Parents frequently ask how to ensure that their children learn to love reading. Though there are no simple answers, I have been thinking about what “makes” a reader and what doesn’t for several years.
Growing a reader certainly feels as if it were a cousin to gardening. Parent or gardener, the process is about providing the ingredients for nurture and tending them as they find their own nature. There is an integrity in the choices children make as well. A central idea in Elizabeth Duckworth's book, The Having of Wonderful Ideas, is that children must construct all knowledge for themselves. It is that construction which is the work of the child.
For an example of that work, we are familiar with the idea that playing peekaboo helps babies understand the permanence of objects, in this case mom or dad, even when their faces are hidden behind a handkerchief. And we do recognize the important implications when his or her hand first pulls aside the cloth instead of waiting for us to pop out.
We also feel proud when our offspring express their understanding of the logic of grammar, even as they misuse it: "Sara do it, self!" or "I broke mine horse." We are less aware, however, of how that integrity of choice and construction of knowledge is going on when they become borrowers of books. I'd like to use some favorite examples to explore the idea of integrity of choices, in this case, those of children from our prekindergarten.
Sometimes, in their endless curiosity, children make choices that are surprising or puzzling. One child would hold an unopened book at arm's length and study the cover as if all answers to its contents would be revealed there. A girl would spend library period deep in the process of turning the pages of her choices with great seriousness, but then at the last moment, slide out a book from the shelf--unpreviewed--and borrow that one. One boy was interested only in true books about blood or penises. Another would browse through the picture book section only to check out--yet another time--the unabridged dictionary.
Over time, both entranced and mystified by these choices, I'd ask them a few questions when they brought their books back, hoping to gain insight. Time distilled them into just a few, which I believe, are important ones:
- What was it about the book that made you borrow it?
- What did you like about it?
- How could the book have been better?
As a result of asking those questions, I discovered some amazing things about their choices. I learned that the child who studied the book cover noticed that the best part of the story was often shown on the cover; that the girl who checked out a book without previewing it wanted to surprise both herself and her dad who would be reading it to her; and that the blood-and-penises boy's father was a urologist and he wanted to be one too. But it was the story of the boy who borrowed the unabridged dictionary that brought me to trust in what Duckworth wrote.
I discovered a browser with broad interests in a lively four-year-old boy. Early in the school year he began borrowing The Random House Unabridged Dictionary. This book had over 2,000 pages of extra-thin paper and weighed about seven pounds--the weight of a gallon of milk. He would leaf through several books after the class had heard a story aloud, but inevitably he'd drift by the 400 section, pull out the dictionary again and, holding it in a hug in order to lift it, bring it to the counter for check out.
The following week, I'd ask him those three questions. His answers: "There's a picture of my dog in it," and "I like the little cut-out places. They make it open right to a letter." I still have his image in mind, standing in the car pick-up line waiting to go home. There he was with the book in his backpack, the tan corners sticking out because it couldn't zip fully. He had to walk leaning forward a bit in order to keep it from pulling him over backward.
Weeks went by in the same pattern. Browsing, enjoying other books, but always the dictionary for taking home. One day when I inquired about his choice again, he answered, "It has all the words." What a stunning reply! It quite took me aback. Was he wondering about learning all the words? About language? Learning to read all of them? His ability to know what they all meant? If any of these reasons were close to the truth, how clever of him to keep them handy, right in his backpack, just in case.
And then an interesting thing happened: he stopped borrowing it. I wondered why. I like to imagine that he had finally answered the question for himself: that if ever he needed a word, he knew just where to find the book that held all of them.
As a coda, I must note that he borrowed it two or three times more that year, spaced at intervals of a month of more. When I asked those three questions, he no longer thought back and tried to answer me. Instead, he'd smile and shrug. "I just like it," he'd say.
The credit for that young boy's exploration and growth goes to his parents. Each week when he brought it home, they greeted it with untiring good faith. His mother confided that he probably had some reason in mind, and since they borrowed many books each week together from other libraries, the dictionary could have its place in their reading life too.
That boy must be at least in his late twenties by now, possibly even a parent himself. I often wonder at the idea of him as a dad, and how he might developed as a result of his parents' acceptance of that long ago boy, as he went about the work of growing into himself--as a library-user and as a person. And I smile.
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