Since many people on this board are self-proclaimed book addicts, I thought this would be a good place to ask about something that came up at a recent meeting of my book club.
One of the things my book club does is do book talks at libraries and schools (it’s a children’s literature book club for adults). The general premise is that we like to read, so we want to share our enthusiasm for reading with children.
We’ve noticed two particular kinds of kids at some of these programs. Some kids (woefully few, I’m afraid) are already book addicts, and will cheerfully take any book we have to offer. Often these kids would rather just read the book than participate in any of the book-related activities we have planned.
Other kids do not like to read. We’ve had considerable success (I say modestly) planning activities that focus on various books that are designed to coax the kids to read, and some of them actually do read the books as a result. Guinastasia might be interested to know that I hooked a number of kids on a book about the Russian revolution by enticing them with a very morbid tale of an entire family being shot, placing a great deal of emphasis on the blood and gore, all of which would be theirs to enjoy, if they would only read this book.
But, in a philosophical way, I’m wondering if any of the kids in the second group will actually become readers. You know, the SDMB kind of readers. The people who define hell as being stuck on a train without a book. The fenris reading maniacs. Everyone I know who is that kind of reader seemed to read that way with little prompting from anyone else.
So, if you identify yourself as a book addict, do you feel you were always that way? Is there anyone who was a reluctant reader that had a change of heart and become an avid reader?
If you have kids who are big readers, did you do anything deliberately to foster that? I would be especially interested to hear from people who have some reading kids and some non-reading kids – why do you think this is?
Just to clarify, by “non-reader,” I’m not talking about kids who don’t know how to read. I mean kids who can read, and might read occasionally, but are not getting in trouble for reading with a flashlight until 2 AM.
I was definitely in the first group as a child. I don’t remember a time I didn’t know how to read and love to read. I used to get in trouble in grade school because I would be reading on the sly instead of paying attention. In sixth grade, I got in trouble with my history teacher for reading ahead in the text book, which actually was the first time I realized that an adult could be a idiot.
As far as what fostered it, I will also say that I can’t remember a time that my mother was not reading to us kids. I know I got my love of reading from her, as did my sister. But my brother, brought up the same way, has never been much for books, and I’ve always kind of wondered myself what makes some kids take to reading so easily and why some kids just never embrace it.
I think book addicts are born, not made. I learned to read when I was three, by myself. I actually tried to hide the fact that I could read from my mom, because I thought if she knew she would stop reading to me at bed time. I’ve read non-stop since then, and was still getting into trouble for reading in class through college.
Incidentally, I learned how to read from the French comic Tintin (the English translations, obviously). The big, gorgeously illustrated pages kept my interest, and the complex plots encouraged me to learn because I wanted to know what was going on. Although I don’t know if Tintin has enough universal appeal to hook other kids, I’m a big proponent of using comics to teach literacy in young kids.
I’ve always been a reader. Began reading when I was four years old. My dad would read the New York Book Review to me when I was less than a year old. Not exactly the most exciting reading material for a young child, but maybe that helped.
My little brother was one of these. He’d read if asked/told to. He would handle being read to. If there was nothing else whatsoever to do - he’d read, but it was far from the first several choices of things to do. (Unlike my sister and I who figured out that you could read by the light of the electric blanket controller and no one would find out, flashlights being far too dangerous.)
Around Jr. High or so he found books that he liked - and switched over, and became one of us. I think it was choice of reading material, and age, and attitude, or something. Don’t really know.
Personally, I was a book-addict as a kid. My earliest memories are of begging my parents to read particular stories to me, and I started learning to read when I was three. By the time I was nine I was reading 500 page novels, and spent most of my recesses reading (yes, I was a complete geek. What of it?). I don’t know how many times I got in trouble for reading through half the night.
Oddly, I’m not much of a reader now. Since high school I’ve read few books outside of school assignments. That’s starting to change a bit now, though–I’ve discovered Terry Pratchett
My youngest brother wasn’t much into reading until junior high, IIRC, but now he’s always reading. I’m pretty sure my father was the same way. He’s told me that he wasn’t very good at reading until the sixth grade or so, but after getting tutoring of some sort in school for it, he read better and discovered that he loved reading science fiction. So it might be that many of the children who don’t read a lot are discouraged because they have poor reading skills. Or they may not have found a genre that interests them. Then again, maybe it’s something that has to be learned in the first few years of life, when parents either are or aren’t reading to their children regularly.
I have been in the first group as long as I can remember. My mother is also a reader, and when I was a kid we had very limited TV time.
My brother didn’t like to read as much, and she resorted to some kind of bribery. He got a reward, I can’t remember what, for every book he read. This worked well enough until he was about 12. He read Patton, for some reason, and fell in love with it. He read it over and over and over for over a year. My mom used to read books about other WWII generals, and books critical of Patton. She was trying to get him interested enough to read related titles. It didn’t work. Eventually, however, he recovered, was an English major in college, and now reads as much as he has time for.
My sister was totally uninterested and unimaginative. She had some sort of class program at school where she was supposed to read a certain number of pages a night. She did, she was very dutiful, but when she hit the magic number she was done, whether she was in mid-sentence or one page short of the end of a chapter. However, she also became a reader at a later date (I don’t know when, I had moved out by then) and now has the most sophisticated literary taste of the three of us.
So, I suspect that a lot of it is inborn, but environment helps, and there seems to be an inflection point in volume, after which addiction kicks in. YMMV.
I have always been a reader. I was such a reader than I volunteered to help out in the library when in elementary school. I would read the books as I re-shelved them, I would even read the card cataloges. I would get side-tracked when looking up something in a dictionary, and end up reading all the entries for a couple of pages. I read the encylcopedias. And Jodi, I was constantly in trouble for reading ahead.
Now, my kids. #1 is a reader, but is not as avid as I was/am. #2 is a reader, but most of her reading is on the computer. #3 will read comic books occasionally, but asking him to read a “real book” is akin to torture. I read every night to all 3 kids, and they see me with a book in hand at all times, as well as 2-3 in the bedroom, a stack in the livingroom and another couple of books in the car. Dad doesn’t read at all, and does not understand the facination of the printed word.
i have been reading ever since i can remember. i think this addiction to books may be genetic, as my father always had a book or two going.
i remember as i child my mom would (fake) scream if she heard daddy, or my brother, or myself say “i don’t have anything to read”
if they didn’t want us to read it, it wasn’t in the house.
my older sisters both read some, but they are not addict like my brother and i.
sometimes i think i could of gone farther in life if i hadn;t been interested in so damn many different subjects. i mean i could of stuck with one long enough to actually learn all about it before i flitted off to another subject.
as it is i am a seething mass of useless knowledge about all kinds of things. my brother managed to stick with physics all the way through a phd (from dartmouth-i’m proud of him). but i stumble along in my less then steller profession.
I’ve always been a reader. Of course, books were all over the house where I grew up, my mother was always going to the library and bookstores, 80% of the cupboard space in the dining room served as bookshelves, and that sort of thing. In my experience, the majority of bookworms have grown up with parents who also read a lot.
I knew how to read well before kindergarten and, like Jodi, used to get in trouble in school for reading when I was supposed to be doing something else. I was skipping class in the second grade and hiding out in the library because I would rather be reading than anything else. My mother tells me she and my father read to me while showing me the words, so I picked it up from them. Both my parents and all my siblings are all avid readers; I think like The Punkyova said, it’s a combination of nature and nurture.
Yesterday I picked up a fun book and read a bit fo it to Anna. She asked me if she could read it after me and how many pages I had left. “I just started it, so flip, lfip, flip about 300.”
“Oh. Okay. So a couple hours then?”
“yup.”
“Cool.”
I could horrify my elementary school teachers by annoncing that my parents would not let me read as punishment.
We have a picture of Becca with a T-shirt from her school reading program. It proudly proclaims “I read 25 books!” She’s sitting in her room surrounded by books, we estimated around 1,000, that she had read during the time of the reading program. The child has read Mein Kompf for heaven’s sake. (Shes a war history buff. She’s also 11.)
I don’t remember learning to read. All I do know is what I’ve been told – one day when I was four and a half I sat down and read Green Eggs and Ham out loud to my mother and grandma. Since everybody in that family is a self-taught early reader, it wasn’t a huge shock, but it must have been something of a surprise. Sometimes I wish I could remember the moment where I looked at some word and realized I could read it – but I can’t.
When I started first grade, my teacher did not believe my mother when she said I knew how to read and did not need phonics lessons. After several weeks of increasing misbehavior on my part the teacher finally sent me to be tested and surprise! I was reading at sixth grade level. To be fair, she had thought Mom was being pushy, but after she was proven wrong, she was very apologetic and turned out to be a really good teacher. Skepticism is a fine trait, but I do think she might have let her guard down a little sooner.
My third grade teacher didn’t even make me participate in reading lessons, I got to go sit and read from several shelves full of National Geographics. The other kids, oddly, didn’t seem to mind. It was obvious by that point that I was a bit different where reading was concerned, I guess.
I’ve always, always read ahead, even in the most boring textbooks. I don’t think I ever got in trouble for it. I still do. I don’t spend nearly as much time studying as most people I know, yet in anything but math, I get pretty damn high grades. (I’m a junior in college. Finally.)
I have far too many books crammed into my little apartment. And I like it that way. I think you might get a kid who wasn’t a reader interested in reading some, but I think to read the way I do, you have to be born to it.
I was always a book addict. Even before I could read. I don’t remember, but according to my mother, I would insist on taking a book to bed with me when I was 2, long before I could read them. She taught me to read at 3 or 4, mainly because I was constantly demanding to be read to and she couldn’t get anything else done.
Our favorite parent-child trip was a walk to the village library and the park. Better yet was the Bookmobile, which always brought new and different books from the big-city library. We were on a first-name basis with the driver.
By the time I was in first grade, I had to be sent to a ‘special’ reading class that met in a dimly lit storage closet down the hall from my classroom (nice, huh?) because I read so far above my classmates that my presence in the room was pointless.
My best friend all through elementary school was the librarian’s daughter.
If I recall correctly, I made the jump from the kids’ section of the library to the adult section in third or fourth grade, although I read from both- heck, I still read from both sections.
So, although I hate to admit it, maybe bibliophilia is something I was born with.
From the time I was old enough to hold a book in my hands, I was rarely without one in my grasp.
I learnt to read at school like all the other kids, but my parents say that my interest in books and magazines pre-dates my ability to read, and that I would either study and memorize the contents of books and magazines or force people to read to me, and memorize the words. I would then “read” the book back to them word for word. My mother says a typical incident was when we went to my grandmother’s house one day, and the latest Woman’s Weekly magazine was lying on the table. I said “There’s a horsey in there”, having “read” Mum’s copy the day before. For fun, Mum picked up the magazine, and flipped through to find the horse, but there were no horses in the magazine. I took the magazine from her, and went through it, and found the picture which was so small, Mum said she would never have noticed it. I apparently always did things like that.
My brother was raised in the same household, with the same parents who were always happy to sit down and read to us at any time, but he never showed any interest in reading at all. While I was anxious to start school so they could teach me to read, my brother only wanted to go to school because I did. When Mum would sit to read him a story, he would listen for about 2 minutes, and then take off.
As I got older, I was always in trouble for reading. I read under the covers with a flashlight. I would sneak my light back on after my parents turned it off. I would get so engrossed in a book that I wouldn’t hear ANYTHING, and that lead to constant scoldings. While my parents were keen to encourage us to read, neither of them were readers and couldn’t understand why I was the way I was about books. I must say, reading is probably the one activity where being in trouble didn’t put me off doing it again. I am a ravenous book fiend, and I devour them one after another. My brother still shows no interest in books (age 22, he can read just enough to get by, but I think I could read as well as he does now by age 6), and I still can’t get enough of them. That’s why I think book fiends are born, not made.
Sounds quite a bit like my family, Lyllyan. My two oldest (13 & 12) like to read, the 13-yo more than the 12-yo. The youngest can’t read yet (he just turned 5; he can read a few words) but does love to be read to, and to look at books.
And unless it’s on the sports page, hubby won’t read it. (although he will sometimes read biographies of sports figures…)
His parents don’t read at all. They have no concept of the Joy of Reading. My MIL cannot understand why on earth I would want to read a book again and again, even after I know how it ends. She just doesn’t get it.
I was another one who got in trouble for reading late into the night, and for reading ahead in school.
FisherQueen and whiterabbit, I also always read above my grade level. I can remember going to have “Reading” with kids two grades ahead of me. They all seemed so big!
Do they still have Bookmobiles? I loved when the Bookmobile came. Books on wheels, it was so cool! The library was pretty neat, too. All those books! And you can borrow them! For free! Any book you want!
The Punkyova made a comment about having limited TV time. I can’t remember my TV time being limited, but I would almost always prefer a book over TV. Besides, [Grandma Mode] in my day, we didn’t have cable TV. Four channels, that’s all! And we had to get up and walk across the room to change channels![/Grandma Mode]
I hope I have instilled my love of reading in my kids. My daughters really like to read, and I hope my son will, too.
My very old-world grandmother, the woman who raised me, was very concerned about my reading habits. She honestly believed a person could lose their mind if they read too much. I guess she was right.
Dunno where I got my reading jones. My son reads about 10x more than I do, my daughter will read if there is nothing on T.V. My guess is that some people are predisposed to enjoy reading and need very little encouragement, while others will not find reading enjoyable no matter what.
Nature/nuture. If anyone finds the definitive answer to which has more influence on people please write a book. I’d love to read it.
I have always been a reader. I am not happy unless I have at least two or three books waiting to be read. (I’m also a fast reader, so three books in a weekend is common).I don’t remember my parents pushing me to read (although my mother always had a book). I know that I learned to read before I started kindergarten, apparently because it was easier for my mother to teach me to read than to keep reading to me.I now have a house full of books and my (non-reading) husband is probably very happy we live in NYC (a city with very good library systems) because I don’t wait for paperbacks. I have two children. My daughter didn’t learn to read until near the end of first grade, had trouble reading until about third grade, and only in sixth grade did she begin to read for pleasure once in a while (if you can call “Girl’s Life” reading). My son, on the other hand, learned to read halfway through kindergarten,read “The Time Machine” in the summer between second and third grades,and reads the newspaper every day. They are very close in age, and my daughter is older, so I have to assume they were born with it,since having less time to read to one wouldn’t have been an issue.
My obssession with books began well before I could read to myself. In fact, my dad sat me down when I was four and said “Daddy is tired of reading Green Eggs and Ham and The Three Billy Goats’ Gruff. I’m going to teach you how to read them.” So he did. That began my devouring of books, and startling librarians. I got my first library card when I was four, and to the surprise of the librarian I could pass the “test” for getting one- write your name, count to 20, say the abc’s…by the time I was nine I was reading at at the level of a sophomore in high school, so I soon moved on to novels- imagine the shock of the poor librarians when a ten year old, who looks about eight, tells you the books are not for her parents. I didn’t give up kids books, though, so I guess that stuck them as a little odder- yes, both the Babysitter’s club books and the Stephen King books are for me
My mom has always been a reader, but my dad, who now reads at least as often as she does, didn’t start pleasure reading until after they were married. I have hope that my brother, who has always been the same way, will eventually learn to love reading too- he’d better, for God only knows what reason he’s decided to major in English, too.
