Do you want a companion who will always be available, never desert you in a crisis and whisk you away to an exciting adventure with very little or no cost to you? Try picking up a book!
A friend and I were talking about the importance of a child learning to read. We agreed that a love of reading is foundational. It is up to parents to establish that love at an early age. Long before my son or grandchildren could hold a book and look at pictures, I read to them. A cloth book is great. It is pliable and easy for little hands to hold. It isn’t harmful to book or baby when tasted. Books with very little print and very large pictures are nice too. The best place for a baby to be when he is being read to is the old fashioned, warm, soft lap. Baby will experience the security of being held while listening to a familiar voice recite some words. What could be better than that?
Educators use various ways of teaching reading to children in the classroom: phonics, look and say, probably lots of new ways since this teacher left the classroom but when I taught kindergarteners, my favorite way was their way. The youngster would tell me a story and I would write it. Then he would “read” it back to me. He would also write his own story, using scribbling, then letters. I didn’t correct spelling or say he should have written it a different way. It was his story. When the child actually put letters together into words that I could interrpret, it was a red-letter day. We celebrated. Remember, these were five- and six-year olds. Tackling conventional books would come later but now his interest was piqued and he was ready for more.
But, all that to say that reading is much more than a skill. It is indispensable. Throughout life, books have been some of my best friends. Who else can whisk me away to another land, another adventure, or broaden my horizons ? Who else can sit with me through the interminable hours of waiting for a doctor or sitting by the bedside of a sick loved one? When sleep is only a wish and it seems that morning will never come, who can chase away the shadows better than a book?
The only thing better than reading books is writing them. That too is an opportunity for relishing a different environment, thinking new thoughts, getting into difficult situations and then, lo and behold! getting out of them again. Now e-books have come on the market and my books are in e-book form as well as traditional but somehow I don’t think a little one would be nearly as impressed with Mom reading to him from an electronic gadget as he would be in feeling or tasting or holding the pages of that wonderful friend for life, the one who will never desert him and will always be available, the centuries old but always brand new–book!
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