Raising a Reader

I have been woefully neglectful of updating this blog, and, in fact, of doing any writing at all, really. I failed to finish the first draft of 3rd Down Cow or any of the other books I'm working on before my daughter, Charlotte, was born. Since then, I have been working on a very important task: raising a reader.

I read to my daughter daily. My husband reads to her. There are always stacks of books by the chair we spend much of our days in so that one may be easily grabbed and read. 

The best part is, that my daughter seems to enjoy this. She'll be 10 weeks old tomorrow, and already she is focusing on the pages of books I read her, taking in the colorful pictures as words she has yet to learn or understand embrace her. 

We read board books and paper books. We read books with a message and just plain silly books. We read counting books and learning books and books far advanced of where she is (which is really most of them still). If I can instill a love of books into my daughter, then I will feel I have done something right as a parent. 

I read in funny voices and put on accents to entertain her and hold her attention. (Much to my joy, she often gazes up at me in apparent wonder, when I do this.) I add my own commentary to books that we are reading, or point things out in pictures to try to encourage her interaction. When it's not easy for me to hold a book and her (like when she's nursing), I tell her stories - some I remember from childhood, some are autobiographical, and some I make up on the spot. I am surrounding her with words so that she may learn to use them, understand them, and hopefully love them as I do. 

I bond with her over books, musty smelling and yellowed with age, that I loved as a child (or my sister and sometimes my father before me). I find myself grinning when I see the names of past owners (all near and dear to my heart) written inside the front cover. Or better, I find inscriptions of books that were given as gifts before they were passed on. A happy birthday message is discovered inside a Shel Silverstein book of poetry, written to my sister from our grandparents and dated two years before I was even born. A message of love is found, neatly scripted inside the cover of Make Way For Ducklings, made out from my mother to my father before they were married. I share with my daughter, not only my love of books, but my history with the books, and the books' histories in turn. 

So now I have to put my writing on hold again, and go read to my daughter. Have a happy reading day!