Our Reading Lives Reflection
Who have been the influential readers in your life?
“What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how.”
—William Wordsworth, The Prelude
This quote taken from William Wordsworth’s poem, The Prelude, appears as an epigraph in the first chapter of my first book, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child (Jossey-Bass, 2009). I chose this quote because it speaks to our collective influence when raising children to enjoy reading. If adults show young people what a love for reading looks and feels like, they will be more inclined to do it. With our encouragement and enthusiasm, children will learn to love reading, too.
Our daughters, Celeste and Sarah, are grown now. From their earliest memories, books, libraries, and reading have been part of their lives. We took them to the library and Half-Price Books on a regular basis and always valued their reading tastes and interests. Our three grandchildren (16, 13, and 7) were born into this reading culture, too. No matter what else we have accomplished as parents and grandparents, Don and I have passed along our love for reading and books.
(Along with our love for animals, board games, and musicals.)
Can you trace your love for reading back to someone influential in your life? Was there a family member like a parent or grandparent who modeled reading joy for you? What about your teachers or librarians? Who were your early reading influences?
Have you been able to pass along a love of reading to someone in your life? Your children or students, perhaps? What does this signify to you?
Absolutely, my Father Bear was a voracious reader as I was from the time I started reading aged 3. If I ran out of my books, I'd start in on his shelf, often reading way above my head at times - haha!) - but reading Steinbeck (whom I still admire so much) from around 12 years old, and our own Paul Brickhill (all the war books - my dad knew him and was himself, an air gunner/wireless operator in Lancasters in the RAF). My older brother (7 years older) was also a greedy reader, I mostly snaffled his non-fiction books (lots of those 60s type encyclopedia fact books), poetry (his textbooks from school) and anything ancient history. I still have many of their books, they've both been gone for over 20 years and their books and the memmories of talking books help me when I'm missing them so much.
The Wild Robot is the first full-length novel my granddaughter has read on her own. She zoomed on to the next two Robot books and now she is reading them aloud, to her stuffed tiger. Knowing how much she loved the books, I took up the first one--and it turned out to be a reading experience I'd never had before. I saw every scene through my grandbaby's wide eyes and felt every sorrow and joy with her small, loving heart. It's rare nowadays that a book feels so completely urgent to me--what a gift to be viscerally reminded what story can mean to a child.