This topic is not something new. Everybody talks about it. It is good to start children on this habit at an early age. In my own experience, my own son and daughter developed this habit of reading comics, story books and magazines at a very young age. I would buy books for them regularly. Frankly, shopping for clothes and accessories never interested me. By the time my children reached their teens I had a mound of children’s books on my hands and they would not allow me to give them away either. So, the idea of starting a children’s library took shape.

I had this children’s library at my own residence on the top floor for quite some years and I would lend books to children of the area for a nominal charge. It not only satisfied me but I built a close rapport with all the children that visited my library and it also gave me an insight into their psychology of reading. I can relate many experiences that I had during these fruitful years with both children and their parents.

It is rather sad that many parents do not understand the underlying psychology of the child’s innate reading desire. There was this neighbour whose son was an avid reader. The father was a professor at Stanford. They would spend their vacation in Bangalore at their bungalow close to our house and the little boy used my library almost everyday. Sometimes, his father would accompany him. He would stand next to the boy and most often never approved of what his son chose for reading. He would himself pile about 6 to 10 books on my table and say, ‘Ryan, take these’ and would go away. The boy would look at me and smile mischievously. He would put away all the books that his father chose for him and take back only those books he liked to read. “Won’t your father be angry if he saw the books you have taken, Ryan”, I would ask.  “He hardly has the time to see what I read, ma’am. He thinks I do not know what to choose. But, I know what I want to read”,  he would say confidently.

There are certain patterns that I have observed with children who read a lot. These are the children who grow up to become voracious readers and also do academically well because reading becomes a part of their mental activity. It is a sort of compulsion they cannot do without. I have listed below a few that have caught my attention in these years of being a teacher and also a librarian.

nChildren get into the reading habit only when the parents also evince keen interest in reading.

nBooks of all types must be available for the children to read and they must be kept at a reachable height.
nParents should make it a habit to read to children from childhood. Reading literature of all countries and cultures makes them curious to read more and more.

nTheir rooms should have shelves for books and any book they pick up should be easy for them to read. Expecting children to read beyond their level dampens their reading habit.

nThe more books a child reads, the more her creative urges increase.

nImagination is the key to honing creative reading habits. Allow the child’s imagination to run riot. To quote an example, when my daughter was young, she told me that she had a new version of the story of the Hare and the Tortoise where the tortoise won not because he was slow and steady but because he was on roller skates. I had a hearty laugh and appreciated her for her imagination.

nSometimes children narrate stories that they have read by changing the premise slightly. It is not necessary to correct the version of the story. ‘Your story seems more interesting than what is given in the book.’ Will help in encouraging the urge of story telling, reading and writing.

nParents who are over anxious about their children’s reading habits will have poor readers on their hands. A child who considers her parent as a guide and a friend will herself eagerly shows all the books that she is reading to her parents. ‘See what I am reading, Mom!’ The parents’ reaction should be positive. “O, that’s good can I also read them after you finish?’ If the parent says, “These are all baby-books; take something appropriate for your age!”, it acts as a damper. Never will the child show what she reads to her parent after that.

n‘Read this book today, read that book tomorrow.’ ‘Don’t read now.’ ‘Read the book in the afternoon. It is now play time.’ ‘It is now study time.’ Etc are other dampers.

n‘Read anything, everything, anytime as long as it is meant for your age group’, is a good slogan.

Merl Reagal, a crossword constructor says, ‘There is a fine line between entertainment and torture. Reading should become a source of enjoyment and entertainment and not torture. Finagling a child to read what she does not want to read is torture.

Reading enhances creativity through imagination and flights of fancy. When I read, I see the characters in the book as real amidst the settings the author describes. When I read Middlemarch I almost experienced Victorian England. Gone with the Wind took me to Tara. I imagined myself living in great big houses with high ceilings surrounded by high drams with Scarlet O’ Hara.

This pleasure can be a part of our life only if we are introduced to reading at an early age. It would be sad indeed when as an adult you enter a library and feel a stranger. If authors are not your friends, if books are not your passion, if reading is not a pleasure your mind gets dull and warped. It is difficult to kindle the fire of creativity within us after growing up into adults.