love reading… it doesn’t really matter much what they’re reading. For instance Charlie read Superfudge and Stuart Little this week, but his ability to read for an extended period of time and be interested in other genres really stemmed from reading so many Minecraft novels.

– Graphic novels are your friend. Olive just learned how to read at the beginning of this year, and I downloaded a bunch of early reader books with characters she already loved like Pinkalicious and Fancy Nancy. But it was the graphic novel genre that really took her independent reading to the next level. There are lots of pictures and not a lot of text, so the stories are easy to understand with lots of plot movement, which makes them much more fun than simple early reader books. Who would have thought my child who hated books the first 2 years of her life would become such a bookworm?

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We never really “taught” the kids how to read. They both picked it up in kindergarten as most kids tend to do. We mostly just focused on reading to them as much as possible, and encouraging them to read things that interested them. And with all things parenting, maybe we were just lucky!

Do you have any tips for raising bookworms?