Book Love: Help Your Child Grow from Reluctant to Enthusiastic Reader: Melissa Taylor
December 12, 2012
Book: Book Love: Help Your Child Grow from Reluctant to Enthusiastic Reader (Kindle edition)
Author: Melissa Taylor
Pages: n/a
Age Range: Adult nonfiction
On a recent trip, I read two books aimed at helping parents to raise readers. The first was Book Love: Help Your Child Grow from Reluctant to Enthusiastic Reader by my blog/Twitter friend Melissa Taylor from Imagination Soup. Book Love is written from Melissa's perspective as an elementary school teacher and as a book-loving parent who found herself with two children who didn't enjoy reading. While there are certainly nuggets in the book that will apply to any parent of young children, Book Love is directed towards parents who have kids who, for one reason or another, don't enjoy reading. Taylor proposes four general reasons why kids dislike reading, and then explores them each in detail. The reasons are:
- Too boring (because "either the reading level is too hard, or your child hasn't found the right book or subject that gets him hooked.")
- Too blurry (because "vision, learning difficulties, and the ability (or inability) to pay attention" get in the way)
- Too tricky (because reading is a hard thing to learn to do)
- Too "sitty" (because some kids don't like to sit still and read)
Taylor starts with some brief, down to earth guidelines for "setting your child up for success as you help him learn to love reading". These include "Don't push him. Please", and a quick warning about limiting television.
The tone of Book Love is as if your child's very committed teacher sat down with you for coffee, and gave you one-on-one advice for helping your child with reading. There's a very personal, colloquial feel to the book, with plenty of short, declarative sentences ("Reading is important. Make time for it"). Here's an example:
"Engage in Grown-Up Reading
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right? Kids copy what we do.
Here's your change to read that book you've been wanting to read. So read a book. Or two. Or ten. Show your child how you choose your books. Talk about the ones you want to read. Demonstrate how you make time for reading, even a little bit, every day."
Book Love is highly approachable, and not at all intimidating. It's a relatively quick read, a plus for busy parents. There are user-friendly lists of questions to ask your child to help diagnose the above-described reasons for not liking reading. There are lists of the child's favorite interests for the parent to fill in (and book lists to support those interests). There are carefully chosen pictures throughout. There are less common tips, like this:
"skip buying a reading lamp. Buy a headlamp--the light is brighter and covers a wider area. Then kids can also read in the car at night (including during longer trips where it's tempting to let them overdose on video games or movies), in a tent or in a cabin at camp, or when staying over with friends of relatives."
There are bulleted lists, and references to the most cutting edge technology (eBook readers, etc.). There are steps listed for assessments that parents can perform to understand their own children's reading issues (and references to where to find help in advocating for the child). There are literacy-themed games and activities. Book Love has a lot of useful information in a contemporary and user-friendly package.
I do think that readers who have already read canons of the literacy field (such as The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease) may find Book Love a bit ... informal. There are relatively few references to other books or to research studies. There are a fair number of links to online material, but these tend to be somewhat casually sourced (e.g a reference to Betsy Bird's list of top 100 children's books that doesn't actually mention Betsy or her blog, A Fuse #8 Production, by name; there's a reference to Daniel Pennac's The Rights of the Reader poster, but one has to click through to see the list itself, etc.).
I think that this informality stems from a) the fact that Book Love is self-published (it's harder for an individual author to go through the hoops of requesting permission to just include things like The Rights of the Reader poster) and b) the fact that Book Love was inspired by a blog. Just linking to something, rather than including it, is common blog practice. And it works well. When people are reading online, it's easy enough to click through to the original source, and is actually courteous on the part of the referring author (since traffic is sent to the original source). However, when one is reading a book (particularly a print book, but even an eBook on a device), having to click through to see something is more disruptive. This may be an artifact of where we are in the evolution of books (20 years from now we may be reading everything online, and so used to cross-linking that one would barely notice). Book Love is clearly on the cutting edge, in the sense of being a book-formed offshoot of content developed on a blog.
But getting back to the book itself (rather than musing on the nature of books), Book Love contains lists and lists of book suggestions, and also suggestions for products to help with literacy learning. I can't speak for the content of the product lists (though I do very much like the idea of helping parents find phonics tools and the like with which to help struggling young readers). But I found the book lists to be quite comprehensive. Taylor is well in the loop and up on both current and classic literature. The lists aren't blurbed (books or products), however, so to find out whether or not a particular book or item might be interesting and relevant to your child's age, one must click through. The lack of blurbs for book lists is common, of course, and would be prohibitive in this case (since Taylor suggests so many book). But I personally find lists that also tell me something about the book to be a bit more useful (like the Cybils shortlists). Still, the range of suggested books (and the many themes for the lists) is quite impressive.
The nicest thing about Book Love, I think, is that it is directly aimed at parents of children who are struggling with reading in one way or another (or disinterested in reading). For such parents, Book Love offers a real (and non-judgmental) lifeline. The tips for what to do are clear, concrete, and contemporary. There are tons of ideas, book suggestions, and product recommendations. Readers who like concise, practical advice, as from magazine articles and blog posts, will appreciate Book Love's format and tone. It's definitely a new era book, though, with a different feel from that of books by Jim Trelease and Mem Fox. Readers who expect a lot of references and research studies, and don't want to be clicking back and forth to the web when they read, may not find Book Love a good fit. But that's ok. As Taylor indicates herself in Book Love, the trick is finding the right book for the right reader at the right time. That goes for books about growing bookworms, too. Later, I'll have a review of a book that takes a more traditional approach.
Publisher: Imagination Soup, LLC (@ImaginationSoup)
Publication Date: November 5, 2012
Source of Book: Review copy from the publisher
© 2012 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. This site is an Amazon affiliate, and purchases made through Amazon links may result in my receiving a small commission (at no additional cost to you).
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