Books ! Should You Keep It Real ???

I wanted to add, that yes. There are crappy books. But, like boogiemama, we can learn from them, too. We have some of these books that people bought us on the cheap (I can just see them at Wal Mart saying, "Don't those crazy hippies read all the time? Get the kid a book." And them picking out some garbage.) We have some cheap books, mostly from (gag) Disney, which just has prints of the cells from the movies, and then some text, which often makes no sense. I HATE these books, but I can't throw out a book no matter what. Sage (my now 7 year old) was looking at one of them a while ago, and she said, "Mama, this book makes no sense." I asked her why, and she gave an actual critique of the writing style and how "It looked like a different person wrote every diffferent page, just looking at the picture." Pretty heavy stuff, coming from a small child. So, we made up our own story, with the pictures, and the rest of our family pronounced it much better than what was written on the page. Like was said before, we turned it into a learning expeience.

 

I thought a lot about this when my kids were younger. I did choose books with photographs & realistic pictures over fakey-looking cartoons. (some animation was allowed, but it had to be GOOD art, not stick-type drawings)

I did allow books with talking animals, but held off on stories about faeries, angels & other things that you cannot physically see. I wanted them to be able to explore fantasy, but to be able to SEE when something was real & when something was make-believe.

Once they were old enough to create their own imaginary friends & knew fantasy from reality, (DS was about 3.5, DD about 3) I introduced them to creatures of the imagination.

To date, both of them read more "talking animal" books than anything else. I don't know why, but they prefer books about animals over anything else. DD is currently learning to read with the Thornton Burgess books, and DS is devouring the Redwall series.
love,
mom

 

I have to say that as a mom, a reader and a librarian I am happy to see such a lively discussion about children's books! I have always loved reading, as have my siblings. I think, at least partially, we loved to read because our parents let us read whatever we wanted. We lived out in the country, but had cards at 3 libraries. I remember my dad taking us to the library in the summers and it was always so exciting! We read everything! My sisters and I read gardening books. I read history books. My brother read poetry. We read The Babysitters Club and Dr. Suess. My parents read to us, even when we were older.
I have tried to be the same with my daughter. I spent so many hours reading to her when she was younger. I still do now, just not as much. She reads all the time and she chooses a variety of books.
From my work with kids (I was a social worker and a teacher, now I am a children's librarian) I have learned that the only way to improve a child's reading is for them to read. And to get them to read, they have to read what they like. Children will choose books that interest them. Being able to enjoy reading makes a lifelong reader.