When my sons were little I worried about everything! They were close in age and it seemed I didn't have time for anything. (My oldest wasn't quite 4 years old when my youngest was born.) The one thing I worried about mostly was making sure they were good readers and enjoyed reading as much as I do. As a teacher, I also knew that reading is the key to all other academics and that reading to my sons would give them a great start.
So I read to my boys- nearly every night. And I brought them to the library to pick out books "of their own". As they got older and liked looking at books by themselves, I let them do one more thing. I told them that when they went to bed, they could keep their lights on as long as they wanted as long as they were "reading"- no toys, no getting out of bed, no talking. I think this is what worked the best! Kids like to be "in charge" and this gave them a little power. Every night at bedtime, each boy would pick a book and go to bed- falling asleep as they read or looked at pictures.
I decided it didn't matter what they read- they all had different interests- as long as, they had reading materials in hand. One of my boys actually loved "Mad Magazine" and comics and this is what he always picked. At the end of each school quarter, we would go to a book store and they could pick out a book of their own to buy. Today all of my sons are avid readers- still with their own interests. One likes Stephen King and other fiction stories, another likes history and non-fiction, and the third, my comic-book-boy? He loves reading science fiction, technical manuals and how-to books and is now an engineer.
Here are some of the books I read to my sons- I'm sure you can find others and more up-to-date ones:
The Cat in the Hat- (and every other Dr. Seuss book we could find!)
Where the Sidewalk Ends- Shel Silverstein
The Tales of Peter Rabbit-(they loved all the Beatrix Potter stories)
Stuart Little- EB White
Charlotte's Web- EB White
Winnie the Pooh- AA Milne
Where the Wild Things Are- Maurice Sendak
James and the Giant Peach- Roald Dahl
Wind in the Willows- Kenneth Grahame
The Adventures of Pinocchio- Carl Collodi
A Cricket in Times Square- George Selden
Hans Bricker- Mary Dodge
Bambi- Felix Salten
Swiss Family Robinson- JD Wyers
The Jungle Book-Rudyard Kipling
The Secret Garden- Frances H Burnett
Tom Sawyer- Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain
Peter Pan- JM Barrie
Around the World in 80 Days- Jules Verne (and other works of his in illustrated books)
These books bring back great memories and I hope they bring the same memories to my sons. I often looked for "classics", books with lots of illustrations, and others that had won children's book awards such as the Newbury Medal or Caldecot Children's Book Award winners- all easily found on-line these days. I hope your summer is going well and that your children have made a friend in a great book this summer!
