The Tiger’s Bookshelf: A Continuing Conversation
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Posting a blog entry is like going to a party–you never know who you are going to meet or what kind of interesting conversations will come up. (And of course there’s always the dreadful possibility that you will be a wallflower and nobody will respond to you at all.)
The Tiger’s Bookshelf has been lucky. During the past two months there have been a number of rich, varied, and thoughtful responses to some of the blog entries that blend into a longer, continuing conversation.
Corinne and Michael Miller both pointed out that if you want your children to read, read to them and let them catch you reading, since they will model your behavior. Corinne also mentions the importance of making television and computers a secondary source of entertainment, with books being a family’s primary pastime and the library being a primary destination.
Sally Ito observed that a family can become its own book group, by “sharing the page.” Although all of different ages and with different tastes, her family is drawn together by the books they read aloud, and those shared books lead to the broadening of individual tastes–reading fairy tales to her daughter, Sally said, prompted her to pick up Italo Calvino.
Alison and Corinne both brought up the importance of a teacher reading aloud to a class, which is another form of book group, and one that brings together children of different reading abilities and different interests, uniting them in the excitement of a good story.
Holly decried the fact that books are so easily pigeon-holed into age categories, while so many books found in children’s sections of libraries and bookstores are ones that adults enjoy too. She applauded the idea of moms and daughters sharing books, which is an idea further discussed by Aline, who loves reading to her daughter and asked when is a good time to begin being part of a book group? Is five too young?
What do you think? Can a five-year-old be part of a book group? Can television and computer time become secondary to reading? Can adults and children, whether they are related by family ties or by reading tastes, discuss books together in a group, on equal terms as readers of the same book? And how has the reading that you have done with your children affected your own reading choices?
Let’s talk.
