(no subject)

[the_rck]

I'm contemplating the boxes of children's books in the basement. Some are things I inherited from my mother. Some are things I picked up in high school when I still hoped my brother would turn out to be a reader (the local library was tiny, and there were a lot books I loved that it didn't have). Some are things that I simply grabbed when I saw them out of an uncertainty as to whether or not they'd be available anywhere else.

They're in boxes because we don't have shelf space for them. As Cordelia edges toward chapter books, I've been thinking about going through those boxes. Most of the books will be too old for her for a while yet, but some might be close. I also can't predict how fast she'll improve as a reader.

I keep wondering if there's something I could do to encourage her to read chapter books. I've been holding myself back from it for fear of pushing too hard. I rather expect that it's just another thing that will happen all at once. Right now, she can read a page from a chapter book out loud to me. She just isn't ready to sit down and do that alone or to come back repeatedly to read the next page in sequence. I think she likes the notion, in theory. I don't want to make her feel like she should be doing it already and is failing (a sure method to make her stop reading altogether by making her hate reading). I want her to enjoy reading.

I'm partly thinking about this as I make up her Christmas wishlist for Scott's family. They'd love to give her books, and she's right at a transition. I don't want to ask for chapter books because I don't know when or if they'll get read. I don't want to ask for picture books because they might get abandoned at any moment (or not).

I don't even remember what's in all of those boxes. There's at least one filled with Nancy Drew mysteries and other books I got from my mother, books that had been hers when she was a girl. I don't know if they can be read without disintegrating as they're more than fifty years old. Given that our basement is cool and dry, those books may be better off down there than they'd be upstairs, but they also won't get read if they stay down there.

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Just put the books on the shelves. Then read her books that are a bit too difficult for her to read for herself.

[the_rck]

I'm going to have to pick and choose quite a bit. I've got 4-6 boxes and only one shelf of space in Cordelia's room (enough for about half a box). There are books I'd like to cull from her collection to get more space that she's quite adamant about keeping. I'm sort of hoping that showing her the books that are coming will loosen her attachment to some of the books that she never reads.

At the same time, I hate to push her to get rid of books. After all, I'm reluctant to get rid of *my* books.

We'll probably put more shelves in her room later, when she's actually reading chapter books. We're waiting in hopes that we can find shelves that will fit the available space without blocking the window. I've found the right height but the wrong width and the right width but the wrong height. Maybe in February, Scott will have time to build shelves.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

I have no idea if this would work for any other kid, but, for my voracious reader, we didn't push at all. She spent a very long time devouring dozens of picture books every day, even long after I thought she could read chapter books. Eventually she got hold of a very interesting, very easy, chapter book that happened to be the start of a long series. She devoured that, and went right ahead through the whole series. Today she's happy to gobble down a mixture of chapter books and picture books -- she loves reading anything and everything.

But each kid is different, so I don't know that what was interesting for Kendra would be interesting for Cordelia.

Oh! Kendra donated most of her board books to her baby brother, but picked quite a number of favorites that she wanted to keep in her own room. I was very startled, since I'd been thinking of those books at the family's property, not her personal books. Plus I don't think she reads them anymore. They had belonged to her older brother before her, so I was assuming that we would just transfer them to the baby. But I'm okay with some board books staying in Kendra's room for now; baby Corbin at this point is only interested in some very limited books; he doesn't miss the ones that she kept, and she'll outgrow them eventually.

[the_rck]

Cordelia's current interest is fairies, witches and other bits of magic. She likes the Magic School Bus books, too.

The main thing that I find is that, if I ask her about any book, she wants to keep it.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Hm. Kendra's bridge into chapter books was the Rainbow Magic series. It's about two girls who find fairies. They're pretty commonly available, so you may well have already encountered them. I always expect them to be cloying and then they aren't *quite* as bad as I expected. Kendra started with "Ruby the Red Fairy," which is the first book of the (very long) series, and took off from there. If Cordelia is into fairies, then she might find these interesting too.

[the_rck]

Cordelia likes those books. She hasn't been willing to read them herself yet, though. I've got her to alternate pages with me at bedtime. I'm hoping that will increase her confidence. Sadly, she doesn't seem to care whether she gets to the end of the story or not.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Does she know about browsing through unfamiliar books on the shelves of a bookstore or library to pick out a few she likes? I'm not sure exactly when I learned how to do that, but I could do it by the time I was 7. (I also remember being young enough to believe my father always knew exactly what books he wanted, and was scanning library shelves and flipping pages in order to find them, not to choose them.)

You might keep your old chapter books in the basement, explaining to Cordelia that the cool dry air is good for keeping books in good condition, and taking her down there for regular supervised browsing. I don't know if she'll want to put any of her old picture books in the basement library to save them for posterity. But she's likely to find at least a few books there she wants to take upstairs and read.

[the_rck]

Cordelia went through the boxes with me. She spotted some books she recognized and wanted those, and she seized on the Oz books. She read me a page from one of them (at my request) to prove that they weren't too hard. I've no idea if she'll choose to actually read them.

I don't know that she's good at browsing yet. Her tendency is to grab the first things that look familiar in book stores or libraries (this is why tie-in books sell so well). Part of that is that she doesn't have any idea how books are sorted onto the shelves, so she doesn't necessarily have any idea how to find anything again.

::grins:: She did decide that she absolutely had to have my old Spanish-English dictionary. I have no idea what she'll do with it.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Spanish-English dictionary? Interesting.... :)

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

My brother *loved* reading dictionaries when he was about that age. (I didn't understand him then, either.) He started with The Cat In The Hat Spanish-English/English-Spanish Dictionary which you may be able to find in the library. It's sort of a cross between an alphabet book and a phrasebook for young travelers who find themselves in foreign kindergartens, zoos, etc. There was a very similar one for French. He liked a German dictionary that was written for children, but not such young children...maybe 8-10? It looked more or less like a dictionary, but the font was like a regular book, the definitions were simple, and there were a lot of pictures. For Greek, he wanted a dictionary, but my father gave him alphabet books instead, and that turned out to be good enough.