Transcripts For CSPAN2 Pamela Paul How To Raise A Reader 202

Good afternoon, everyone. We are running a little bit behind today. On behalf of the American Enterprise institute i would like to welcome you with the conversation with pamela paul of the New York Times book review about her recent book how to raise a reader. She coauthored it with her colleague maria russo. So much about raising children is about what we dont want them to do, keep them dangers both real and virtual, no doubt this is a feature and bug of our helicoptering age with this attitude fails to promote a sense of independence in kids. Not only do they not know how to walk down the street by themselves but are incapable of entertaining themselves without a device in hand. For reasons both selfish, parents need a break, and selfless, we know this is an important life skill for them, the Current Situation is pretty untenable, our kids have trouble with any unstructured activity but reading for pleasure is the activity that has suffered the most. According to a recent analysis the share of americans who read for pleasure has fallen by more than 30 since 2004. If there is a way to reverse this trend it has to start with our children and i can think of no one who could help us better to learn to share the joy of reading with children than pamela paul. Before rising to her current position she was Childrens Book editor at the New York Times, she has three children herself and is author of six books and host of the book review podcast. I asked her to talk about her research and her book for a little bit. She and i will have a conversation we will open up to questions from the audience. With that i will turn it over to pamela. Thank you for having me. I will start by telling a story that runs against my instincts and temperament which is a story about my kids. I am more of the type that generally relays something terrible and embarrassing my kids have done but im telling it for a reason. This is happens my last time in dc but i came before the National Book festival over Labor Day Weekend to launch this book how to raise a reader and took the train down with my three kids and my husband and we were on the train and got seated separately so they were scattered around but we were passing things to them. It was clear as i got up to leave the train and gathering my family there was an older couple behind me and the man stopped me and said are those your children . Usually that fills me with fear, what have they done . I said yes a little tentatively. He said i just have to say that i am so heartened to see that they were all reading the whole way down here and they were reading actual books. I kind of thought okay. His wife chimed in and said i was just reading the most interesting article in the New York Times about this very subject and she pointed to a piece that, as you know when you have a book coming out you will often read a piece, this is my piece for the oped section of the times called no gold star for reading about not rewarding reading, that reading in and of itself is the reward and to reward reading is counterproductive. I couldnt resist. It was my moment so i said i actually wrote that piece. It is in fact true, my kids are all readers, they are 10, 13, and 14. The reason i tell that story is not to show off about that but because i wanted to relay what i think naomi alluded to which is people are really panicked about kids reading, they are freaked out and the reason why people are so afraid of kids reading is not only the value of books but what it signifies for themselves and our culture and society. For themselves, for kids it is unquestioned at this point that reading is important. Theres a lot of research around it. We know reading is important to cognitive development, we know it is tied to academic success. We have research that shows reading improves executive functions, it is tied to a childs social and Emotional Development and my opinion is it also leaves us better human beings help people are very eager to have this wasnt the case in the 70s and 80s when i was coming of age. At that point no one trotted out there kid and said the reader. Think the word bookworm it is a massive competent, people were more inclined to show up out of filed in player or someone with basic coordinated skills on a playing field, none of which i had but now people really do want their kids to be readers. Theres all kinds of effort on the local level to get kids to read and yet as naomi suggested the research isnt necessarily that strongly comforting that it succeeded. I will talk about how i came to write this book and then some of the findings. This book started off as a Digital Guide for the New York Times. When i was demoted as my kids say it from Childrens Book editor to edit of the book review in 2013 and hired a new Childrens Book editor, maria russo, i was asked to create a kind of guide for the website. We had done guides or the people had done guide on things like how to meditate. Even though i have yet to meditate, other guides about how to live a better life and they came to be and said what kind of guide for reading and books . For me this was the obvious answer, how to raise a reader, it is something i always wanted to do and something in my position as Childrens Books editor and parent of three kids i knew many parents wanted to do. We got together and created a Digital Guide. It went online and went viral, questions and comments flowed in as one of the most common without why print this out and turn it into a book, a guide about how to raise a reader should be a book and that is what we did which was to expand on all of the research we had done at the advice we had in the recommendations for books, for kids. We turned it into a book in short order. When i was a Childrens Book editor and even ongoing onthejob now, i got a lot of questions and a lot of what we wanted to do in the book was address those questions. The questions can be very basic. A lot of times parents come to me and say my kid is into puppies but not sad stories, he likes graphic novels and doesnt like lots of text and hates photographs. What should he read . Very specific requests or suggestions but there is excess dental questions, what do i do if my kid doesnt like to read owen should my kids start reading or my child at Kindergarten Teacher says my child is two level behind where he is supposed to be and i dont know what to do about it and once kids learn to read they worry what if my child isnt choosing to read, what if he isnt reading enough, what if she only wants to read graphic novels, what if ever since she got instagram she doesnt want to do anything else . What we perceived in these questions with a lot of myths around reading, what makes a reader. I will move to the slide shortly but i will talk about some of those myths and i will now do it with a visual aid. First miss, nothing is as important to raise a reader is reading aloud to your child. This is the thing Everybody Knows they are supposed to do and it is true, you should read aloud to your child and there are lots of ways, dos and donts how to read aloud to a child but another interesting statistic just as powerful as reading aloud to your child is the number of books in your phone. Is not necessarily immediately obvious but is not tied to income or education, not just something people who have lots of money or books have an advantage, this is something anyone can do because books now, especially used books are easy to acquire online and you can go to the library. When you have books in your home you are saying something, that reading is prized and also very hard, anyone who has children knows one of the most annoying things to hear from a child is on board. It is hard to be bored if there are constantly books around you and books not only in the library, in the home but books for each child if they dont have their own room, a bookshelf and shared room, kids are inquisitive creatures, they like to collect and own things, they should have a place for their own books but books should also be throughout the house, in the parlor or wherever the television is our computers, they should be in the kitchen where cookbooks can be, in the bathroom where everyone does a lot of reading if they are not on the ipad. The former is better than the latter. It is important to keep books in the home to show books are something that matters to you and to give kids the opportunity to read. If you dont own the book and you go to the library and take out 20 or 30 books a week make sure you have a constant rotating cast of books in there. Kids dont always know what they want to read. They are developing their interests. Take out books you are sure might interest them, take a different kind of books, books that are more visual, subjects they might not be familiar with, to always allow them the opportunity to turn to a book. The earlier a child learns to read independently the more he will read for life. This is easy to believe because our parents think in terms of development or milestones but it is natural to think the earlier they do something the better it will be but the analogy i would like to think of is shoelaces. If a child learns to tie his shoelaces at the age of 4 it will not make her a better shoelace tire at the age of 25 then if she didnt learn until she was 10. The same goes for reading. The age your child learns to read is not related to future reading or cognitive ability. This is something many countries in europe know very well. Germany, scandinavian countries dont begin teaching reading until page 8 because the Research Supports it. Kids brains are not able to do the complicated decoding reading requires and if you do start to teach reading at an early age, 3 or 4 or 5 when a child isnt ready, they become frustrated, they become annoyed, have negative feelings associated with reading, this is something i am not good at and it leads to a lot of years of anxiety and frustration dont correlate well with a childs growth that this is something i actually want to do with my 3 time. There is 0 correlation. On personal experience with my 3 kids, the one who was reading the latest is the most ambitious ad for asus reader of the three. Reading the same book over and over means your child is stuck. I cant tell you the number of parents who first it was harry potter, my kid will not stop reading harry potter, she doesnt want to read anything else, now it is dog man, it is even worse, terrible graphic novels. I have some reassurance on that front. There is a lot of good to reading over and over and the reason kids do it and it changes for every age but it is true for adults too. When they become toddlers they benefit from reading those books over and over again, they learn to recognize the words or recognition is a big part of reading. They learn to memorize the text. Another big part of reading. Of your child is memorizing, it is good to have books around as a family culture, when you go out and run errands, you tuck more books and your bag that when you end up in the moment that happens to all parents when your kids are bored waiting around whether on the line to the Grocery Store or at a Doctors Office rather than doing the easy thing and pulling out a phone, you pull out some more books. If you are occupied, if they memorized the book they can read it to themselves and again that builds confidence and a feeling that i am a reader from a very early age. Older children benefit emotionally and cognitively from rereading books. For kids, i can certainly say this from personal experience, when you read, the characters become your friends. They are your social life, people youre familiar with. The worlds they live and whether they are realistic or fantastical, places you want to be, they are comfort zones, places for fantasy but also a feeling of belonging. It is good for kids to reread. As any adult nose, when you reread a book as an adult you get Something Different from it each time. If you reread a book at age 25 and then reread it at 40 once you have been through many of the things discussed in that book, you have experienced some of that, parenthood and loss and the passing of generations that you might not have appreciated when you were 25 and you get more out of it. If you think about a child who is developing at every moment, what they read six months from now they will read in a different way than a previously read it, they will get more out of the story, see new things in it because they are normally getting to know it better but are in a different place themselves so it is good for kids to reread and not worry they are stuck. Anonymous. Parents should work with their children starting in preschool to teach them how to read and help them progress year by year. This feels like an obvious, of course, we all hear about parent involvement, we are supposed to be supporting our Child Health Education and that is true. We should be doing those things but school is where children learn to read. Home is where children learn to love to read and that is a very different job for parents. If you think about trying to get your kids to do something, to learn how to do something that is different from getting your child to want to do something, to choose to do something, to enjoy something. If your child is struggling to learn how to read in school the last thing hes going to want to do is have that experience replicated at home. If hes feeling bad that he is in group k and everyone else in his class is in group in and youre forcing him to go through those levels at home, it is continuing what might be a negative experience. While he is struggling to learn to read at school trust your teacher to do that job. If you have doubts you can always consult your reading specialist. What your child as a parent to do, offset the negative experience, make sure books are something pleasurable, that it is pleasure, not pressure at home. When youre with your child at night rather than have him read and struggle through those early level readers whether it is trying to pronouns and sort of connect the dots in phonics you can read about a picture book to them and it is important to get through the next one, children enjoy books in different ways at the same time but let me talk about harry potter. A lot of people think one of the milestones of childhood is reading harry potter allowed to your kids. This is not your job. Not the parents job for a number of reasons. Not everyone loves harry potter. I happen to live it but a lot of kids dont like fantasy or find books frightening. Jk rowling wrote the first four books as middle grade books meaning they are for age 812 in the last three books in the series are why a books for 12 and up. She decided to grow the series with her readers as she was writing in real time and there is a turning point at the edge of book 4 when one of the main characters, i hope i am not no spoilers here, dies. That is a traumatizing thing for some children, that is the transition from Childrens Books to young adult books and not every child is ready for it. When my kids were little everyone was showing off my kid read all we 7 harry potters in kindergarten and that was the big thing people wanted to show off about so if your kid wasnt. What did parents do . They read it aloud to make sure their kids felt like they werent being left behind, but harry potter is the desert. You do not have to feed harry potter to your kids. That is a goal for them, something to aspire. That is about reading being the reward. If your child wants to read harry potter wait until she is ready to read those books and let her read them herself. Why would you give that away . That is a motivator for her. Similarly a lot of series are not great reading for parents and i dont know how many parents of Young Children there are in this room but if youre a parent of girls you probably know rainbow fairies. A great series for little kids. It is a terrible series for adults. There are 70,000 of them written by a nonperson named daisy meadows, she doesnt exist, girls were 4, five, six, seven, eight, love them. They are torture for a parent to read aloud. The magic treehouse, similar, huge long series, kids love them. Most parent have to read them aloud want to kill themselves after the fourth book because they all start with the same prologue. Im not saying anything bad about these books, they serve the function in the function they serve, kids love them and they want to read in order to read the book, those are not books you need to read aloud to kids. Then this gets to the point which is once they are reading on their own, move on from picture books, this is not true. Picture books should stay in the picture throughout childhood and beyond, picture books have their own beauty in their own function, well into adulthood. There would be no instagram. What picture books allow a child to do is to appreciate a richer vocabulary, to absorb artwork, visuals, understand how to read pictures and follow that sequence of events through the art of visual storytelling and if your child is working on a book at school that says pat and the cat sat on the mat, chances are his or her brain is well beyond that in terms of what they are interested in with storytelling and if you say as soon as youre reading those books on your own i will not read anymore to you you are essentially punishing them for becoming an independent reader. If kids have grown up in a home where reading aloud your child is a cherished family have it and pleasure, to pull out from underneath them at the moment they are reading on their own is really punitive. Moreover, it denies them the opportunity to enjoy books that have a richer vocabulary, are more visually interesting for them than early readers they are getting at school. In a similar way at the same time they are struggling through those levels you should continue to read aloud nonpicture books. If youre reading the hobbit or little house on the prairie or whatever the series might be, to continue to do that, kids are like adults. They enjoy storytelling in all of its various ways and just as many of us, while we might enjoy reading for fun we might also occasionally like to read a domestic thriller or spy novel. We might like to listen to books on audio. We all like to enjoy books of different kinds at any moment and kids are the same way. The best American Enterprise<\/a> institute i would like to welcome you with the conversation with pamela paul of the New York Times<\/a> book review about her recent book how to raise a reader. She coauthored it with her colleague maria russo. So much about raising children is about what we dont want them to do, keep them dangers both real and virtual, no doubt this is a feature and bug of our helicoptering age with this attitude fails to promote a sense of independence in kids. Not only do they not know how to walk down the street by themselves but are incapable of entertaining themselves without a device in hand. For reasons both selfish, parents need a break, and selfless, we know this is an important life skill for them, the Current Situation<\/a> is pretty untenable, our kids have trouble with any unstructured activity but reading for pleasure is the activity that has suffered the most. According to a recent analysis the share of americans who read for pleasure has fallen by more than 30 since 2004. If there is a way to reverse this trend it has to start with our children and i can think of no one who could help us better to learn to share the joy of reading with children than pamela paul. Before rising to her current position she was Childrens Book<\/a> editor at the New York Times<\/a>, she has three children herself and is author of six books and host of the book review podcast. I asked her to talk about her research and her book for a little bit. She and i will have a conversation we will open up to questions from the audience. With that i will turn it over to pamela. Thank you for having me. I will start by telling a story that runs against my instincts and temperament which is a story about my kids. I am more of the type that generally relays something terrible and embarrassing my kids have done but im telling it for a reason. This is happens my last time in dc but i came before the National Book<\/a> festival over Labor Day Weekend<\/a> to launch this book how to raise a reader and took the train down with my three kids and my husband and we were on the train and got seated separately so they were scattered around but we were passing things to them. It was clear as i got up to leave the train and gathering my family there was an older couple behind me and the man stopped me and said are those your children . Usually that fills me with fear, what have they done . I said yes a little tentatively. He said i just have to say that i am so heartened to see that they were all reading the whole way down here and they were reading actual books. I kind of thought okay. His wife chimed in and said i was just reading the most interesting article in the New York Times<\/a> about this very subject and she pointed to a piece that, as you know when you have a book coming out you will often read a piece, this is my piece for the oped section of the times called no gold star for reading about not rewarding reading, that reading in and of itself is the reward and to reward reading is counterproductive. I couldnt resist. It was my moment so i said i actually wrote that piece. It is in fact true, my kids are all readers, they are 10, 13, and 14. The reason i tell that story is not to show off about that but because i wanted to relay what i think naomi alluded to which is people are really panicked about kids reading, they are freaked out and the reason why people are so afraid of kids reading is not only the value of books but what it signifies for themselves and our culture and society. For themselves, for kids it is unquestioned at this point that reading is important. Theres a lot of research around it. We know reading is important to cognitive development, we know it is tied to academic success. We have research that shows reading improves executive functions, it is tied to a childs social and Emotional Development<\/a> and my opinion is it also leaves us better human beings help people are very eager to have this wasnt the case in the 70s and 80s when i was coming of age. At that point no one trotted out there kid and said the reader. Think the word bookworm it is a massive competent, people were more inclined to show up out of filed in player or someone with basic coordinated skills on a playing field, none of which i had but now people really do want their kids to be readers. Theres all kinds of effort on the local level to get kids to read and yet as naomi suggested the research isnt necessarily that strongly comforting that it succeeded. I will talk about how i came to write this book and then some of the findings. This book started off as a Digital Guide<\/a> for the New York Times<\/a>. When i was demoted as my kids say it from Childrens Book<\/a> editor to edit of the book review in 2013 and hired a new Childrens Book<\/a> editor, maria russo, i was asked to create a kind of guide for the website. We had done guides or the people had done guide on things like how to meditate. Even though i have yet to meditate, other guides about how to live a better life and they came to be and said what kind of guide for reading and books . For me this was the obvious answer, how to raise a reader, it is something i always wanted to do and something in my position as Childrens Book<\/a>s editor and parent of three kids i knew many parents wanted to do. We got together and created a Digital Guide<\/a>. It went online and went viral, questions and comments flowed in as one of the most common without why print this out and turn it into a book, a guide about how to raise a reader should be a book and that is what we did which was to expand on all of the research we had done at the advice we had in the recommendations for books, for kids. We turned it into a book in short order. When i was a Childrens Book<\/a> editor and even ongoing onthejob now, i got a lot of questions and a lot of what we wanted to do in the book was address those questions. The questions can be very basic. A lot of times parents come to me and say my kid is into puppies but not sad stories, he likes graphic novels and doesnt like lots of text and hates photographs. What should he read . Very specific requests or suggestions but there is excess dental questions, what do i do if my kid doesnt like to read owen should my kids start reading or my child at Kindergarten Teacher<\/a> says my child is two level behind where he is supposed to be and i dont know what to do about it and once kids learn to read they worry what if my child isnt choosing to read, what if he isnt reading enough, what if she only wants to read graphic novels, what if ever since she got instagram she doesnt want to do anything else . What we perceived in these questions with a lot of myths around reading, what makes a reader. I will move to the slide shortly but i will talk about some of those myths and i will now do it with a visual aid. First miss, nothing is as important to raise a reader is reading aloud to your child. This is the thing Everybody Knows<\/a> they are supposed to do and it is true, you should read aloud to your child and there are lots of ways, dos and donts how to read aloud to a child but another interesting statistic just as powerful as reading aloud to your child is the number of books in your phone. Is not necessarily immediately obvious but is not tied to income or education, not just something people who have lots of money or books have an advantage, this is something anyone can do because books now, especially used books are easy to acquire online and you can go to the library. When you have books in your home you are saying something, that reading is prized and also very hard, anyone who has children knows one of the most annoying things to hear from a child is on board. It is hard to be bored if there are constantly books around you and books not only in the library, in the home but books for each child if they dont have their own room, a bookshelf and shared room, kids are inquisitive creatures, they like to collect and own things, they should have a place for their own books but books should also be throughout the house, in the parlor or wherever the television is our computers, they should be in the kitchen where cookbooks can be, in the bathroom where everyone does a lot of reading if they are not on the ipad. The former is better than the latter. It is important to keep books in the home to show books are something that matters to you and to give kids the opportunity to read. If you dont own the book and you go to the library and take out 20 or 30 books a week make sure you have a constant rotating cast of books in there. Kids dont always know what they want to read. They are developing their interests. Take out books you are sure might interest them, take a different kind of books, books that are more visual, subjects they might not be familiar with, to always allow them the opportunity to turn to a book. The earlier a child learns to read independently the more he will read for life. This is easy to believe because our parents think in terms of development or milestones but it is natural to think the earlier they do something the better it will be but the analogy i would like to think of is shoelaces. If a child learns to tie his shoelaces at the age of 4 it will not make her a better shoelace tire at the age of 25 then if she didnt learn until she was 10. The same goes for reading. The age your child learns to read is not related to future reading or cognitive ability. This is something many countries in europe know very well. Germany, scandinavian countries dont begin teaching reading until page 8 because the Research Supports<\/a> it. Kids brains are not able to do the complicated decoding reading requires and if you do start to teach reading at an early age, 3 or 4 or 5 when a child isnt ready, they become frustrated, they become annoyed, have negative feelings associated with reading, this is something i am not good at and it leads to a lot of years of anxiety and frustration dont correlate well with a childs growth that this is something i actually want to do with my 3 time. There is 0 correlation. On personal experience with my 3 kids, the one who was reading the latest is the most ambitious ad for asus reader of the three. Reading the same book over and over means your child is stuck. I cant tell you the number of parents who first it was harry potter, my kid will not stop reading harry potter, she doesnt want to read anything else, now it is dog man, it is even worse, terrible graphic novels. I have some reassurance on that front. There is a lot of good to reading over and over and the reason kids do it and it changes for every age but it is true for adults too. When they become toddlers they benefit from reading those books over and over again, they learn to recognize the words or recognition is a big part of reading. They learn to memorize the text. Another big part of reading. Of your child is memorizing, it is good to have books around as a family culture, when you go out and run errands, you tuck more books and your bag that when you end up in the moment that happens to all parents when your kids are bored waiting around whether on the line to the Grocery Store<\/a> or at a Doctors Office<\/a> rather than doing the easy thing and pulling out a phone, you pull out some more books. If you are occupied, if they memorized the book they can read it to themselves and again that builds confidence and a feeling that i am a reader from a very early age. Older children benefit emotionally and cognitively from rereading books. For kids, i can certainly say this from personal experience, when you read, the characters become your friends. They are your social life, people youre familiar with. The worlds they live and whether they are realistic or fantastical, places you want to be, they are comfort zones, places for fantasy but also a feeling of belonging. It is good for kids to reread. As any adult nose, when you reread a book as an adult you get Something Different<\/a> from it each time. If you reread a book at age 25 and then reread it at 40 once you have been through many of the things discussed in that book, you have experienced some of that, parenthood and loss and the passing of generations that you might not have appreciated when you were 25 and you get more out of it. If you think about a child who is developing at every moment, what they read six months from now they will read in a different way than a previously read it, they will get more out of the story, see new things in it because they are normally getting to know it better but are in a different place themselves so it is good for kids to reread and not worry they are stuck. Anonymous. Parents should work with their children starting in preschool to teach them how to read and help them progress year by year. This feels like an obvious, of course, we all hear about parent involvement, we are supposed to be supporting our Child Health Education<\/a> and that is true. We should be doing those things but school is where children learn to read. Home is where children learn to love to read and that is a very different job for parents. If you think about trying to get your kids to do something, to learn how to do something that is different from getting your child to want to do something, to choose to do something, to enjoy something. If your child is struggling to learn how to read in school the last thing hes going to want to do is have that experience replicated at home. If hes feeling bad that he is in group k and everyone else in his class is in group in and youre forcing him to go through those levels at home, it is continuing what might be a negative experience. While he is struggling to learn to read at school trust your teacher to do that job. If you have doubts you can always consult your reading specialist. What your child as a parent to do, offset the negative experience, make sure books are something pleasurable, that it is pleasure, not pressure at home. When youre with your child at night rather than have him read and struggle through those early level readers whether it is trying to pronouns and sort of connect the dots in phonics you can read about a picture book to them and it is important to get through the next one, children enjoy books in different ways at the same time but let me talk about harry potter. A lot of people think one of the milestones of childhood is reading harry potter allowed to your kids. This is not your job. Not the parents job for a number of reasons. Not everyone loves harry potter. I happen to live it but a lot of kids dont like fantasy or find books frightening. Jk rowling wrote the first four books as middle grade books meaning they are for age 812 in the last three books in the series are why a books for 12 and up. She decided to grow the series with her readers as she was writing in real time and there is a turning point at the edge of book 4 when one of the main characters, i hope i am not no spoilers here, dies. That is a traumatizing thing for some children, that is the transition from Childrens Book<\/a>s to young adult books and not every child is ready for it. When my kids were little everyone was showing off my kid read all we 7 harry potters in kindergarten and that was the big thing people wanted to show off about so if your kid wasnt. What did parents do . They read it aloud to make sure their kids felt like they werent being left behind, but harry potter is the desert. You do not have to feed harry potter to your kids. That is a goal for them, something to aspire. That is about reading being the reward. If your child wants to read harry potter wait until she is ready to read those books and let her read them herself. Why would you give that away . That is a motivator for her. Similarly a lot of series are not great reading for parents and i dont know how many parents of Young Children<\/a> there are in this room but if youre a parent of girls you probably know rainbow fairies. A great series for little kids. It is a terrible series for adults. There are 70,000 of them written by a nonperson named daisy meadows, she doesnt exist, girls were 4, five, six, seven, eight, love them. They are torture for a parent to read aloud. The magic treehouse, similar, huge long series, kids love them. Most parent have to read them aloud want to kill themselves after the fourth book because they all start with the same prologue. Im not saying anything bad about these books, they serve the function in the function they serve, kids love them and they want to read in order to read the book, those are not books you need to read aloud to kids. Then this gets to the point which is once they are reading on their own, move on from picture books, this is not true. Picture books should stay in the picture throughout childhood and beyond, picture books have their own beauty in their own function, well into adulthood. There would be no instagram. What picture books allow a child to do is to appreciate a richer vocabulary, to absorb artwork, visuals, understand how to read pictures and follow that sequence of events through the art of visual storytelling and if your child is working on a book at school that says pat and the cat sat on the mat, chances are his or her brain is well beyond that in terms of what they are interested in with storytelling and if you say as soon as youre reading those books on your own i will not read anymore to you you are essentially punishing them for becoming an independent reader. If kids have grown up in a home where reading aloud your child is a cherished family have it and pleasure, to pull out from underneath them at the moment they are reading on their own is really punitive. Moreover, it denies them the opportunity to enjoy books that have a richer vocabulary, are more visually interesting for them than early readers they are getting at school. In a similar way at the same time they are struggling through those levels you should continue to read aloud nonpicture books. If youre reading the hobbit or little house on the prairie or whatever the series might be, to continue to do that, kids are like adults. They enjoy storytelling in all of its various ways and just as many of us, while we might enjoy reading for fun we might also occasionally like to read a domestic thriller or spy novel. We might like to listen to books on audio. We all like to enjoy books of different kinds at any moment and kids are the same way. The best Childrens Book<\/a>s are the classics. This is kind of a myth. There are great classic books out there for kids. If you look at the sales of Childrens Book<\/a>s in this country you will find that the books that continue to outsell all of the new books in the aggregate are the classics. There is a reason why and it is because when we become new parents or new grandparents we think i cant wait to share blueberries for south or dr. Seuss or i am a bunny or whatever our own favorites were from childhood. There is nothing wrong with that but the reason people go back to that is they dont know the whole world that is out there and we are living in a new golden age for Childrens Book<\/a>s. I dont just say that because i work at the book review and i didnt say that as a Childrens Book<\/a>s editor. I was so shocked by how good Childrens Book<\/a> had become when i was a Childrens Book<\/a> editor, i asked for more pages. When i got more pages there were still more books that deserved attention and i continued to race one Online Review<\/a> a week, 52 additional books just to cover a small sliver of the greatness that is out there. The books have improved it every agent in every format. Even Something Like<\/a> board books, those books that kids can chew on, they are now available in many other formats, books called indestructible, books that are created to go in the bathtub, books that because the production has improved so much along with the printing done in shine and ways the books can be created has improved so much there are things they can do with cutouts, things they can do, it used to be you had to abridge a picture book to adapt it into a board book format because the board book couldnt hold as many pages and now they have improved the production to the point they dont have to abridge picture books. They are better than ever. With picture books i cannot even describe to you it is a shame the book review has to be printed on newsprint because this glorious illustration in the quality of the stories is truly phenomenal. I have to say also the diversity of the Childrens Book<\/a>s in terms of the kinds of experiences and the children depicted in their pages has improved enormously. They reflect the reality of our world today. You cannot publish a picture book today with all the faces, that is good for children of color, see themselves reflected in the pages of the books they read, it is also good for children who are white who do not necessarily encounter those experiences in everyday life because they will. That is the world they are coming into and books are one of the most powerful paths for fostering empathy. It is a way in which we can see through other peoples eyes, we can see their stories, learn about other experiences and that is something with picture books that all children can do. They are more global so that we have incredible childrens picture books coming from europe, latin america, more and more from asia, china did not have a tradition of picture books and they have started and are producing incredible work and all of that is coming over here so it is a world they are opening up to kids. In terms of nonfiction, Childrens Book<\/a>s have gotten incredible. There was a wall in the childrens library, i would go alphabetical looking for the girls, from Abigail Adams<\/a> to clara barton, to Dolly Madison<\/a> and it was all first ladies and nurses, i liked reading about them. Helen keller was one of the exceptions but now there are childrens biographies of everyone you can imagine from artists to entrepreneurs to writers to politicians to public service, people who excelled in public service, sports heroes across the spectrum and they are highly illustrated and beautifully produced and they run from quite young, lots of word books, you might have seen these hero books for very Young Children<\/a> going through picture books for older kids, kids are more visual readers who appreciate rich photography. The photography produced in all these books because of the lowered printing costs and production in asia has gotten better so that a book of photographs that used to be unaffordable for most kids in the 70s and 80s, you have National Geographic<\/a> in washington producing incredible photography books for kids and then there are lots of books in terms of middle grades that reflect the world in which kids are living now. Another category is young adult books when i was a kid, young adults didnt exist. You went from sweet valley high and leapfrog into Sidney Sheldon<\/a> and vc andrewss flowers in the attic about incest. There were no books for teenagers. Now there is a whole category that has arisen of books for teenagers in all their incarnations really reflect kids experiences and desires and the way in which these writers work is truly remarkable because they know what they are up against. They are up against ticktock, sports night, instagram, so these writers go for your heartstrings. If you as an adult have not read john green, most people know about two Cancer Patients<\/a> who fall in love and do not have a card, these books tap into the immediacy and intensity of adolescent emotion in a way books didnt do at all when i was growing up. In terms of fantasy these are ploty plot driven books because the writers know that if they dont grab you by page 2 they have lost you to the internet or who lou or netflix or amazon or wherever else kids go and spend their free time. What does a parent do to raise a reader . I will run through quick tips, i covered some of them here but just to give you some big ideas, reading should be fun. It should not be a chore. Reading is a pleasure. We have the abbreviated version, many tips for all of these, what i say about reading should be fun, youre not a teacher, dont treat reading in the home like a chore. Treat it like something that is special and one more example of practical tips we used in my home which is we told our kids when they were growing up, they are 10, 13, 14. We would set bedtime, 7 00. If you want to stay in bed quietly reading, you could stay up until 7 30, what that tells them, reading is a privilege, something you get to do because you are older. When 7 30 comes along they dont say can i stay up late, can i just finished the chapter or finish this page . I am almost done with the book. You are training them to want to read, to view reading in that positive light. Another big idea. Everyone learns to read. Everyone learns to read. Youre not there as a taskmaster. You could do a lot to help a child learn to read but the more they are reading at home the more that will ultimately help them read at school especially if you start early on. Trust teachers to handle the nuts and bolts of reading, let kids go at their own pace, let them make mistakes, you dont have to correct them when they are reading. If you make a mistake that is a good thing. It is good for them to say this is an imperfect process. A lot of parents after a long day working in the office are exhausted. I looked over many words as i was reading to my kids at the end of the workday, kids appreciate seeing adults make mistakes too. Create a family culture around reading. This is important. When you are at the family table for dinner you can talk about the book you are reading, not just what you are Binge Watching<\/a> on netflix. You can watch movies based on books together. You can show off your own reading. It is a strong message to kids when they say we watch a movie now, no, i am into my book, i will finish what i am reading. That send the message to them. It is also really important, setting rules around screens in your home, if you say in a public area at 8 00 pm you follow that your self. If you say it is time to read and you are scrolling on your phone that is sending a mixed message. Parents need to be part of this too. One thing i love, a whole area, a whole chapter in the book in which ways to incorporate books as part of your family culture, one thing grandparents can do is most parents would welcome this, rather than get your childs big toy or gift card when it is their birthday give them a book, personally inscribed to them, create a library of books, books they got from grandma or grandpa, becomes their library from 0 onwards the donate books, inscribe books to your kids, teach them to treat them with respect, teach them to donate them to the library, donate them to schools, book fairs and take them to reading, let them see the process. When i was at the National Book<\/a> festival i was worried because they had one big room for the largest and greatest authors and Ruth Bader Ginsburg<\/a> was the speaker and had a full house with 7000 people on the waiting list. A popular graphic novelist, i neednt worry, her latest book which deals with childrens anxiety hit number one on amazon before it came out and was number one for a week after that, a huge success with kids in the room was filled to overflowing one of the things she did in that session was to show a slideshow of the book and artwork she created as a child and how her process worked. Writing the text for her book and kids were wrapped to see what the process was like. Let your child take charge. You want to make sure your child is allowed to maintain control over his or her own bookshelf, let them reread them, dont judge what they are reading, dont just say that book again even if that is what you are secretly thinking. Allow them to feel your enthusiasm and support and respect for their own choices. I will end with an image, the bookshelf of one of my coauthors who has three kids. One of her sons bookshelves was arranged very deliberately according to his own interests and she is not allowed to touch it which is as it should be. I welcome naomis questions and hopefully questions from all of you. That was wonderful and you can find many more tips in the book. What i like as a parent of 3 children is a lot of the book has recommendations for your role as a book concierge. If your child is impressed with harry potter they might also like this. It is helpful in that way too. I wanted to talk a couple minutes on the question of the competing things. Kids dont have a lot of free time so it feels very difficult to set aside reading time because there are so many other, whether it is structured sports activities or schoolwork or other obligations kids have and how do you create that time in your home and make that a priority for kids when it seems Everything Else<\/a> comes first . It is a challenge for everyone, there are extracurricular activities, homework and all the myriad distractions, many of them on screens that tug at our childrens time and attention and that is why i stress making books become something kids want to do because ultimately a lot of this is going to come down to their choice particularly as they get older and you start to see this fool up and messaging that we as parents and schools send to kids is really important. One thing i find distressing is when you look at childrens libraries at school, libraries and other preschools are incredibly rich and Come Middle School<\/a> they are turned into Media Centers<\/a> and computer take the priority and a lot of books are being stripped out of librarians being let go which is a mistake. We are trying to encourage enthusiasm. I dont think of it as carving out a time for reading. It is always time to read a book. My kids are always shoving it into the looks and crannies a little moments they had in between Everything Else<\/a> and that is honestly ideally what you want. To set it aside, it creates this idea of a task, something that has to be done. 20 minutes a night a very different kind of mindsets. I urge parents to think about this. I hate to say it, the same manipulate away they think about violin practice, you have to think about how do i create intrinsic motivation as opposed to extrinsic reward punishments or inducements because ultimately it is going to be that kids choice. From an early age i would say even if you have a set routine where you read to them for bed every night make sure that is not the only time so it is good for kids to have that practice because it is especially good for kids to wind down and stay off of the screen, you also want to make sure they are reading in the morning when they wake up, reading in between doing their other things, things like always carrying books with you. When youre going on vacation as a family, what books are you bringing. We are not going to buy books from this trip. If you dont bring enough books that you run out is on you. We have the opposite problem. I have always given at the bookstore. I dont necessarily spoil them but i walk out of the bookstore with quite a big bill. That is another thing you could do. We are not buying souvenirs but we get books from another country. In an englishspeaking country we go to a bookstore and let you pick up 3 books. That kind of thing becomes part of what the family does and there are ways in which a kid needs a battery pack, let it run on the batteries and make sure everyone brings a book with them, make sure theres nothing scattered in the back of their carts, books sitting in the back rather than random plastic toys, ideally you dont want a set time for reading. You want an atmosphere looking for that time. I encourage my kids to read Childrens Book<\/a> reviews. The 12 how to raise a readeryearold, i encourage them to read the wall street journal so they can tell me if there is a book they are interested in and wants to order and they can get into professional book reviewers. It is a great way to empower kids. In moments i felt my kids didnt know what to read here at six books you might like. Pick the one you want to choose, give me a review. I had a professional advantage as a Childrens Book<\/a> editor, bringing home a bunch of works, let me know please are good. I want to open it up for questions. If there are any specific issues or on the culture of bringing reading into your home. All right. Go ahead. Who is your favorite Childrens Book<\/a> illustrator . That is a very difficult one. I have so many. I will mention one person who is a really versatile illustrator and also a comic book artist. His name is Patrick Mcdonald<\/a>. My Favorite Book<\/a> by him is called me james, the childhood of jane goodall and how she grew up to incorporate drawings of jane goodall from her own notebooks, how she grew up observing the world around her, how that led her to a scientist, a reproduction of that famous image of jane, the photograph of her reaching out to a baby chimpanzee. I cry every time i get to the final spread but what is so good about that book, for very Young Children<\/a>, it really gets to the way in which children think about the world around them, the story of jane going to the chicken coop to see how the eggs come to be, the questions all children ask but what i also think is beautiful about that book is it is about nature and close observation in direct experience, very offscreen but what Patrick Mcdonald<\/a> does on the other end of the spectrum, a book called perfectly messed up story, a little unidentifiable creature run during running around in a nice upbeat way. I cant remember the characters name but having a wonderful day, everything was sunny and bright and a blob of jelly lands on the page, the character is really obsessed by the fact this jelly is interrupting the story and ruining it and kids love the story. I am a big fan of books that make kids laugh. For the reluctant reader there is concern about boys and reading and the other two sons, i can understand why, not a lot of boys are, one really great way is humor. I respond well to any book that make a good laugh. The golden age of Childrens Book<\/a>s, it seems paradoxical we experience fewer kids want to read for pleasure seem to be reading for pleasure but there is so much out there for them. Why do you see this golden age . Let me talk about the boys for one second. When you look at statistics of boys and reading, boys read less than girls, they are less likely a National Surveys<\/a> to say reading is a favorite activity. They read fewer books over the summer. Many of them dont read a single book over the summer. I want to couple those statistics with other things we know from National Surveys<\/a>, one is kids of both genders say they are less likely to see their fathers reading than their mothers reading and get back to role models. Really important that both parents role model reading to their kids and mothers and fathers are less likely to read to their sons than their daughters. I want to get to that, something people have observed, a lot more books for boys because theres a wider recognition of the ways kids read and some are more visual readers, they will say my kid there are great interactive books, pop up books, things to do. Im not talking about electronic buttons embedded in books, books that allow kids to get in there. I also say to them it is okay to see kids wandering around the room when you are reading. If they want to see what is in the picture they come back and mostly they do because the pictures tell their own story. Graphic novels are another great way. When i talk about the National Geographic<\/a> book a lot of those books are 101 wacky animals or great sports, those are books. If your child gravitates to those books as many boys do and girls, talking about boys now, dont judge them saying that is just graphic novel are those are just comics. Many of us when you look at great authors and we ask them a question, what did you read going up, many great novelists grew up reading superhero products, peanuts, calvin and hobbes. Everyone can still enjoy those books and grow to appreciate tolstoy and Edith Wharton<\/a> in adulthood. There are a lot more books out there. Graphic novels again, you might look at dog man and captain underpants and i did before i looked into the man now i dont look down on those books, i look up to those books, those books are doing something incredible which is the wimpy kid books are getting kids to read who probably otherwise wouldnt read and if those kids love those books they will then move on to other books. There is recognition, catering to a greater variety of readers. One of the things i wanted to pick your brain about, the new why a category, my older two have gotten to the category and some of them seems totally inappropriate for kids who are ostensibly the target. What makes a book aya book and how can we figure out maybe we need two way categories before handing them over to a child. I think about what is appropriate or inappropriate it ive your towards allowing them to read inappropriate books and i do this for a number of reasons because if youre trying to get kids to read a book theres nothing to involve a teenager more than to say that book isnt appropriate for you. If you want your teenager to read a book, tell them they cant. They will read that book. If they are going to learn about something dangerous, something unknown, something beyond their years and their kids of done it all and they have to share; find stories, the way i console myself is this. Would you rather read it in a book that has been carefully looked at, rewritten, written again, edited, overseen by people making sure not to upset, not to offend, adhere to the academic institutional market or would you rather than go online and google it . Not just that but the book experience allows them to process it in a way that seeing it on a screen or Something Like<\/a> that takes more time. When my kids have seen something inappropriate they are more likely to have a nightmare about the movie then tell me they are having nightmares because they read something scary a book that happened. It is a culture of readers, you have a conversation about it. Kids of all ages often find it easier to talk about a difficult situation or Emotional Experience<\/a> when it is not about them but about someone else. A character in the book can talk about it that way. Of it is something theyre worried about they are not able to talk about it in terms of themselves there is a character in this book, i dont understand what that means. I remember a nerveracking moment my daughter was only 10 years old and she came downstairs, reading a middle grade book, for kids ages 812, what does this word mean and she pointed to the word and it was heroin. I did not we were going going to have a conversation yet. My son reads books about sports figures so the drug conversation came earlier. The reason why it was in that book is the character in the book had a sister who was an opioid addict, that is an issue that affects a lot of americans and if you seek about those americans who have that situation in their family lives or their community, to see that in a book, handled sensitively and in context that is usually powerful for that child to see something that might be upsetting or disturbing to them. For my daughter it was new but i would rather her learn about it there than somewhere shes not going to come to me and say what is this . When a child google something online, i dont think i should have seen that they are not going to bring it up with you necessarily but it is something they talk to you about, that is what your family does and they will naturally come to the parent and ask. One last question i noticed you suggested one of the tips was reading should not be competitive. So much of what we are trying to induce our kids to do, we use competition as a way for that to happen among siblings. Who can read the most books, whatever it is. I was wondering why you think that is particularly harmful in the context of reading . It is about extrinsic rewards, not intrinsic rewards. You have three children so you know this too. My first child was a girl, when i started, is it going to be like this one or that one, not a totally different child and there are all three very different readers. There is no competition. My daughter reads for comfort, she reads really trashy stuff but also will read history. Right now she was given in School Andrew<\/a> solomons book far from the trading on the adult version, i want to read the real book. My middle child loves classics. Hes 13, mostly reading adult books but what was interesting with him is he would read books, he read the jungle book of Richard Kipling<\/a> and came away and tell parents to trust kids and he came back to me and said these books havent aged very well. Theres a lot of racist stuff in here and i thought that is interesting and some people say dont give your kids those books, protect them from that but many kids can handle it. You know your child, the kind of things, my younger child likes to read encyclopedias, the last thing i want to read. I think of it as there are really different. You dont want to set them against each other. What you dont want is for one kid to say im not a reader. So and so is the reader. To say you are reading these different kinds of books, the fact books and shes reading long novels but this is what you do. You dont want we have a sort of each kid has different tastes. They have arguments over whether the other sibling might like such a book because they only read that type of book and the other sibling will get upset and now, i like those books too. Another way to empower your kid and foster a more cooperative way of doing it, each of my kids we these books out of their room, you can imagine it. In my profession they get a lot of books. They have to go through them and i asked them which ones do you think should go to this kid, which wants to go to this did, which wants to go to a cousin because you dont think your brothers will be into it and they love the process. I am the older brother or sister and i know the other ones that are and i will give them these books and it becomes Something Different<\/a>. Thank you, please join me in thanking pamela paul for joining us today. [applause] weeknights we are featuring booktv programs showcasing what is available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight we feature authors of history book starting with professor sabin on the 1770 boston massacre and then history professor benjamin park who wrote about the founding of illinois by mormon leader joseph smith in 1839. That is followed by gretchens for an honor book driving while black, how the other mobile impacted the lives of africanamericans. Booktv all this weekend, every weekend on cspan2. Television has changed since cspan began 41 years ago but our Mission Continues<\/a> to provide an unfiltered view of government that already this year we brought you primary election coverage, president ial impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch cspan Public Affairs<\/a> programming on television, online or listen on our free radio apps and be part of the National Conversation<\/a> through cspans daily Washington Journal Program<\/a> or through our social media scene. 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