Latest news with #summerreading
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
5 Expert Tips for Making Reading Time the Best Part of Your Child's Day
After a summer of obligatory reading lists and extra screen time, getting your kids to crack open a book might seem impossible. Here's what experts say. After a summer filled with outdoor play, screen time, and relaxed routines, getting kids back into the habit of reading can be a challenge. For many families, the transition from summer break to the school year brings a renewed focus on academics, but rekindling a child's love for reading goes beyond homework assignments. This is especially important given that kids' reading skills are at historic lows and even some elite college students can't read full books. With summer reading wrapping up and back-to-school in the fall, it feels like a good moment for this topic. Whether your child lost interest in books over the summer or just needs a gentle nudge, Parents spoke to five experts for practical tips and creative ideas to help you raise a reader, not out of obligation, but out of genuine excitement and enjoyment. Finding Their Niche Charlie N. Holmberg, WSJ bestselling author, thinks that a big part of getting kids interested in reading is to emulate a love of reading. Not only to be seen reading, but to share what you're reading. 'I'll often share interesting things in my reading with my husband, so why not share them with my kids, too? We like to share highlights of our day at the dinner table, and I think the twists and turns of current stories make for a great highlight.' For Holmberg, raising a kid who loves reading also means understanding exactly what your kids like to read. 'My son has recently gotten into the typical middle-grade novels and will crack them open before bed, but my daughter doesn't connect with those. She's not a big lover of books—reading and writing are her least favorite subjects in school. But through some trial and error, I've learned she loves nonfiction books, especially ones with photos, graphics, and other visuals. Finding titles at the store or the library with subject matter she's presently showing interest in makes a big difference, too. Last year it was rocks and minerals, this year it's astrology and feathers.' Lastly, Holmberg thinks it's great for kids to have their own library cards and have opportunities to pick out their own books, as well as take responsibility for those books. That sense of ownership and independence places value not only on the books themselves, but on the identity of being a reader. Don't Skip Read Alouds Marisa Ware, MSEd, literacy specialist and consultant to Charge Mommy Books, understands that weaving reading into daily life can feel challenging, especially for busy parents, but there are many small, meaningful ways to do it. 'Reading aloud at bedtime, sharing articles on topics their kids are curious about, listening to audiobooks together, or keeping a book or magazine in the car.' She suggests during the summer to avoid letting reading become a chore. Research indicates that allowing students to choose their own reading materials significantly benefits their reading motivation, comprehension, and overall academic performance, so let kids choose materials they enjoy – graphic novels, joke books, how-to guides, or sports articles all 'count' as reading and help build positive associations. 'Some parents may find it helpful to establish a daily reading routine,' she notes. 'Set aside a specific time each day during which the whole family reads and then discusses what they read. This may be independent reading, or may be a few minutes in which your child reads aloud to you.' Meet Them Where They Are Maya Payne Smart, author of Reading for Our Lives: The Urgency of Early Literacy and the Action Plan to Help Your Child, acknowledges that too often parents mistake a love of stories for a love of reading. 'But the reality is: enjoying being read to and feeling excited to read on your own are two very different things, and kids need both. When children struggle to sound out words or make meaning from them, reading feels hard, not fun. That's when screens win, with games and apps that deliver immediate gratification, dopamine hits, and nonstop stimulation.' She says that reading to kids builds vocabulary and background knowledge that support comprehension (as well as story love), but for kids to love reading on their own, they need the skills to do it successfully. So if you have school-aged kids, summer is the time to shore up their independent reading skills. 'Even in the midst of packed schedules and long workdays, parents can weave in quick reading moments—asking kids to read aloud during errands, over breakfast, or before bed,' Smart advises. 'These short check-ins offer a valuable window into how they're progressing. Notice where they're smooth and where they stumble.' If you're unsure how their reading compares with the expectations for their age or stage, Smart says that summer is a great time to check out your state's reading standards or get a screening from a local learning center. 'Use the summer break to get a sense of what your child needs to start the next school year strong,' she advises. Smart wants to remind parents that literacy learning happens everywhere. So every time parents talk, play, or explore with their children, they're building the vocabulary and knowledge that will power reading comprehension later on. 'For my family, nearby Lake Michigan offers sand dunes carved by ancient glaciers and stories of Indigenous communities like the Ojibwe, Menominee, and Potawatomi. We can explore the lake's ecosystem, spot native fish (and invasive ones, too), investigate shipwrecks and lighthouse legends—or just enjoy beaches and parks while learning how to protect this freshwater treasure,' she says. She further says to remember that reading doesn't start—or stop—with books. 'I was reminded of this when my daughter attended a soccer camp in Colorado. Coming from the Midwest to discover this new terrain together, our conversations suddenly included words like altitude, elevation, and dehydration. And her reading included scouring the camp's packing list, digesting weather reports, and poring over oxygen canister instructions. It wasn't storytime, but it was reading—driven by real needs, genuine curiosity, and the excitement of new experiences,' she recalls. Try a Little Tech Kristy Woodson Harvey, NYT bestselling author, believes that a big part of getting kids interested in reading is meeting them where they are. For kids who love screens, ebooks can be a more appealing alternative, and for kids who don't think they love reading at all, audiobooks can bridge the gap and make them fall in love with story as well. Watching movie adaptations after a book can be fun as well for kids who prefer TV to books. 'As a writer, I obviously adore reading and find it to be one of the most enjoyable and foundational hobbies we can pass along to our children. But, as with so many things in life, we can't make our children love to read,' she notes. 'I feel like modeling reading is one of the most important things we can do as parents. It's also hard to scold our children for preferring screens when we're constantly pulling out our phones, so I think practicing what we preach and modeling a love of reading is paramount.' Harvey has a web show and podcast with three other New York Times Bestselling authors called Friends & Fiction, where they have interviewed hundreds and hundreds of writers. Almost across the board, they say that their parents didn't censor their reading much or focus on what was educational over entertaining. 'I love this approach. Whatever the genre, the more words the better,' she advises. Lean Into Listening Erin Beers, a middle school language arts teacher, acknowledges that life is fast-paced, and kids (and families) are seemingly always on the go, especially during the summer. One way that she has tackled five books this summer is by using Audible. 'My students love read-alouds – it is one of their favorite times within my class where they get to listen to a book that I read that they voted on as a whole class,' she says. 'I often think that people only view reading when a book is in hand,' Beers continues. 'However, with access to audiobooks using apps like Audible, books are more accessible than ever. Listening to texts is just as valuable because kids are still using metacognition as they are listening. Parents can use technology to their advantage by encouraging audiobooks as an on-the-go way to navigate summer reading or even to engage a family in a common book during a long car ride." Read the original article on Parents Solve the daily Crossword
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
This summer I'm taking a Maga approach to reading: self-serving and isolationist
July means one certain thing. Summer reading lists are upon us – magazine and newspaper editors sit around and, with some effort, dash together a 20-or-so long list of the books you should bring on holiday. The lists usually look like some combination of the following: an obscure new novel, authored by a friend in need of a favour; the second book of the most recently zeitgeisty novelist – quality of these vary; something from the 'smart thinking' or popular science category (designed to make you feel clever, actually makes you dumber); a history tome so dense and unfriendly it is hard to imagine any normal person wanting to read it, let alone on a beach; a blandly feminist pamphlet titled something glib such as Women Are Powerful; a crime thriller, ordained to be on every popular reading list by some unknown force of the universe. The publishing houses are happy, the featured writers too. Meanwhile, the newspaper believes it has paid a service to its reader – but of course it has done the opposite. Because it is abjectly implausible that even five of the books on these lists will stand any kind of longevity test, let alone all 20 (how many books are there are in total from, say, 2002 that have had lasting impact on the culture?). The summer reading list necessarily emphasises the new. This comes at the cost of recommending the quality. And so the likelihood that these lists are stuffed with duds and wastes-of-times is so strong it is approaching inevitability. READ MORE In a bid to avoid gutting but predictable disappointment, this summer – with the exception of the books I am lucky enough to read for work – I have committed myself to the act of rereading. Why risk something untested when I know for sure that most of Hemingway 's are pretty good? I will have a good time with Cormac McCarthy , I always do. If you're an Austen fan, check out Pride and Prejudice again, you'll love it. This is an obvious and dishonourably parochial instinct. There is a whole world out there I am cutting off from myself: what about the great Malay playwrights (I assume there are some); or Danish masters of genre fiction (Danes, enlighten me); or Afrikaans poets; or the next VS Naipaul surely hovering somewhere on the horizon waiting to be plucked from obscurity and rocketed to fame one summer reading list at a time? What secrets of the universe am I wilfully keeping from myself? Well, I'm contented with not knowing for now. This is the ultra-Maga approach to reading: self-serving, isolationist, retreating from all those cosmopolitan obligations somehow acquired over the years, harking after an imagined halcyon past when books were good (and jobs were American!). Hell, I might even buy a red hat. Or maybe we needn't be so cynical. The art of rereading is a romantic pursuit, too. The Italian writer Italo Calvino describes 'a classic' as a book that never finishes saying what it has to say. Twee, maybe. But it's a good test. Every reread of your favourite story will bring you something new. I am not the same person as I was at 24, mid-pandemic, reading The Secret History for the first time. I should try it again – there may be as many more secrets of the universe to discover in that activity as there will be in an attempt to develop a hinterland with those Danish genre-fiction writers. 'You can't step in the same river twice,' said some zany Presocratic philosopher a very long time ago. I suspect this is true of reading books too. Time for a hard-pivot to the doldrums of low culture (where I am, to be frank, more comfortable dwelling), because this is not a feature limited to the written word. I suppose it was on my fourth rewatch of Gossip Girl that I truly came to understand myself; the monorail episode of The Simpsons on the fifth go taught me something ineffable about humanity's unquenchable optimism; and that same tomato pasta I have been making for 15 years now is not boring, thank you very much, it's a paean to nostalgia and memory, or something like that. In search of a truly balanced life, I should teach myself how to do both. But for now, which is more important? Possessing the bravery to face the new, so we don't confine ourselves unnecessarily? It is perhaps too obvious to point out the virtue in that. But what of being too insecure to sit with the familiar? Could that be just as limiting? What's left of that instinct is a Sisyphean project of casting around the artistic realm trying to keep up with every trend and development, never satisfied because the work will never be done. And all the while there are expansive universes still undiscovered in whatever your favourite novel was when you were 26. I am not sure of the answer. Let me consult Gossip Girl, or Cormac McCarthy, just one more time.
CTV News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Summer reads for young people
Atlantic Watch The folks from Nimbus Publishing share some of their favourite summer titles for young readers.
Daily Mail
22-07-2025
- Daily Mail
How YOU can avoid being a victim of crime: Always face the door in a pub and never leave your house empty while on holiday... IAN RANKIN and Britain's top crime writers reveal their top lessons on keeping yourself safe
They plot the most ingenious, twisty, heart-thudding stories. And many of us will be reading their books on the beach this summer. But what has a life of crime-writing taught some of Britain's bestselling authors about how to keep safe - at home and away? From reducing the risk of home burglary when you park your car at the airport to avoiding con artists at the hotel bar, five blockbusting novelists offer crucial top tips for a crime-free summer…
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Keep reading fun (and free!) all summer long
At Read 2 Succeed (R2S), we know that summer is a critical time to help children stay connected to reading – especially as many local students are still catching up from learning disruptions over the past year. But keeping your child engaged in reading doesn't have to be a chore, and it doesn't have to cost a thing. From free books and audiobooks to reading rewards and online story times, there are tons of fun and no-cost ways to keep your child turning pages all summer are just a few ideas to get you started: Free summer reading rewards Whether it's a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut, a sweet treat from The Hop Ice Cream, or a free book from Barnes & Noble, there are multiple brands supporting summer reading with awesome rewards this summer! Check out 7 Free Summer Reading Programs Kids (and Parents) Will Love over on the R2S blog. Free audiobooks Take your family vacation to the next level with a fabulous (and free) audiobook. Download the Libby app from the NC Digital Library and use your local library card to access thousands of audiobooks, ebooks and even magazines – perfect for long car rides or quiet evenings at home. Little Free Libraries Tired of hearing, 'I'm bored'? Try a Little Free Library scavenger hunt. Find a map of Little Free Libraries near you at Let your kids pick out a few gently used books from home they're ready to pass on. Visit a few library boxes in your area, donate a book and see what treasures you might find in return. Make it a family ritual – each new stop is an adventure. Free online read-alouds On rainy days or during downtime, tap into free online read-aloud videos to help keep your child's reading habit going strong. Try Storyline Online, Story Time with Kayla, Brightly Storytime and Black Children's Books Read Aloud to get started! Set up a cozy 'read-aloud corner' at home with snacks and comfy seating to make it feel special. Free printable family reading newsletters Each month, R2S publishes printable family reading newsletters filled with book recommendations, local family events, fun literacy activities and links to curated read-alouds. Options are available for both early childhood and K–5 families – and they're all free to download at For even more summer reading resources or to get involved with Read 2 Succeed, follow R2S on Instagram and Facebook @r2sasheville or visit This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Find book joy – no admission required Solve the daily Crossword
