One of my greatest memories is reading the same, mundane book over and over again, night after night, to my firstborn over a decade ago. And yes, after the 179th reading, it was hard for me to muster the energy and enthusiasm to proclaim “Oh look, a red ball!” each night. But Nicholas identified with the little boy in the book, who loved balls and did bear a sort-of resemblance to my then-toddler. And so I kept reading. And reading.
Now my babies are 13 and 15, and their noses are more often buried in the screen of their smartphones than the pages of books. So when The Guardian posted a recent article titled “Bedtime Story is Key to Literacy,” it got me thinking. Why do we stop reading to our children? Is the bedtime story a dying breed?
According to British children’s writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, it just might be, with disastrous effects. Boyce, who won the 2004 Carnegie medal for his debut children’s book, Millions (HarperCollins, 2004), stated in the article “the joy of a bedtime story is the key to developing a love of reading in children…They’re being taught to read [in school] before anyone has shared with them the pleasure of reading – so what motivation have they got to learn?”
In an interesting twist, a February 2015 survey conducted in Britain by the GPS company TomTom revealed that “of 1,000 parents of children aged one to 10, 34 percent never read a bedtime story to their children, with 29 percent blaming late working and 26 percent the daily commute.” As a commercial tie-in, the company began a campaign offering a free story book for nighttime reading with the purchase of a TomTom Go 5000 navigation system, including this tagline: “We know your time is precious, especially if you are a busy mum. Spend less time on the road and more time doing the things you love—like tucking your little ones in with a bedtime story.”
My interest is piqued when non-literary companies, such as TomTom, market their product as a parenting device designed to cut down on parental stress, so that parents can focus on the important things in life, like bedtime stories. Guilt factor notwithstanding, the message is important. We need to continue reading to our children, well past the age when they themselves become independent readers. One of the most intriguing non-fiction books that I’ve read over the last five years was Alice Ozma’s The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books we Shared (Hachette, 2011). When she was in fourth grade, Alice and her father made a pact that he would read aloud to her for 100 consecutive nights. At the end of the pact, both realized they wanted to continue—and Alice’s father kept reading out loud to his daughter every night, without fail. The day the streak stopped was when Alice left for college. Yes, college.
Libraries are wonderful incubators for the story. We share them in storytimes, sometimes at night with little ones who arrive in feeted pajamas and clutching beloved stuffed animals. The children will always be there for the stories. It is the parents that we need to turn into lifelong storytellers.
Start a page on your website or library blog of “favorite bedtime tales” and offer patrons the ability to suggest stories. Create a bulletin board display of a large, cozy bed, where the “quilt” on top is comprised of the front covers of beloved books perfect for reading out loud. Bookmark bibliographies for the circulation desk that can subtly be slipped into every book that is checked out during a specific week or month. All of these things can send home that important message of sharing books well beyond the early literacy years.
As for my own two, now towering over me as my “man-children,” as I lovingly refer to the boys I can no longer cuddle and pick up on my own: I’m digging up that tattered copy of a book about a toddler boy and his fascination with different types of sports balls. And then, we’ll have a family vote on which chapter book we are going to read out loud, together. Please share your suggestions with me. I only have two years left to get a lot of stories in before the college years.