Picture Book Club

Parents and caregivers groan when kids ask them to read a favorite again and again and again -- there is only so long you can stomach reading the same book night after night without feeling a little crazy when they ask you to read it yet again.  But rest assured that there are some very positive reasons to reread books (even if you are the one doing the reading).  A fairly recent article found that when people reread books, it's more emotional, which actually can be beneficial for the reader (or, surely, the listener, for kids who are too young to read it themselves).

Basically the first time you read a book, you are paying so much more attention to the details of the plot, setting, and so on, that you don't have as much of a chance to get emotionally involved with the characters and their stories.  The second time around (as well as the hundredth), you know the story, so you have an opportunity to explore the emotional side a little more in depth, connecting with and improving upon the remembered emotions from the first reading.

So a favorite book to a child is probably more than just a favorite book.  It's a comfortable thing, as well as an emotional thing.

If you are getting bored with reading the book, though, try changing things up a little: doing the voices a little differently and that sort of thing.  You can also find activities and crafts to do to celebrate the favorite book -- for instance, you can make green eggs and ham in real life, or perhaps draw more monsters for Max to rule in Where the Wild Things Are.

We all have favorites that we like to revisit periodically -- this article shows that there is a reason why!

The other day, the preschool-age boy I nanny for brought home Frog and Toad are Friends from his school library.  Although his reading skills are not yet quite far advanced enough to take advantage of the book's true purpose -- as reading practice for beginning readers -- I discovered that it also makes for a very good set of stories when read aloud.

More than anything, though, I enjoyed this reminder of one of my favorite early reading books.

The Frog and Toad books are timeless classics for early readers.  Frog and Toad are Friends, the first in the series, was published more than 40 years ago, yet all of these books are still sold (and loved!) today by young readers.  Recently I went to the kids' section in the bookstore to buy a few early reader books for a different boy I babysit for sometimes, and Pokemon "I Can Read" books were sitting side by side with the Frog and Toad books.

I'm sure that part of the reason these books are so popular still is that parents like the thought of sharing with their kids a piece of their own childhoods.  I can still remember how much I loved reading about Frog and Toad as a kid -- two unlikely friends who did everything together.  These books rank right up there with books like Bread and Jam for Frances on my list of most memorable children's books.

What books from your childhood have you shared with your children?  Or are there any books you plan on sharing with them as they get a little older?

Today I saw a story on NPR about the new Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Walter Dean Myers.  He is the third person to be chosen for this two-year post.  During the radio interview, he talks about how he wants more kids to be read to nationwide.

It's a generally held belief that kids need to be read to every day from an early age in order to teach them to respect books, love reading, and most importantly of all, to read well.  Most families I've babysat over the years have dutifully incorporated "story time" into their bedtime routines, but is that really all that's needed to teach kids to embrace books?

In fact, it's not.  Reading to kids daily certainly helps, but studies have also found a significant correlation between years of education and how many books the child's home had as they were growing up.  The implication is that being surrounded by books actually has more of an impact on literacy and a love of reading, and if you picture parents who hate reading treating bedtime stories as a chore, you can probably see why.

But wait -- before you run out and buy lots of books for your house, consider this: These studies looked at the number of books in the house simply because it was a good indicator of how the parents and the rest of the family feel about reading.  Adults who love to read, and who value books, tend to own a lot of books.  Adults who don't, won't.

So, in truth, what this all comes down to is modeling a desired behavior -- "monkey see, monkey do," one of the best ways to teach a child anything, whether intentionally or inadvertently.  Parents who fill their house with books and spend their free time reading are likely to encourage their kids to value literacy, whether they realize it or not.

This doesn't mean you can or should give up the daily storytime -- it IS still important to read to kids, after all -- just that the storytime alone isn't enough.  If you design your life around a respect for the written word, your kids will naturally grow up in an environment where reading is an important and valued skill.

In a previous post, I talked about my favorite Christmas books, including 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, which my dad would traditionally read to me and my sister before bed on Christmas Eve.  Considering the fond memories I have surrounding this classic Christmas story, I was thrilled to find a free storybook app of the 1912 edition of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas available for the Nook.

I love to see ebooks and book apps that digitalize original (or at least old) illustrations.  In this case, the 1912 edition was illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, a well-known illustrator whose work appeared in magazines and children's books.  I have several children's books illustrated by her, and I love her work, so I was happy to see it had been immortalized for new generations in this free app.

The app itself is nothing fancy -- it doesn't read to you, like the Peter Rabbit app I reviewed last week, it doesn't play any background music, and there aren't any interactive images.  It's about as close to an ebook it can get and still be called a storybook app.  But I don't mind, because the pages are laid out nicely, and the images are preserved in vivid color.  Each page has a few more lines of verse, along with original illustrations from the 1912 edition, laid out to look like they are meant to be viewed on the Nook.

As you can tell, I am becoming quite enamored of storybook apps.  The more I explore them, the more I think both ebooks and apps do a great job of entertaining today's technology-enamored kids, while still maintaining the importance of reading!