“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” - Emilie Buchwalk (2003)

Award winning children’s author, Emilie Buchwalk’s words ring true with both parents and educators. Books are the springboard for conversations about family, friends and places we have seen, and studies have shown, children who read or discuss books with their parents will perform better academically (Kloosterman, 2011).

One of the best parts of my day is curling up with my 5 year old son to read before bed. My colleague also finds time to cuddle up with her teenager. Although it isn’t in a bed and they may not be reading aloud, they are still talking about books in connection with their life, family, friends and global issues. And it is evident from our library reports on book circulation that families at CIS believe in the importance of reading.

For CIS Librarians, our Author Week goal was to encourage our students to find a new author or genre to fall in love with. It is common at the beginning of the year for students to gravitate back to their favourite books so they need guidance to find some new and challenging books to read. As librarians, we believe in the empowerment of student choice. We teach students how to select an appropriate and challenging book, one that is ‘just right’. This is done to help them become better readers. What strategies do we employ to do this you might ask. Students were invited to an ‘author tasting’ where we encouraged them to sample different books, from a range of genres, that they wouldn’t normally explore. At the end of the tasting, every single student left with something new, either a book that was by a different author or a new genre.

Our modern world today is filled to the brim with distraction or alternatives. Our devices’ banners and pop-up reminders disrupt the natural flow of reading and thinking. Television and gaming systems are so visually enticing that they can appear more attractive than book. Research by the National Literacy Trust in the UK shows that only three in 10 children spend some of their own time reading books. The survey of more than 21,000 children found a notable decline in the number of children reading for pleasure between 2005 and 2011. Pleasurable reading is a wonderful tool to increase a child’s vocabulary without seeming like studying (Collins, 2005). If students read less at home, their vocabulary is in danger of becoming stagnant. As role models, we need to be balanced in our work and play times in order to encourage, guide, discuss, and support our children in the wonderful exploration of literature

As a result of author week, we found a greater diversity of books being checked out - even after the week came to a close. We were delighted to see the books moving off our shelves and to see students excited to discover something new. Many students surprised themselves and felt they’d taken an important step in the journey to become a better reader. Our work didn’t stop with students though. We included a session inviting parents to come and taste some new authors too. It was a wonderful chance to talk about books and to confess our literacy loves with fellow parents. We regularly host ‘Library Bytes’ sessions for parents, so if you have any questions about developing a love of literature, or have ideas you’d like to share, please contact us.

If you have any further wonderings about the power and wonder of the narrative tale, I encourage you to watch the Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘The Danger of the Single Story’ (2009). Chimamanda eloquently describes her journey as a reader and what power reading a variety of books brought to her perspective on life and the world.

So what are you waiting for CIS. Visit your library and try something new!

Work Cited

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. "The Danger of a Single Story." TedGlobal, July 2009. Speech.

Collins, Molly Fuller. “ESL Preschoolers' English Vocabulary Acquisition from Storybook Reading.” Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 4, 2005, pp. 406–408. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4151659.

Kloosterman, Rianne, et al. “The Effects of Parental Reading Socialization and Early School Involvement on Children's Academic Performance: A Panel Study of Primary School Pupils in the Netherlands.” European Sociological Review, vol. 27, no. 3, 2011, pp. 291–306. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41236594.