Terri Faulkner

Back to: News
October 25, 2013
Follow News

Terri Faulkner: 12 Great books to share with your family | Moms

﻿﻿As the story goes, a young mother was seeking wisdom from her neighbor, an older woman whose children had successfully navigated high school and college, and had attended prestigious universities on academic scholarships. What was their secret? Academic summer camps? Tutors? Private high schools? AP classes? “Oh, no,” said the older woman. “We started much, much earlier than that, and it was simple. We just gave our children books.”

No one can deny that instilling a love of reading is, indeed, part of a parent’s power. For a child to embrace that love is for a child to become curious about the world and everything in it. Children who love to read become students who love to learn.

And yet.

For parents, because of today’s world with the Internet, video games and other distractions, it may seem like a daily battle to make your child read. I challenge you to change that view: stop the battle, because you’ll never win it. Instead, change your approach. You don’t have to make your child love you; that comes with the territory. So blur the line between love of you and love of reading by making reading an intrinsic part of your relationship. Stop saying “Go read!” and start saying “Let’s read!” Cuddle up with your child, even your older child, and a good book, and savor the rich experience of exploring the literary world together. As the cold Fall and Winter evenings loom, be deliberate in the way you spend time with your child. Allow them to stay up an extra fifteen minutes, just so they can read with you. Who knows? You may be buying down that college debt.

Wondering where to start? Here are some sure winners, books that make fantastic read-aloud choices for you and your child.

  • The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo – An outstanding, relatively short chapter book about a stuffed rabbit (that would be Edward). A good choice for both boys and girls from about age 5 and up through college (seriously). This delightful, emotional tale is chock-full of family-value talking points. You will be intrigued by how much you care about the characters you meet, and so will your children.

  • The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate – Last year’s Newbery award winning book about a small zoo in a run-down shopping mall. Told from the wise perspective of a silverback gorilla, the story is a satisfying, thought-provoking look at how people (and creatures) can weave their lives together to create both problems and solutions to those problems. Again perfect for boys and girls, ages 7 and up.

  • The Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems – Maybe your crowd is not ready for chapter books. No worries! If you have little people, try this hilarious series by author/illustrator Mo Willems. Some of the twenty titles include I Broke My Trunk, Listen to My Trumpet, and Big Guy Took My Ball. Short, sweet with very clean illustrations, you’d be wise to pick up a few different titles, because you won’t be able to stop with just one!

  • Feeling ambitious? Then maybe you want to jump into the four-book Peter and the Starcatchers series by humorist Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Try on different accents to give the Lost Boys, the pirates, the Indians, Peter, and his true BFF, Molly, their own personalities. This hilarious series is a great twist on the Peter Pan legend that starts with this question: How did Peter learn to fly?

  • For the Mother/Daughter experience, look no further than Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Sweet and sad (spoiler alert: you will need tissues), it’s about a girl setting out across the country with her grandparents in search of her mother. Other good choices: Wendy Mass’s 11 Birthdays, Suzanne LaFluer’s 8 Keys or The Mother-Daughter Book Club by Heather Vogel Frederick. These are best-suited for girls ages about eight and up.

  • Dads, get in the action by getting into a gritty story of survival with your boy. Think Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, about a young boy surviving alone in the Canadian wilderness. Or reach for Peak, by Roland Smith, about a father and son determined to climb Mount Everest together.

Don’t forget that Weld County is home to the world-class High Plains library system. When you finish these books and are looking for something new, ask any of the skilled librarians at High Plains for another recommendation, and let the adventure with your child continue!

There are many little ways to enlarge your child\'s world. Love of books is the best of all. — Jacqueline Kennedy



Explore Related Articles

The Greeley Tribune Updated Dec 14, 2013 12:46PM Published Nov 4, 2013 08:34PM Copyright 2013 The Greeley Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/8648271-113/child-love-books-book
www.greeleytribune.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-49
69240
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:R6W2IBE6BCI4GVUNMRF2QKHWWPXRAJPP
<urn:uuid:d3cf47fa-d91f-40b6-8d19-cfce4697663b>
2014-11-24T05:41:27Z
64.94.90.94
sha1:KFUUDQLPJCBYAFDQLYBFOFXXWFREMOEY
<urn:uuid:89372648-6769-400f-bb6a-0f6386ddd43f>
http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/8648271-113/child-love-books-book
response
<urn:uuid:f3effc59-edb2-46b4-80c7-ad4508fead03>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-49
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for November 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf