Summer Reading! Keep the fires burning...

So, confess! How many books have you read, with or without your kids?

No, wait, come back! This is not a “beat the guilty parent over the head” blog.

This is a yes, we’re all in this together and here’s how to cope blog.

If you’re like the rest of us, somewhere around July 4 your good intentions started to slip.  Back in June we informed ourselves that this summer, our children will read the classic kid stories we loved back in the day. Or at least Newbery winners.

Ok, Caldecott Picture Book winners.

Fine. Captain Underpants. But that’s my final offer.

And they definitely WILL learn their multiplication tables by….

Oh, the heck with it.

Who wants to be the bad guy when there are pools on hot, humid afternoons?

So don’t be that guy. Mom. Whatever.

Keep mandatory reading fun. Reading with a parent should never be like eating your vegetables. Don’t ask a lot of questions about the story unless you REALLY want to know the answer. Enjoy the ride!

If you’re going on vacation, repeat after me: books on tape. Or cd.

Ban the DVDs. Ok, at least until you’re into the motel. Let them look out the window and make pictures in their heads while listening to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series or Matt Christopher’s Pitcher with a Glass Arm. And even if you’ve read all the books Harry Potter on cd is an unbelievable listening experience. Fantastically read by Jim Dale! The whole family will seriously love this. Yes. Even your husband. I promise. 

If you’re in a hurry, you’re dismissed. If you have a little time – read on.

With an elementary school age child, you don’t want to go two and a half months without having him or her read to you at all. But be sure to pick an “independent level” book. That’s a book that is comfortable, not challenging, for your child. You’re not his reading teacher (if you homeschool, separate school reading and home reading). Just like shooting baskets alone on a court to get some regular practice, your child needs to read practice and hone those reading skills in a laid-back manner. This also shows your child that reading can be a relaxing time; I call these kinds of books “potato chip books”; these are the kinds of books your child WANTS to kick back with. You can have your child read aloud to you, or relax with a magazine as s/he reads silently. When you’re reading silently yourself, you’re showing that you enjoy reading, too.  

I remember a parent who confessed to reading to her two children when they were in the bathtub. “It was the only time they weren’t moving,” she confessed. “…and I had time to sit down next to them for a little while.” So they came out a little pruney after a 45 minute bath. No big deal. They learned to laugh together, to hang onto the edge of a cliff-hanger for the next installment… and to look forward to the next bath.

Children can understand higher level books when they are listening to the stories because they don’t need to work at decoding the words. They can just focus on the story line. So when they’re not quite ready to read that book on their own, many families enjoy a bedtime book that’s just a bit above their child’s reading level. That way, they’re boosting their child’s reading comprehension a bit, and they’re working on the child’s listening skills, too – that can help a lot in a classroom setting (your teacher will adore you for that, truly).

Books on CD offer many more choices than Harry Potter and Rick Riordan and general fantasy. Since listening to a book is easier than reading it, you’ve got plenty of options for filling their minds with vocabulary they might not encounter for years. Many libraries stock juicy audio books of White Fang (retellings of the classic), perfect when the temps start climbing. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Invisible Man – terrifying stuff to listen to in a traffic jam!

Novel by HG Wells. Beatiful cover illustration by Damien Fletcher

Pop it into the cd player and away you go. This way, too, you can vary your genres more widely. Before lunch – fantasy. After lunch – nonfiction. Dad picks a biography. Mom picks humor. Kids learn compromise and grudgingly learn about different types of books and start appreciating different read aloud styles.

If there are any “hams” in the car who enjoy reading aloud, you might exploit that member of the family. There are old fashioned books that stand up surprisingly well to being read aloud. Eleanor Estes book wrote a series of books about the Pye family, a middle class family in the early 1920’s.  Ginger Pye revolves around the family dog, who is truly gifted and talented, and the book, while mostly about a loving if eccentric family, does not whitewash some of the social issues in a small town. It’s kid-appropriate – no serious violence, and absolutely nothing above a G rating. The Estes books are all fun, and older kids can read them on their own, while Ginger Pye can be a good read aloud for the end of the day.

Matt Christopher writes sports books for boys and girls, covering every sport right down to tiddly winks. He’s good for an advanced second grader right up through fourth and fifth; the books are fairly easy reads, and you can rely on them to have a satisfying ending. Many of his books, such as Catcher with a Glass Arm and Miracle at the Plate, are geared towards baseball and are at about a second to third grade reading level. Have your fourth or fifth grader read them aloud, though, to avoid stumbling or embarrassment while reading aloud. Christopher’s books feature fairly straightforward kid problems – bullies, sibling issues, and so forth.

If your kids have moved beyond the Matt Christopher sports books, try Mike Lupica, author of Summer Ball and Travel Team. He also appears on ESPN and writes sports columns for The Daily News. He just wrote a book based on Peyton and Eli Manning; learn more at his website.  Lupica’s books feature more worldly issues, such as kids without parents trying to make it without going into foster care, racism, and generally trying to navigate the real world. But he seems to understand the need to present both good guys and bad guys, which makes his books less depressing to read than some. These are books for the junior high and high school set; you might read them along with them. They make for good discussions about the difficulty of making good decisions; it really does get harder as you get older. Lupica introduces the concept of gray, in a world where good and bad used to be black and white.

Girls still have to look specifically for books about girl athletes. Looking down the list of Lupica’s books, and Christopher’s books, there are just not that many that feature girls as the focus. So I googled it, and yes, here’s just such a list. GoodReads is a wonderful app that can help you avoid wasting your time and find the good stuff fast.  http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/15017.Girls_in_Sports  "Whoever said football and girls don't mix hasn't read Catching Jordan. I couldn't put it down " -- Simone Elkeles, New York Times bestselling author of the Perfect Chemistry series 

Not EVERY book on the list is about athletes (Vampire Academy?), but you can use this list to generate your own, and then rate them as you read them – parents and kids as well.

Jon Sciezka, author of The True Story of the Three 
Little Pigs, created a great website for boys, called Guys Read. He features great books you’ve never heard of, especially nonfiction. This month’s pick is…

 A Mostly Accurate Account of Some of Earth's Strangest Animals    

This is the kind of book your kid will probably browse; he (or she) might not sit down and read cover to cover. But you’ll probably hear all about it – maybe in more detail than you…really…want.   Gordon Korman writes both suspense, as in trying to escape from bad guys and deserted islands, and funny books for younger kids (Liar, Liar Pants on Fire).  He also writes books for older kids who maybe buck authority a little more than they ought to (No More Dead Dogs – and no, NO dogs are hurt in the reading of this book. But a few pretentious teachers get their feelings hurt. A bit.)Korman is a writer who touches on almost every note in his different books. Be sure to take a look at the level of the writing and the back of the book. But they are universally well written. 

So – Please read with your children, and to your children. Bring books on cd along on car trips, and save the dvd’s for the motel rooms when you need a quick shower and you don’t want World War III to break out.  Have the actor in your family read aloud, if s/he wants to! Try many different kinds of books, and shoot me an email if your child hates to read…. That’s a challenge I love!

Next blog – nature calls! Ok, that was tacky. But get the kids outside first, and then use some books with great graphics to look up what you found under rocks, in your net, and on that tree.