Why reading to kids is different than reading for oneself
I was commenting online in a different forum that since early days we've read big honking popsci and other adult nonfiction books to Beka, and she has enjoyed them. Mostly we read them because they keep us interested, and when we're not bored out of our minds we're better parents. Let's face it, there are only so many times you can read Dr. Seuss' Foot Book aloud in a row before starting to gibber incoherently. Another parent on the group interjected that her kid isn't always in the mood for anything longer-attention-span than picture books, and I (agreeing, of course) thought it through and came up with a list of categories the books we read our kid fall into. These are nonexclusive; individual works can be members of multiple groups simultaneously.
Group 1: Durable Books. These are for the kid to play with primarily on their own, though grownups may 'help' with them or read them aloud as well. Unrippables, or damage resistant (she's managed to shred some board books impressively), often with good pictures -- or books you don't CARE if they destroy. We had a couple of old cellphone manuals, out-of-date Zagat guides, and Angie's List spam leaflet/magazines that we let her use for 'real page' books early on, and she enjoyed them greatly. Sometimes if you give the kid a Durable Book to play with in their hands while you read something else, it can forestall grabbing/ripping behaviors. Or not. Depends.
Group 2: Colorful Pictures. The primary attraction of these books is visual, though of course they may have words in them.
Group 3: Participatory Books. These books aren't really all that "read-aloudable" -- they're point-at-the-pictures books. At first, baby points and parent names or describes; later, the parent can point to elicit vocabulary practice from the kid. We call these 'noun books' around here, and some books that the publishers intended to be further down my list of categories, we only use as 'noun books' because we think the text is insipid or ideologically incorrect -- but they have great pictures and/or a good variety of nouns depicted. Touch-and-feel books are usually in this group, even if they attempt to have a 'story', as are a lot of counting-demonstration books and illustrated abecedaria.
Group 4: Bouncy Verse. The fun of these books is the short sentences and frequent rhymes. Now that she's getting pretty good at this language stuff, we often stop short of the final word or phrase of a line to prompt her to recite it, proving that she's got a good number of them at least partially memorized, which is impressive.
Group 5: Narrative Books. These books (which may also have bouncy verse, good pictures, or nouns to point at, of course) have a through-story that actually goes somewhere, and the kid learns to enjoy that flow to an anticipated denouement.
Group 6: Longer Stories. These books are significantly longer than, say, Goodnight Moon or Boynton's Going To Bed Book. They take 5+ minutes to read, and are usually prose rather than verse. These are the books our kid asks for when she wants to lie down and hear our voices in her final spiraling-the-drain steps towards sleep. Everything from Beatrix Potter's works or the Velveteen Rabbit on up to adult nonfiction doorstops are in this category. Some also have good pictures, and are therefore additionally suited to 'sit kid in lap and read while showing pictures', in those in-lap sessions where the kid is patient enough not to be turning the pages before we're finished reading 'em. :->
Now, each of those groups of books is a different craving, for our daughter. And each category includes books that make us cringe and ones we actively enjoy reading. For obvious reasons, ones we enjoy reading motivate us more strongly to read them to her, so we try to bias our collections that way while still being mindful of the reasons SHE wants us to read them.
For the curious, some adult nonfiction we have successfully read, or are reading, to her at length (a chapter or half-chapter at a time until the book is finished) include:
Group 1: Durable Books. These are for the kid to play with primarily on their own, though grownups may 'help' with them or read them aloud as well. Unrippables, or damage resistant (she's managed to shred some board books impressively), often with good pictures -- or books you don't CARE if they destroy. We had a couple of old cellphone manuals, out-of-date Zagat guides, and Angie's List spam leaflet/magazines that we let her use for 'real page' books early on, and she enjoyed them greatly. Sometimes if you give the kid a Durable Book to play with in their hands while you read something else, it can forestall grabbing/ripping behaviors. Or not. Depends.
Group 2: Colorful Pictures. The primary attraction of these books is visual, though of course they may have words in them.
Group 3: Participatory Books. These books aren't really all that "read-aloudable" -- they're point-at-the-pictures books. At first, baby points and parent names or describes; later, the parent can point to elicit vocabulary practice from the kid. We call these 'noun books' around here, and some books that the publishers intended to be further down my list of categories, we only use as 'noun books' because we think the text is insipid or ideologically incorrect -- but they have great pictures and/or a good variety of nouns depicted. Touch-and-feel books are usually in this group, even if they attempt to have a 'story', as are a lot of counting-demonstration books and illustrated abecedaria.
Group 4: Bouncy Verse. The fun of these books is the short sentences and frequent rhymes. Now that she's getting pretty good at this language stuff, we often stop short of the final word or phrase of a line to prompt her to recite it, proving that she's got a good number of them at least partially memorized, which is impressive.
Group 5: Narrative Books. These books (which may also have bouncy verse, good pictures, or nouns to point at, of course) have a through-story that actually goes somewhere, and the kid learns to enjoy that flow to an anticipated denouement.
Group 6: Longer Stories. These books are significantly longer than, say, Goodnight Moon or Boynton's Going To Bed Book. They take 5+ minutes to read, and are usually prose rather than verse. These are the books our kid asks for when she wants to lie down and hear our voices in her final spiraling-the-drain steps towards sleep. Everything from Beatrix Potter's works or the Velveteen Rabbit on up to adult nonfiction doorstops are in this category. Some also have good pictures, and are therefore additionally suited to 'sit kid in lap and read while showing pictures', in those in-lap sessions where the kid is patient enough not to be turning the pages before we're finished reading 'em. :->
Now, each of those groups of books is a different craving, for our daughter. And each category includes books that make us cringe and ones we actively enjoy reading. For obvious reasons, ones we enjoy reading motivate us more strongly to read them to her, so we try to bias our collections that way while still being mindful of the reasons SHE wants us to read them.
For the curious, some adult nonfiction we have successfully read, or are reading, to her at length (a chapter or half-chapter at a time until the book is finished) include:
- The Scientist in the Crib, by Alison Gopnik et al. [the "baby book"]
- Fruitless Fall, by Rowan Jacobsen [the "bee book"]
- The Map that Changed the World, by Simon Winchester [the "rock book"]
- Chocolate Wars, by Deborah Cadbury [the "chocolate book"]