By Kitty Felde
There was nothing wrong with spending most of December watching your favorite Christmas movie over and over again. There’s nothing wrong with ordering your favorite dish at a restaurant or returning to your favorite spot for vacation year after year.And there’s nothing wrong with re-reading your favorite book.
Minnesota reader Mary Reed told the Washington Post that she’d kissed a lot of frogs, looking for a prince of a book. She’d tried over and over again to fall in love with something new, but found herself abandoning them all after a few chapters.
So she returned to an old favorite: the Louise Penny series of Inspector Armand Gamache adventures. “I just needed to be with some old literary friends,” she said.
We all need our literary friends.
Anybody who’s read a book at bedtime to a child knows which books are their favorites: you’ve read them aloud at least a hundred times. From Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, these are the books that make memories for you and your child. These are our friends.
But perhaps your child has crossed over to the era of “I don’t want to read.”
Ask your young reader my favorite question: what’s your favorite book? If you get a shrug or the answer, “I don’t have a favorite book,” search their bookshelves. Is there a dog-eared copy of a manga adventure or the third Harry Potter book or even a long-neglected picture book? Drag it out, offer it as a possibility. If you get another shrug, leave it in a place where that reluctant reader can easily pick it up – near the phone charger, the back of the toilet, you get the idea.
If you can’t get a child to pick up a book, those perhaps-forgotten literary friends may have more luck.
Kitty Felde writes The Fina Mendoza Mysteries series set in the U.S. Capitol. “Losing is Democratic: How to Talk to Kids About January 6th” is now available with curriculum in the back of the book.