# How to Raise a Reader ## Metadata - Author: [[Pamela Paul, Maria Russo, Dan Yaccarino, Lisk Feng, Vera Brosgol, and Monica Garwood]] - Full Title: How to Raise a Reader - Category: #source/books ## Highlights - Children who read are, yes, likely to excel academically, but there’s much more to the picture. The latest research shows that children who read at home are also better at self-regulation and executive function—those life skills that make us happier and well adjusted: controlling impulses, paying attention, setting goals and figuring out how to achieve them. Think of this as “life readiness.” By being part of your child’s reading life—by setting out purposefully to raise a reader—you’re helping her become someone who controls her own destiny. ([Location 46](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=46)) - School is where children learn that they have to read. Home is where kids learn to read because they want to. It’s where they learn to love to read. ([Location 50](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=50)) - Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach ([Location 72](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=72)) - Note: Book recommendation - “A minute spent reading to your kids now will repay itself a million-fold later,” the author George Saunders once wrote, “not only because they love you for reading to them, but also because, years later, when they’re miles away, those quiet evenings when you were tucked in with them, everything quiet but the sound of the page-turns, will seem to you, I promise, sacred.” ([Location 93](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=93)) ### Born to Read #### Reading to Your Baby - It comes down to this: If you want to raise a reader, be a reader. ([Location 144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=144)) - Research shows that the number of words an infant is exposed to has a direct effect on language development and literacy, whether they understand them immediately or not. Many of us know this instinctively; it’s why we find ourselves incessantly babbling away while changing a diaper. But here’s the catch to language exposure: Those words have to be live, in person, and directed at the child. Turning on a video, or even an audiobook, doesn’t count. This is about you reading aloud to them. ([Location 158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=158)) - Purple House Press, a website that sells classics that had previously gone out of print, ([Location 191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=191)) - Note: That's super neat - But you may notice some startlingly antiquated text or images in those great classics. The little girls in those charming Golden Books stories from the forties may be invariably blond and pinafored. They all want to be nurses while their brothers aspire to be doctors. Where are all the brown- and black-skinned kids, and why is Christmas the only holiday? Many classic children’s books are now considered sexist, racist, outdated, and, in certain ways, downright awful. Kids are occasionally referred to as “stupid.” Children treat one another in bullying ways that would nowadays land them swiftly in the principal’s office. Parents tell their children not to talk at the dinner table. Go ahead and make old books better, if you can (some, alas, are irredeemable). Feel free to tweak the text when you’re reading out loud. Edit them as you narrate; especially at this early stage, your child won’t notice, and you can give them the good parts and leave out the bad. ([Location 192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=192)) - Note: Love the diversity, equity, and inclusion perspective on this. #### Reading with Toddlers - Gradually, and then suddenly—that’s how Ernest Hemingway described going broke. ([Location 340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=340)) ##### Open Up Their Worlds - Take advantage of this time to expose them to a balanced cast in their books, and help children of both sexes spend time with themes that might seem exclusively or stereotypically “boy oriented” (say, trucks, machinery, sports) or “girl oriented” (say, friendship, cooking, fairies). Seek out books that show girls being active and assertive and boys being sensitive and nurturing. Books that feature a protagonist whose gender is not clear are great, too (animals! robots! ), for implanting the idea that gender roles and identities don’t have to be set in stone, and that beyond “masculine” or “feminine” is simply “human.” ([Location 362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=362)) ##### Reflect the Real World - All children need to see themselves reflected in stories. ([Location 370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=370)) - As you read with them, you’re helping prepare them for life in a diverse world—and you’re helping to build their capacity for empathy. ([Location 373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=373)) - Literacy experts talk about the need for a child to be exposed to books that are both “mirrors and windows,” in the words of the scholar Dr. Rudin Sims Bishop. Some should be mirrors in which a child can see herself. Others, windows into the experiences of people who are different. By giving your toddler both kinds of books, you’re helping with the task of learning how to value and respect himself while also valuing and respecting others. ([Location 376](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=376)) - Note: SUcha goodexample of how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are slearnd behaviors and that they're profoundly important in raising generations of aware people. ##### Develop Rituals Around Reading - Encourage children to express what they like about their books, and find more books like those. ([Location 401](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07NMTJC2H&location=401))