Getting Your Kids Hooked on a Book--tricks of the trade

Getting Your Kids Hooked on a Book--

or should I say Getting the hooks of a book into your kids

Let me tell you a little story about an important lesson I learned my first year as a reading teacher. I had decided to read The Diary of Anne Frank with my eighth graders. I was excited. I loved that book when I read it in middle school. So I handed it out to my class, did a short introduction and gave them their first reading assignment. After a few days, they came back complaining they were bored. They hated the book. I had a terrible time getting them to read it. They didn't want to take it home. I didn't know my students well enough to get that they didn't know anything about the Nazis. Most of my kids had never heard of concentration camps or WWII.  Therefore the story seemed "boring" and irrelevant to them. Teacher failure big time. 

Then I started my graduate work in Reading and some BIG light bulbs went on. The book I was reading was talking about how the brain learns by attaching new information to prior learning (things we already know). If the brain isn't familiar with the information it doesn't know where/how to store it, and will dump it from working memory as fast as you read it. Don't you remember reading text books in college with lots of detailed information about a subject you weren't familiar with and you couldn't remember at all what you read? That's why.

The following year I decided to apply what I had learned and do an experiment with my kids. I decided to read Anne Frank again with my eighth graders but this time, I took some time introducing it. I found a documentary that interviewed survivors who knew Anne Frank, showed video footage of the concentration camps and who talked about the Nazis. It showed pictures of her with her family and read clips from her diary.  I showed them some video clips of Hitler and the concentration camps. I also tried to help them connect with Anne by introducing themes from the book about teenage identity struggle. I read the first few chapters aloud and stopped to discuss it. I provided a vocabulary list so that unfamiliar words were right there for them as they read. By day three of showing the video and reading with them, my kids were begging to take the book home. Every single one of my kids finished the book that year. At home. Night and Day difference. 

 Its so easy as a teacher or a parent when we hear our kids say a book is boring to tell them just to try harder and concentrate. But we're not thinking about learning then. The brain needs relevance and context to attach information to stored/prior learning. So when our kids say something is boring--we need to translate that. What they are saying is "Why are we reading this?" "What does this mean?" or "I don't understand this. This makes no sense to me." Those are statements we can really do something with. That is our opportunity to dig into the book a little and find out what the context is. Did it take place in the civil war? Maybe you need to watch some PBS with them, or find some video clips online. Is it a story from the deep south? You might need to explain about racism. Find out what the topic is and if the  book really needs some explanation of the setting or background information to understand what's taking place in the book. 

I have found that I can hook kids on almost any book if I give them the relevance and the context of the book, and read the first few chapters aloud, so they can get into the world of the book in their minds. Once they can picture the world of the novel, it's like a good movie--they want to see the ending.

Many times the books kids bring home from school for summer reading need a little "front loading."  They need a little information, explanation and context for the kids to understand what they are reading. If the school doesn't provide that, go ahead and do the ten minutes of work to help you child get the information they need to understand the book. Try to find a point of interest with the book that they can connect with. If you do, you will get them hooked on the book. It's so worth the time and effort on your part. And the time you spent helping them understand what they are reading will pay off when you don't have to fight them to finish it! 

Happy Reading!