Parenting : Love of Books Needs a Spark : Sports, science or even TV may offer a path to your child’s literary heart. Find what turns them on.

It’s summer reading season again, time for parents to head for libraries and bookstores for the usual stack of childhood favorites. For certain grown- ups--those who whiled away their own youths dreaming over books--the prospect of sharing remembered tomes with kids is delightful. “Eloise,” “Charlotte’s Web,” “Treasure Island”--whatever ignited the love of reading in parents will probably leap to mind as they shop for children’s summer fare. Their youngsters, however, may have other ideas. They might, for example, reject “Eloise”--the classic story by Kay Thompson about an impish resident of the Plaza--in deference to the Berenstain Bears, the wildly successful series by Stan and Jan Berenstain. They might choose the Rev. W. Awdry’s “Thomas the Tank Engine” over the “Velveteen Rabbit.”

Marjorie Clifton, children’s librarian at the Sherman Oaks Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, reports that some juvenile classics hold up better with today’s youngsters than others. Among the winners, she mentions Theodor Seuss Geisel’s “Dr. Seuss” series as well as the “Madeline” books by Ludwig Bemelmans. “Eloise,” she says, contains some “hard-to-get jokes, plus it looks dated”--especially to children weaned on the representative, detailed illustration style of contemporary artists like Chris Van Allsburg.

On the other hand, she points out, “some books that parents liked, their kids will too if parents bring them out at exactly the right age.”

She cites Margery Williams’ “Velveteen Rabbit” as one grown-ups often introduce too soon. “It’s fine for 7- or 8-year-olds,” she concedes. “But preschoolers find it hard to sit still for.”

Clifton advocates reading aloud to youngsters as a way to turn them on to books. “As soon as they can sit up,” she advises, “make it part of their bedtime routine.” She believes that “the more parents read to children, the more accepting kids will be of a wide range of books. It broadens their horizons.”

Many parents find television a fierce competitor with any book for kids’ affections. Rather than fighting it, some use the tube to enhance the appeal of the written word, either through videos of classic storybooks or shows such as the PBS series “Reading Rainbow.”

Others employ the set as a way to discover their young one’s interests--whatever they are--in order to turn them into reading material. Adults who themselves were once forbidden to buy comic books now snap them up by the armloads if they’re based on such television hits as “The Simpsons” and “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.”

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TV, of course, isn’t the only route to a child’s literary heart. Glenda Grubbs of North Hollywood found her sports-crazy son Logan, 8, eager to start reading, but only if he could learn more about his favorite athletes. “I bought him anything I could find about sports,” Grubbs says. “Logan read so many sports books I’ve lost track of the titles. I remember one Michael Jordan book he loved. If it was about sports and had big typeface and colorful illustrations, I got it.”

Carl Stensel of Studio City bought science books for his son Max, 8, who is passionate about science and technology in general, and fighter planes in particular. According to Carl, “He loved science fact books with lots of pictures and captions. He started off reading captions, really. I bought ‘The Big Book of Real Airplanes’ (Putnam, $7.95), the ‘Encyclopedia Brittanica Book of Fascinating Facts’ (Outlet Books, $17.99) and all the science-oriented ‘Eyewitness’ books (Dorling Kindersley, $7.95-$12.95).”

Only when Max was well into reading in his chosen field did his father introduce Franklin W. Dixon’s “Hardy Boys” series, which Max now reads avidly.

The Stensels’ experience offers parents a hint: Be patient. Sometimes grown-ups forget exactly when they read the cherished volume that sparked their own passion for print. Many, in fact, were 11 or 12, not 8 or 9, when they first cracked “Tom Sawyer.” Like their own kids, they needed to cut their reading teeth on easier fare first.

Finally, though, it’s wise to remember that discovery is part of the thrill of reading. Whatever a grown-up puts in front of child, the child may opt for something he or she finds independently--perhaps at camp or at a friend’s house. Whatever it is may itself become the stuff of memory, the one book out of all the rest that opened up the written world.