Post by Mark T. Locker.

The books I want to discuss today are so rudimentary and without plot that I won’t even call them by name. Let’s say book #1 is called Mass-Produced Board Book That is Basically Advertising and book #2 is Simple Short Stories about Dinosaurs. What makes these two books the best books I have encountered is that they are the first ones that were read to me by my son. No nudging, no help with sounding out a single word. I know that kids his age read; that’s just a thing they do. But seeing him use the keys in his own mind to decode these books made me melt with pride. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter a whit what the books were about. (Though I must say, if they made easy reader books about Doctor Who, I’m certain his reading would skyrocket!)

What matters is hearing him stitch the letters into sounds, the sounds into words, the words into sentences. If you have a child, no matter the age, tonight you should go sit in his/her lap and make him/her read to YOU. It’s a wonderful thing. Even (especially) if you have a surly teen who is not into the whole parent/child thing anymore 🙂