Reading opens
new worlds.

Why Books Are So Important

Nearly 10 million of America's children struggle to read, according to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Studies have shown that poor reading skills lead to anxiety and low self-esteem in children, and the long-term effects are even more devastating.

New research shows that children whose parents read to them during their critical development years become better readers and do better in school. Furthermore, we know that children who grow up in homes with fewer than 10 books are almost guaranteed to fall far behind in school.

A love of books can be fostered from birth: Babies begin to understand written language when adults read stories to them and when they see their parents reading the newspaper and books for themselves. Parents' reading habits set the stage for their children to become successful readers and writers later in life. This applies to every member of the family, from Mom all the way to aunts, uncles, and Grandpa.

Nothing motivates readers like a good story. "Have you ever heard of a child hiding with a flashlight beneath the covers to read a worksheet?" quips Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook (Penguin, 1995). A child must enjoy books -- the tales they tell and the ideas they ignite -- to spend hours reading. And those hours, according to experts, translate directly into school success, as reading for leisure is the best predictor of children's comprehension, vocabulary, and reading speed.

Books for Kids

Reading expands vocabulary and saturates the mind with the way language is used. For example, an avid reader has seen a semicolon used countless times; he can learn its usage rules easily. Reading teaches kids to think. It exercises the brain by modeling how a thought is developed and explored. Reading broadens children's understanding of the world and fills them with knowledge that billows into all subject areas. Even math scores rise when children increase the time they spend reading.

According to Mary Leonhardt, author of Parents Who Love Reading, Kids Who Don't (Crown, 1993), there is an incredible difference between the avid reader and someone who just gets through reading assignments. Merely knowing how to sound out words is not the same as following complex ideas through sophisticated writing. Success goes to the child who gobbles up books, not the one who merely nibbles at them.

Leonhardt compares avid reading instead to basketball or cooking, where time on the court or in the kitchen builds expertise. Studies show that the most competent readers read 144 times as much as the least able.

If you think your child is logging enough reading time in school, think again. Time allotted for actual reading practice in the classroom averages less than 13 minutes per day for fourth-grade students, and diminishes from there in upper grades, according to Judi Paul, developer of The Accelerated Reader, a computer program used in schools to measure students' reading. She recommends schools prioritize an hour of daily reading practice, including time a child is read to, read with, or reads independently. Other experts cite 1 million words a year (roughly a 200-page book every two weeks) as a target for independent readers by the time they're in fifth grade.

With guidelines like that, it's obvious most kids need to be reading at home. But reluctant readers will not willingly hand over the PlayStation controls in exchange for a biography. You have to dangle a carrot or two.