Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*'s Reviews > How to Raise a Reader

Most of my GR friends who are parents are already committed to raising lifelong readers by sharing their passion for books with their children. If this is you, then you may not get much use out of this book, other than to affirm what you have done or are doing right, and to peruse the lists of recommended books and say "read that one, that one, yep that one...". I did exactly this with my daughter last night; she asked what the book was about and this led to perusing the book recommendations; my daughter pulled books off her shelf that matched the recs, and she brought up a book of funny poems that she really likes (Where the Sidewalk Ends) which I then found recommended in this book and showed her. It was a great affirmation of her current enjoyment of reading. Conversely, I have a work colleague who has mentioned her struggle to get her middle-grade son to read. She does not like to read books herself, which this book is quick to point out is essential to raising a reader. I offerred to loan her this book, but she said "I am not going to read it, just give me the highlights." Here, the core of the problem is obvious.

The basics of the authors' advice are: be a reader yourself; start (very) young; promote a reading culture; don't make reading a chore, competition or obligation; sneakily leave books around for your child to discover; talk to them about books and reading often but not in a way that creates pressure. My favorite tidbit is that the single factor most srongly associated with future reading comprehension is simply the number of books that you have at home. Not the amount of time reading, or age that your child started reading, just how many books you have around. Well, most of us here are set for life then!

This is a short work, and in content would be highly suited to a blog or website. Indeed there is a truncated version of this book available online to get you started: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/books/how-to-raise-a-reader. I trust the authors' expertise, as long-time children's book editors for the NY times (think what you will of its journalistic content.) The book is divided into three main sections based on the child's age group: baby/toddler/early reader, middle-grade, and teen. For each stage, a collection of single-paragraph topics and tips are listed, followed by more tips for choosing books for that age of reader. Then come the book recommendations, which are suitably diverse and well organized, each with a brief description of why it's a good book for that stage. A full third of the book is devoted to book recommendations.

The advice that they give is sound, reasonable, and at times backed by studies that I wish they provided references for. There is plenty of caution about what not to do, to avoid turning off a reluctant reader. Since the advice starts at birth, this would make a great gift to an expecting parent, whether they are an avid reader or not.

The physical book design is lovely. It's small, squarish, sprinkled with illustrations, with visually pleasing text layout, easy to flip through or jump to your child's age for a refresher. You can effectively read a whole section of interest at the bookstore without buying it. It could be a good bathroom book, if you allow such things.

One flub: Stephen King's It was described as having an "orgy" among its child characters, which is not accurate. Clearly this chafed one of the authors, neither of whom appear to have read the book, for this complaint about an adult book to appear TWICE in a book about children's reading. (It was raised in the context of one of their teens reading it, it seems from the description that the author heard about this event from the book but did not read the book itself).