Aitza B

Nearly all of my close friends and colleagues are serious readers. Their upbringings all had most of the following in common: -their parents read to them from a very young age -at least one parent, usually both, read habitually—maybe not always a book, but magazines, newspapers, etc. -they were raised in homes surrounded by (physical) books, or at the very least had regular access to libraries or a book-covered home -they had some sort of restriction on TV/screen time, perhaps informal, as in the case of several kids I knew who didn’t have rules about TV or computer time but were in practice restricted because their fathers played a lot of games or watched a lot of sports -there were conversely few if any restrictions on the type of things they were allowed to read; comic books and/or lots of adult stories were (mostly) fine, even at a young age, and there wasn’t a heavy-handed expectation that they read difficult, “good-for-you” books. Eventually in most cases they tended to realize they wanted try those books themselves, because they came to think of themselves as serious readers The formula seems pretty straightforward. Model being a reader. Give kids access to books. Don’t let them binge on screens. And let them explore books they like, even if those books are trashy or inappropriate, so that they understand that reading is both freeing and *pleasurable*—not something you do because it’s good for you.