Growing a Family Love of Reading

Families and communities that grow avid readers have daily routines of personal reading, as well as reading together with children. Exactly how that looks and when it happens is unique to each family, classroom, neighborhood, or social circle, fitting comfortably with day-to-day activities of their members.

Families with children who read well value and encourage the practice of reading every day. They believe that time spent reading and discussing self-selected books offers an intellectually rich path to family bonding, academic success, and lifelong learning.

What reading families do 

Family engagement in literacy means relaxed, joyful, daily reading and conversation about what’s read within a family and possibly with others in their broader communities. 

People of any age who are new to reading need to be supported socially as they begin to curiously question and then evolve in their understanding of “the how” and especially “the why” of book reading. For a young child, that typically means an older family member reading to and with them a book that the youngster finds enjoyable. Shared reading should continue as children grow.

Family reading culture and lifelong learning

Conversations are a vital part of shared reading experiences. Those conversations are focused on each reader’s or listener’s thoughts and feelings about what’s read, and about how and why each reader or listener personally connects with a book’s content…or doesn’t. We believe that the most enriching shared book reading and subsequent conversations are not structured or scripted. They naturally unfold.

This type of an orientation to books and reading–one that addresses a hunger for the world beyond an individual or family’s physical reach–creates a family culture of reading. As a bonus, performance on academic tests of reading proficiency increases and lifelong learning begins.