I love to read with my kids. My son is now 4 and loves to read anything from baby board books to short chapter books, so how we read together over the years has changed a lot, but reading has always filled a special place in our home. We are very lucky to have had no regular screen time for him up until now (before COVID, it was a parenting choice because we did not like how even short exposure to screens affected his moods, but after the pandemic started, I am cognizant of how much of a privilege it is to parent without screens). Because of this, books play a huge role in our down time. I thought I would write a post to share what types of books and what styles of reading have worked best for us, in case this helps anyone else. When my son was a baby, he immediately liked interactive books and music. He loved the baby animal books with flaps, of course. We also have a shark finger puppet book Little Shark, and when I read it, I interleave the actual book text with "little shark, doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo" rhythm from the Baby Shark song while wiggling the shark finger puppet. He also liked Snuggle Puppy, because I made up a tune to go with the book and would sing the tune every time. (I probably should have looked up the actual Sandra Boynton song, but once I made up a tune, we just stuck by it, and even my husband sings my tune.) Similarly, he liked Moo, Baa, La La La and we would always sing the "la la la" part with gusto. Even my one-year-old sings it now, which is adorable! When my son got a little older, his favorite musical books included The Wonky Donky and Coat of Many Colors (both songs now stream conveniently on Alexa). My husband loves to beatbox his way through The Pout-Pout Fish and Chicka Chicka ABC. These sing-song books have stood the test of time, and my daughter loves them, too! A few books that we love for dancing include Hokey Pokey Elmo (my one-year-old recently learned to turn herself around during this song, which is amazing) and From Head to Toe by Eric Carle. We also love rhymes at our house. We started our son on the beginner Dr. Seuss books (gifted to us by our neighbors when our son turned 1), but have since moved on to various intermediate Seuss Books (all hand-me-downs from neighbors), even though some of them are significantly longer than the beginner books. He loves the stories, the pictures, and the rhymes. For his recent birthday during COVID shelter-at-home, I actually executed my idea of drawing Dr. Seuss's Birthday Bird (a character from one of his intermediate books) on our sidewalk during his nap. He loved it and was able to enjoy the chalk drawing for weeks before it was washed off by the rain! The rhymes in Dr. Seuss's books were so good for his language development, that he began making his own rhyming phrases using non-real words by the time he was in preschool. Intermediate Dr. Seuss books also have pretty sophisticated vocabulary, which I try to remember to highlight from time to time. As a toddler, L liked to multi-task while listening to our reading of books and would crawl around instead of sitting on my lap while I was reading. To check in on his attention, I began to purposely switch out words, "We looked! And we saw him -- the dog in the pants!" and he would immediately correct me, "No, the cat in the hat!" It quickly became a running joke; every day, with every book, we would read with so many intentional errors, and L would keep correcting each one. At some point, he became impatient and would recite entire pages to us from memory. Around age 3, we started talking about the feelings of the characters, because I realized that although L could memorize the text, he often could not articulate the characters' motivations. With some encouragement and modeling, he began to use words like "mad", "sad", "happy", and "scared" to explain what is happening in the books. Sometimes he said "frustrated", but I was not sure he actually knew what it meant. I loved the Busy Bus books for this, as well as The Giving Tree and Giraffs Can't Dance, but pretty much every book we read, it was possible to ask him about the characters' emotions. This was when I began viewing picture books as a means to an end, as a lens to understand the world around us. Since then, we have used picture books as a launchpad to talking about: racism (Knock Knock by Daniel Beaty and The Case for Loving by Selina Alko); election (Amelia Bedelia's First Vote by Herman Parish); homelessness (Trupp: A Fuzzhead Tail by Janelle Cannon); and blended families (Tumbleweed Baby by Anna Meyers). I have some books coming from the library that are about gender roles and sexual orientation (I am Jazz and Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress). As I discussed in my previous post, I have also used picture books to open doors to mathematical discussions, and I find that books are great at all ages for opening dialogues to new topics. When we potty-trained, I loved Super Pooper and "Bloop, Bloop!" Goes the Poop from the huge stack of potty-training picture books I picked up from the library. Similarly, in transitioning to big brotherhood, L really loved reading Where do Babies Come From? by Jillian Roberts and Hello in There by Jo Witek before his sister was born; after she was born, Ginger by Charlotte Voake and Babies Ruin Everything! by Matthew Swanson were favorites in our house. We read Babies Ruin Everything! so many times, that I felt like L was definitely affirmed in his angst toward the new baby, while we were both able to laugh about it.
I also enjoy reading some books with L that challenge him to think beyond the literal text. You would think that metaphors are too abstract for kids, but L seems to understand when I talk about the stories being actually about something else. Some examples I can think of include: Yertle the Turtle; The Giving Tree; My First Kafka; and This is Not a Picture Book! Upon my nudging, L was able to appreciate the figurative language used in the gorgeous writing of Owl Moon, and told his dad that the book uses words to "make it feel like you are there." In Every Moon is a book whose text is a beautiful poem; it is a bit abstract but imaginative. My son likes it, and we have talked about the recursive nature of the book. What If... by Samantha Berger is a book gifted to us on L's second birthday; the author's note at the end is so special and re-frames the book to be about both creativity and perseverance, that L asks me to read the author's note to him every time. I also enjoy reading occasional books to the kids in other languages. We had a hand-me-down Clifford book that is bilingual in both English and Spanish, that is a hit with both of our kids. They actually love hearing me read the same book in Spanish and Chinese! We have a copy of The Color Monster pop-up book in French that was a gift from my sister, whose partner is French. I translated the book into written English (a tedious task -- I should have probably Googled earlier to find that there are already English versions online) and then I translate it orally to Chinese on the fly. I generally read all story-heavy English books by translating it into Chinese on the fly, but now that L is reading some English chapter books on his own, we often alternate reading different pages, and usually I do that in English in order to keep the flow going. Other books that have been well-loved in our house include classic series like: Elephant and Piggie; Knuffle Bunny; Olivia the Pig; Clifford the Big Red Dog; Corduroy; and Alexander (a la Judith Viorst). L loved Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day so much that I ended up checking out all of the Alexander books for him from the library. A couple of the later books were twice as long as the first Alexander book and were clearly intended for a slightly older audience, but L loved them all the same. (Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday also has a lot of wonderful references to coin values. Great math link, even though the items are priced way too low by today's standards!) L also loves We Hate Rain! by James Stevenson, and that was among his first exposure to graphic novel-style books. We have also read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The Magic School Bus: Inside the Human Body, which L liked but I thought were meant for an older reader. I have particularly enjoyed watching L looking closely at pictures in books over the years. Some of his books have almost no words, and the entire story is told through a carefully crafted sequence of pictures! The first such book that both of my kids love is Higher! Higher! (currently one of my daughter's favorite books) by Leslie Patricelli. When we read it together, my daughter has opportunities to high-five me and to wave at the different characters that appear. She also says, "盪!" ("swing") and "高" ("high"), because she loves the swing theme in the book. The books I like for close reading of pictures include: Oops by Arthur Geisert; In the Town, All Year Round by Rotraut Susanne Berner; and Busytown by Richard Scarry. My husband does not have enough patience for In the Town, All Year Round, but it is one of my favorite books on the shelf. It was gifted to my son by one of his classmates' mom, and it is just a marvelous book. There are a couple of dozen scenes of the same town throughout the entire year, and you can trace the storylines and friendships of a dozen characters through those scenes. In each season, there are also some vehicles and themes that tie the whole season together, and there are usually elements of surprise tucked away at every turn-of-page. It is exquisitely illustrated. Maybe because L is used to looking closely at pictures, he often astonishes me with his attention to detail. For example, once when we were reading the book Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, he stopped me on the page when the bulldozer was tucked into bed to tell me that, actually, the digger sleeps on the other side of that wall. He proved his point by cross-referencing different pages of the book to show me that the illustrations on all the pages are all spatially coherent. Recently, I noticed (after reading Sheep in a Jeep for like 300 times) that one of the sheep has a brown head through most of the book. I asked L if he knew where it was from, and he said matter-of-factly, "Yeah, it was because he fell (head-first) into the mud in the beginning of the book." Similarly, in A Hippo's Tale, he cross-referenced pictures from multiple parts of the book to tell me that the initial setup of the beach already showed where Mrs. Hippopotamus's hut is located, because you can verify the details from later in the book to know that that is her hut in the corner of the page spread. I am always pleasantly surprised by his attentiveness to the pictures. I am sure that is good pre-academic practice for school somehow, like for the sense-making that we want our kids to have across all the courses. Recently, I have been thinking about how L is ready to learn science through his books. By chance, we came across two neat science books from Little Free Reading Libraries near us: The Open Ocean, a delightful pop-up book by Bernadette Gervais and Francesco Pittau and Benny's Animals, a wonderful chapter book by Millicent Selsam about classification of animals. Eric Carle has a book Pancakes, Pancakes! that has a page that illustrates how water and a pair of gears work together at the mill to turn grains of wheat into flour. As he grows, I look forward to how his books will grow with him. Once L got through the 100 reading lessons and all of the Bob books and the few beginning reader books I bought for him (What This Story Needs is a Pig in a Wig; A Pig, a Fox, and a Box; Elephant and Piggie set; and The Cookie Fiasco), he has been dipping his toes into reading some chapter books that I have checked out from the library. For chapter books, L has been reading the Mercy Watson series, which I feel lukewarm about, but my son apparently adores. I think that he likes the series partly because I made up a musical jingle for Leroy Ninker's silly "Yippie-I-O" rhymes. It has been a challenge balancing reading Mercy Watson with L and not neglecting his little sister, however, because each of those books can take us 20-40 minutes of continuous reading. (If he co-reads with me, it can take a long time, but even if I read it straight-up, each book can take 20+ minutes.) As soon as we finish one of them, he wants to pick up another one. I feel both happy that he is now emerging as a mature reader and sad that my first baby is growing up. What books do you love for your kids?
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About MeBorn in Asia, I have spent more than a third of my life living outside of the U.S. thus far. I currently reside in the Pacific Northwest with my techie husband and two biracial children. Categories
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