Building Lifelong Readers – How I Got My Kids to Love Reading

Being a reading teacher, my passion for children’s literature began way before the birth of my three lovely ladies. But, it was the birth of my first daughter that I obsessively began to buy books. I knew that if I was going to cultivate lifelong readers, the first step was to surround them with books. 

Seeing that our first daughter is named Olivia, our collection of books began with the “Olivia the Pig” series by Ian Falconer. Each book beautifully illustrated and creatively written to capture the spunky personality of the main character, Olivia. From there, our collection just grew and grew to include sweet, sensitive books such as Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkres and inspirational, girl power books such as The Three Ninja Pigs by Corey Rosen Schwartz. 

And, although it seems like a blink of an eye, within the last couple of years our collection has made its final transition from board books to picture books to finally novels. A bittersweet transition.

Now, owning a stockpile of books doesn’t necessarily translate into cultivating lifelong readers. I wholeheartedly attribute my daughters’ love for reading to two simplish concepts: 

1. Surround the house with books

2. Model Good Reading

Surround the House with Books

Treat books as part of the family. Include them in every frequented room and have them circulate to different spots often. When the girls were toddlers, we kept all their books in their rooms. I finally realized that when I moved piles of books to other rooms, more reading happened. 

It was magical to watch all three girls sitting, with piles of books, just flipping through pages. Although it might have only been for a few minutes, those short, but frequent reading sessions have now turned into three girls sprawled out on the couch, with blankets and stuffies, reading silently. Well, as silently as three girls can be. 

Model Good Reading 

As parents, we model kindness, we model gratitude and we also model affection and love. Why not model reading. As we know, much of what children learn is acquired through observation and imitation. One way for children to observe proficient reading is to hear and see what good readers instinctively do while they read.  

Modeling active reading skills simply involves sharing our thoughts and feelings out loud while we read to our children. Stopping periodically as we read to ask ourselves clarifying questions, make logical predictions, or draw evidence-based conclusions works wonders to intentionally teach our children to deepen their understanding of a book. Use “I” statements. “I wonder why Goldilocks felt the need to enter a house that wasn’t hers? Or “I think Baby Bear is going to get really annoyed that Goldilocks literally destroyed his favorite chair.” Or “Wow, I know that we shouldn’t destroy other people’s property. Goldilocks really teaches us to respect other people’s belongings and that our actions can hurt people.”  We can also add a bit of theatrics into the mix by showing our kiddoes how readers sometimes get confused about a word or phrase. “I’ve never heard the word “porridge”, I wonder what it means? I’ll keep reading to find out.” 

Modeling our thinking while we read helps children see that being an active reader directly correlates with understanding what we read. Giving children the opportunity to hear adults monitor their reading is essential in building comprehension.