England, 1152: After seventeen years of civil war, things are about to change...

England, 1152: After seventeen years of civil war, things are about to change...

A few days ago, SmartBitches had a blog on the topic of how to foster a love of books & reading.   It’s a fabulously important topic, & especially relevant here, don’t you think?, among moms (and dads) who write.

In this age, when there is so much information and stimuli vying for our children’s attention, when reading takes long and Twitter takes short, when people can barely be bothered to pay attention to they person they are with because they are too intent on IM-ing they person they aren’t with, I think there’s a renewed urgency to foster a love of books (and all things that require one to attend and reflect, but that’s another blog, another topic.)

So, how do you do it?  Whether your children are 2 or 12 or 22, how do you go about fostering a love of books and reading? Do you do it intentionally?  And why do it at all?

Because I’m annoying in this way, I went to a dictionary immediately (could this be one way to foster a love of words with my son?  Or a way to annoy the h*ll out of him?  Only time will tell…)  I looked up what ‘foster’ meant.  “To promote the growth or development of.”

Sure.  Got it.    Kinda like, “Foster: Verb, meaning to foster.”

I liked the synonyms better.  Here we get favor, forward, advance; foment, instigate. Nurse, nourish, sustain, support, maintain.

Then I was told to See ‘Cherish‘

Oh, yes!  I want to see Cherish.

It implies giving affection, care, or shelter to something.  Cherish suggests regarding or treating something as an object of affection or as valuable.

Oh, yes.  Yes, yes yes.    I’ll tell you what gave me shivers from the above.  ‘To give shelter to.”   I’d never thought of myself as ‘giving shelter to’ books, to the ideas contained within.  But we are, aren’t we?  And that’s why we foster the love, right?   It’s not a love of books per sé, it’s a love of thoughts and ideas, and the way they make us feel.

When we cherish books, we’re saying ‘This matters” and “I will protect the thoughts and ideas radiating out from this book.”  I will protect this incubator of ideas and emotions.  I will give safe harbor to the ideas in this book, and to more than just this one book, which I may even find objectionable, but to the idea of ideas.  To accessing ideas.  To the opportunity of ideas.

B-O-O-K-S, BOOKS!  But, cheering doesn’t seem sufficient, does it?   So what else do we need to do, aside from the pom-poms?  (By the way, I do have pom-pom for certain books, and my son thinks I’m nuts.  And . . . we have glorious fun when we pull those books out.  But I digress. . .)

We model the love of books, firstly and lastly, don’t we?  You can’t counsel green beans unless you’re willing to eat them yourself.  Or rather, of course, we can counsel to our heart’s content, but we’ll be ineffective.

So, we read.   Our children watch.  And those images sinks in, little stones into the oceans of their minds.

We get involved.  We rejoice in a great book, a well-wrought sentence.  We get angry at imaginary characters.  We let ourselves be affected.  (I believe we spend far too much time in our culture trying to be impermeable, but that is another topic, for another blog entirely, so I will not digress on this either.  Promise.)

Oh, and we enjoy.  We don’t treat books like said green beans, insofar as they are an objectionable but necessary part of a psychic diet.  Oh, no, we relish.

But . . . I think there is an element to fostering a love of books where we also treat it like a responsibility.  That doesn’t mean a somber, grave and terrible thing.  I have many responsibilities which are very important, and I carry them lightly, with joy.  Such as . . . bring a parent.

No, I think it means recognizing a thing matters, and, knowing that, we make sure to cherish the thing.  In this case, books.  And, contrary to some, I don’t think we do our children a disservice when we have required reading lists in school.  I agree with Candy, the author of the post mentioned above.

The problem in schools doesn’t come from the presence of a required reading list.  It comes from the lack of  joy in the teaching.  (Which, in turn, may be ‘fostered’ by overburdened classrooms, yet another topic I will not digress onto.  Ah, the joie of tangents.)

The love of reading comes in large part from experiencing the joie of the ‘educator’ (teacher, parent, whomever).  I think this is what most affects whether our children see books as a thing to cherish, or a chore.

So, I will be watching my child’s teachers & school district closely.   If they do not communicate a certain joie de livre (joy of books), then I will be there, both at home and in the school, to make sure the children in my community get to see that books are fun, exciting, and essential.

England, 1152: After seventeen years of civil war, things are about to change...

England, 1152: After seventeen years of civil war, things are about to change...

But of course, this will mean getting involved in the classroom. I don’t know about your district, but mine is always looking for reading tutors.  It’s so sad, that there’s not enough teachers, not enough time.   They need us.

Imagine a veritable army of romance writers going into the schools, throwing pebbles of excitement and joy into the oceans of our children’s  minds.  Imagine showing how to cherish and revere books and ideas.  What a wonderful, fun mission, were we to take it on.

I think the best way we can foster a love of books is to simultaneously cherish and tr them as a solemn responsibility.  And have blast while we’re doing it.

What about you?  How do you foster a love of book & reading in your family?  Ever tutored?