Motivating Kids to Read in Summer

The summer weeks roll by, and still the kid hasn’t read a book.

Have you been reading? To the kid?

It could be that you haven’t been doing enough advertising, says Jim Trelease, author of “The New Read-Aloud Handbook” (Penguin, $9.95). The book and its earlier editions have sold 1.2 million copies.

“Overwhelmingly, the research has shown that the single best way to reach and motivate the reluctant reader is to read to the child,” Trelease says.

Every time you read to a child, he says, “you’re advertising the pleasures of reading--not the pain, not the frustration, which is most of the kind of advertising the kid gets in school.”

Children in the early grades typically come to view reading as a matter of getting through work sheets, he says. “The basic message in each of those work sheets is, ‘This is boring. This is difficult. This is life-leaching.’

“So what the parent or teacher has to do is counterbalance the message from the work sheet with a positive message about how pleasurable reading can be,” he says. “That’s where reading aloud comes in.”

The problem is, even parents who do read to their children often stop way too soon, he says. Many quit when their children learn to read.

But children aren’t going to find reading fun at first.

Even through third grade, he says, “Reading is work. They’re still in the sounding-out stage--it hasn’t become automatic for them. They’re not fluent yet. Which is all the more reason they should be read to and be given the chance to look at picture books in their free time and at bedtime. It’s really not until about fourth grade that all the advertising and the work sheets and drills in class come together.”

Trelease was still reading to his children when they were teen-agers. They would do the dishes, and he would sit at the table and read aloud.

Parents are right to worry if their children don’t read when they’re out of school.

“The research shows conclusively that kids get dumber during the summer. They stop using their brains,” he says. Teachers see it all the time. Children who don’t read during the summer backslide.

But, Trelease says, one study, involving disadvantaged, inner-city children, showed that when seventh-graders read at least six books during the summer, their skills were maintained.

It’s fair to extrapolate, he says, that for younger children, reading a “significant but not extraordinary” number of picture books will accomplish the same.

“Reading is an accrued skill,” he says. “The more you do, the better you get at it. The better you get at it, the more you like it. But you can’t get better at it unless you do it.”

Parents also have to provide:

* Access to books, through trips to the library and by buying books the child can call his or her own.

* Time to read. Usually it’s best to let the child stay up later and read in bed, Trelease says.

* A reading lamp next to the bed, so the child doesn’t have to walk across the room to turn out the light.

“Then you keep your fingers crossed, because in most cases it’s going to work,” Trelease says.

It helps to keep books, magazines and comic books near the table, for when children eat alone. Keep a rack in the bathroom stocked, too.

Monitor your own reading habits. “It’s extremely helpful if the parents are seen reading something other than TV Guide,” he says. “If your child never sees or hears you reading, but only sees you watching (television), then the child assumes this is the most important thing.”

And when you read to the children, make sure it’s something they want to hear. “A lot of moms would like to read the classics or ‘The Secret Garden’ to this fourth-grader,” he says. “But this kid really wants books about football players.”

The consumer guide Parents’ Choice offers a free list, “What Kids Who Don’t Like to Read Like to Read,” of books in English and Spanish for children ages 2 to 12. Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Parents’ Choice, Department R.R., Box 185, Newton, Mass. 02168.