Yesterday I asked my 13YO son what his friends are reading. “My friends don’t read,” he replied. Oh the horror! It got me thinking—as much as my boys love Fortnite and YouTube, they also love to read. How did that happen?
I know people love to bash these books, but I give a lot of credit to Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Both my boys read the series in second and third grade, and it sucked them right in.
Credit also to teachers who read aloud to the class. It’s one thing to tell a kid he’s going to love a book (I tried that with Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet when one of my boys was 10), but it’s quite another to get them to turn those first 10-20 pages until they’re hooked on the story. My son’s teacher read Hatchet to the class a few months after he tried it on his own (and rejected it) and he loved it. If you child’s teacher isn’t reading aloud in class, take twenty minutes at bedtime and do it at home. Heck, do that anyway!