By Kitty Felde
If January is our traditional month for resolutions, why not make February the month to shake it up a bit. Doing the same thing over and over again can be mind-numbing. Small changes can reawaken the joy we felt not so long ago.
You can even shake up a reading rut. Putting something completely different in front of a reluctant reader can sometimes reinspire a reading habit.
If a child usually reads a paperback, try switching to an audiobook. If they devour nothing but graphic novels, hand them the original version of The Baby-Sitter’s Club or Percy Jackson in prose.
If they are only interested in non-fiction books about space or robotics or snakes, ask the librarian or bookseller to help you find a middle grade novel on the same topic – such as Melissa Savage’s The Truth About Martians or Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot or even my upcoming mystery Snake in the Grass about snakes showing up in the gym bags and trash cans of members of Congress.
Another way to shake it up is to switch genres. If fairy tales are the only thing a child has been reading, try introducing an adventure novel. If sports is the only category of interest, hand them a cookbook. Tell them that they don’t have to love it, but just like that unfamiliar vegetable that appears on their plate, they have to try it. Five pages. Or ten minutes of reading. And if they hate it, challenge them to find something different.
Bibliophiles sometimes expand their reading menu by literally moving to a different Dewey Decimal section, or reading an entire shelf of novels by authors whose last name begins with “P.”
Take the February challenge: shake it up a reading habit.
Kitty Felde writes the Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of middle grade novels.