From the Scholastic Bookshelf: How to Talk to Your Kid About Reading

The act of reading opens our eyes and minds to the wonders of the universe. Through literacy, your child can follow their deep interests and learn to articulate their ideas and opinions on the world stage. 

Good reading habits begin with you: Reading to your child for 20 minutes a day boosts literacy skills and fosters a love of reading. Over 75 percent of parents establish a read-aloud routine within their child’s first year — usually at bedtime — according to the Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report.

When your child is young, reading to them is crucial for development: Your voice inflection, narrative rhythm, and tracking of text with your finger forms the basis of their phonics skills. After your child begins school, the read-aloud routine becomes a place where they can test their comprehension skills and practice their fluency reading text out loud on their own. (Here are more reasons to read to your elementary schooler every night.)

Throughout childhood, stock your home with a variety of books so your young reader can begin to discover their interests. If you’re looking for books that instill the message that reading is an important and joyful part of everyday life, Scholastic can help.

For its 100th anniversary, Scholastic spoke with experts to identify a set of books, articles, and tips that make fostering good reading habits fun and exciting. These resources are part of a broader initiative, called the Scholastic Bookshelf, created for Instagram to raise awareness around contemporary issues affecting children today.

Books About Learning to Read

Picture books about concepts (like feelings) and good habits (like reading) are a portal through which children can discover the mystery and wonder of daily life. They are a salve for worried kiddos and a tool parents can use to introduce model behavior. Lots of picture books stress the value and excitement of learning to read. 

How Do Dinosaurs Learn to Read? is a lighthearted story about the do's and don’ts of reading by a few well-known stars of the Mezozoic Era. In this installment of the best-selling series for toddlers, a league of dinosaurs experiment with ways to enjoy books — throwing them, soaking them in the bathtub — before finally cracking them open. Children who find the task of learning to read overwhelming will delight in the combination of rhyming verse and illustrations of life-size dinos in kid-size bedrooms. 

There’s a reason animal friends appear frequently in children’s literature: They make complex topics approachable and easy to understand. Author and illustrator Rosemary Wells is known for her gentle, sophisticated animal characters with important life lessons to share. In Read to Your Bunny, a rhyming poem, art imitates life with this simple dictum: “Read to your bunny often, and your bunny will read to you.”

Reading is empowering, and no book underscores this message like The Word Collector by Peter H. Reynolds, the New York Times best-selling author of Be You! and Say Something! In this extraordinary tale, a boy named Jerome discovers his love for words: short words, medium-size words, and multisyllabic words that sound like little songs. A celebration of language and literacy, The Word Collector is about Jerome finding his words and sharing them with the world.

An Article About Learning to Read

You and your child may encounter challenges on the way to reading and writing — and that’s OK. There are workarounds and special skills that can be learned to overcome frustration. 

“I Struggled to Read,” in Scholastic Action magazine, is the story of teenager Jaylen’s experience growing up with dyslexia, a learning disorder characterized by difficulty reading. About 1 in 10 Americans shows some symptom of dyslexia. 

Jaylen learned his letters just fine in early elementary school, but around 4th grade he began having trouble reading. His teachers gave him extra time to finish tests and homework, but he still struggled to make sense of what he read and explain it in his own words. By 7th grade, he was taking so long to do his homework that his friends stopped inviting him to play after school.

Testing at a learning center revealed Jaylen is dyslexic. Since then, he’s discovered tools and strategies for achieving academic success, like listening to audiobook versions of assigned reading; recording study notes on his phone instead of writing them down; and using speech-to-text software to compose essays. 

Now a high school junior, and with more free time in his schedule, Jaylen has a 4.0 GPA and plays on the high school basketball team. He even gave a speech recently at a schoolwide public speaking event. 

Be sure to visit the Scholastic Bookshelf for more resources on fostering a love of reading and other must-discuss topics. If you’re planning to talk with your child about other complex topics and seek tips or book recommendations, we invite you to visit our Tough Topics hub. You’ll find a wealth of advice from Scholastic editors to help you navigate challenging conversations thoughtfully. Recent topic additions include:

• Anxiety
• Bullying
• Depression

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