Last weekend The Vancouver Sun newspaper published an interesting article entitled “What do kids love most? Their parents reading to them.” Nick Vinocur reported on the results from a recent study that surveyed 500 children aged three to eight in Britain and found that half of the children said story time was their favorite pastime with their parents! Almost two-thirds of the children polled said they wanted their parents to spend more time reading to them before bed and 82% said reading a story with their parents helped them to sleep better. Storytelling ranked higher than television or video game amongst pastimes for kids and the best storytellers, according to the children surveyed, were mothers who used funny voices to illustrate different characters or made their own special sound effects to keep the story moving.

Child psychologist Richard Woolfson led the study and says:

The results of our research confirm the traditional activity of storytelling continues to be a powerful learning and emotional resource in children’s lives. It can be very difficult for parents to find the time to read with their children, but these moments can help build strong bond and play a vital part in their child’s development.

Click here to read the entire article.

I had to include the photo of my husband reading to our son Evan as it is one of my favorites and I still find it hard to believe that my first-born is now 12 years old. How time flies! Such fond memories…

Speaking of photos, don’t forget to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf for our Around the World in 100 Bookshelves project. You will be automatically entered in a drawing to win a selection of 5 age-appropriate books to add to your little one’s bookshelf! See the sidebar for more details.

A recent addition to our blog is Around the World in 100 Bookshelves, where parents are encouraged to send photos of their children’s bookshelves, along with the name and age of their child. It is already becoming wildly popular, with snapshots coming in from all corners of the world, and I am always eager to see the latest bookshelf, or variant thereof–parents are quite creative in ways to store their offspring’s book collections! (My oldest son’s first books were kept in his little red wagon, which he was too small to use for conventional purposes.)

My reaction is curious as well as delighted, and comments from other viewers convey the same yearning to know what are the titles of some of the books in these pictures. And beyond that question is which of these titles are most requested as bedtime stories or daytime readalouds?

Which of these books does the owner spend time poring over, perhaps knowing them by heart? If they are owned by someone who can read the words, which of them is most read aloud to her parents or his younger siblings–or to a pet dog or cat for that matter!

Please tell us which books are most popular in your household? Which one can you recite from menory as you read it aloud to your child? And, while you’re at it, if you haven’t sent us a picture of your child’s library, we are eager to see it–and so are other parents around the world.

Let’s find out if a child in Bangalore loves the same book as a child in Brooklyn–and what books a mother in the Philippines most enjoys reading aloud to her children. The world is full of wonderful books and the children who love them–which are your child’s favorites?

Although my mother taught her children to love books with a fierce and covetous passion, it was a rare occasion when she read to us. She was a woman who had five children in nine years, who lived in Alaska with no electricity or running water, who baked everything we ate from scratch and was either cooking  or washing our clothes or doing her best to keep us in a presentable state. She had time for little else.

My father read to us in the winter when the nights were long–Heidi,  The Rose and the Ring, Treasure Island,  –my earliest memories are of these books that enthralled me long before I went to school. Then he went blind.

By the time my father was no longer able to read aloud, I was hopelessly ensnared in the tradition. The minute I finished a book that I loved, I would promptly begin reading it aloud to my younger sisters and brother, my captive audience. They were, however, a strongminded group and would certainly have rebelled if necessary, but instead they would frequently ask me to read to them, even after they could read to themselves. (more…)