On that day, upon returning to the hotel room, the TV went on just like it would in your family. Then, throughout their life, modeling a life that read.īut then another thought entered my mind: What led us to read that day? The same thing that had led us to read a thousand days before. It started by doing what my mother did-talking about books like they were truly a pleasure. But there was something that caused my children to love a book. I remember thinking that we didn’t do anything-we genuinely enjoyed reading. She said it was a wonderful sight, and wondered how we did it. My wife, bless her soul, was actually reading one of her husband’s books.Ī woman walked over to our table, openly marveling at seeing six people – and particularly four children – reading. A history by David McCullough, I believe, finally won. I had my own stack of books beside me, as if they were a mound of pastries that I couldn’t yet decide which to eat first. My oldest daughter was tearing through the latest installment of Harry Potter in order to pass it on to her siblings my other daughter was soldiering her way through Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov my oldest son was reading – again – Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings and my youngest son was laughing uproariously over some unfortunate event conceived by Lemony Snicket. One day, during one of the afternoons back at the hotel, we were sitting in the atrium around a table doing what came naturally to us as a family. There for a week, our pattern was to go to the parks early in the morning, come back to the hotel for a mid-afternoon break, and then go back out for the evening. In my book A Mind for God I wrote of a time my family and I traveled to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. And, like with any magician’s trick, picking a story apart and learning how it’s done before you have experienced its wonder risks destroying the magic. Young people should experience the intrinsic pleasure of taking a narrative journey, making an emotional connection with a character (including ones different from themselves), and wondering what will happen next-then finding out. Particularly when the only goal is to analyze. “Jumping into a paragraph in the middle of a book,” she writes, “is about as appealing for most kids as cleaning their room.” No wonder the love of reading is extinguished.įor goodness’ sake, let them read the book! As Marsh notes, let them laugh at Amelia’s antics first. Imagine being in the third grade and given the following assignment regarding assigned reading: “Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.”Īnd imagine doing this from the reading of a single paragraph from Peggy Parish’s Amelia Bedelia. “Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing the organic enjoyment.” Through a focus on critical reading and analysis, the “love of books and storytelling is being lost.” No longer is the goal to read as many books as possible, much less to engage emotionally with them. Largely because of the way our educational system teaches kids to relate to books. To this moment, the perfect day is one with a sky full of dark and heavy clouds promising a furious storm, or inches of snow with a fire in the fireplace and a book waiting by my side. I still have the copy of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, worn from countless readings, given to me on my 12th birthday by my grandmother. Reading was presented as such a ravenous delight that I could be punished by not being allowed to go to the library.Īs a young boy, I can remember devouring Ellery Queen mysteries on long vacation drives taking a hot bath and reading The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder curling up in the bay window of a local library, as cascades of rain dripped down the glass, with a harrowing tale of Blackbeard the Pirate. When she finished describing it, I had to read it. My mother could talk about a book like it was something good to eat. But according to the article itself, published in The Atlantic and written by Katherine Marsh, it’s something else. The immediate, intuitive, answer would somehow trace back to screens.
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