We always get a kick out of National Book Month. Not so much because it’s highlighted on our calendar — I didn’t even know it was National Book Month until Mrs. Woody told me it was this morning — but rather for its entertainment value.
Mrs. Woody pointed me to an article in LDSLiving Magazine called A Great Escape. The article was a staff piece that chats up the benefits of reading in a family dynamic, and provides a few pointers they took from the National Book Foundation for “getting the whole family involved in National Book Month.”
First one on the list: “Family trips to the local library. Encourage each family member to check out at least one book.”
Or simply stop by my house, and you can borrow several of our library books.
One book each? We are a family of voracious readers. Daddy can’t always take time to read because he’s always under hideous deadlines at work, but reads whenever he can. The girls, however, are rarely without a book (or three) under way. Mrs. Woody taught them both to read early on, and both girls were well above level by the time they were of kindergarten age. It’s only gotten better with time.
In fact, nine year old Doodle just finished the entire Harry Potter series this year for the first time. She’s read the first few novels several times before, but was always a little scared of the later books. This year she finally got motivated and read all the way through them.
Our trips to the library require a special backpack on wheels. A typical trip to the library for this family begins with rounding up all the books we’ve finished. This is made easier by having the girls put them underneath the end table that we use as our “Library Table.” We stuff them all into the backpack, which is usually filled to capacity, and return them at the desk.
We have to return them at the desk partly because we’re pretty sure the library has misplaced one or two of our returns over time, and we don’t want to have to pay for them. But mostly it’s because our library cards are nearly always at or near capacity, and we need to have books checked in before we can check any more out. It’s a vicious cycle.
So, I’m sorry, but encouraging my children to check out just one book would be tantamount to child abuse in this home. We feel cruel when we limit them to five apiece. My arthritic limbs appreciate their restraint, though.
I blame my mother for part of this, by the way. Here’s another woman who cannot walk into a library without checking out at least ten or more volumes. It’s pathological.
The second tip involves “family reading night.” Really? Just the one? We must be overdoing it, because I defy you to visit this family on a night (or day) when we’re not reading. Of course, they amplify this by suggesting that you hold a family discussion, giving everyone a chance to talk about the book they’re reading.
This is fine as far as it goes, but for every pithy tome the girls read, there’s plenty of what I consider to be “fluff” reading as well. These are the series books that you find in the juvenile section that take, maybe, half an hour to read and are filled with characters that, if they were to become films, would make me want to hurl popcorn at the screen. Still, this family discusses plenty of what gets read. It has even led to Jelly taking her first tentative steps into the world of Role Playing Games because her imagination has found such fertile ground in her reading over the years.
This tip was cute: “Family game nights about literature.” Um… like we’d have time for that. Everyone has their nose buried in a book.
The final tip from this article, though, I heartily agree with: “Reading with your kids. Not only does this help your child realize the importance of reading, it is a great opportunity to spend one-on-one time together.”
It should go without saying that Mrs. Woody and I have done this from the start with our girls. From the time they were old enough to hold up their tiny heads, we were reading to them. We got to where Mrs. Woody and I both had memorized several of their favorite stories over time. The girls, too, were memorizing as it turned out. Whenever Woody was tired and wanted to cut story time short, he’d try to abridge the story. The girls would immediately know that Daddy had skipped, and make me go back and do it right.
In a way, it’s sad that we have to work so hard to encourage people to read books. It speaks to the shorter attention spans that people seem to be developing because of half hour sitcoms, sound-bite news, and anything you can find on the internet. Probably one of the reasons why I’m not a more popular blogger is that it takes me so much longer to say what most bloggers can say in a few sentences. I’ve always been too long-winded for the generic internet.
Still, there’s hope. Demonizing an author like J. K. Rowling simply because she chose to write about a world where magic exists with terms like “witchcraft” and “sorcery” should always be balanced against the undeniable fact that she motivated an entire generation of new readers. It does not mean that millions of kids will grow up to become pagans. It does mean that millions of kids may grow up with a greater ability to read and comprehend even greater messages contained in numberless volumes of truly classic literature that a thin, wiry, bespectacled wizard may have unlocked for them.
So celebrate National Book Month. Or, if you’re anything like our family, National Book Life. It makes a difference.
