A Literate Family

Last Friday, I was invited to attend a mini-conference on Family Literacy at the Provo City Library with a couple of friends. The keynote speaker was Mary Leonhardt, author of "99 Ways to Get Kids to Love Reading: And 100 Books They'll Love," whom they flew in from the East Coast just for this event. She was SO entertaining to listen to! She had about a million reasons to get your children to love reading and a million entertaining stories associated with them. The overarching theme was children who see parents reading will become avid readers themselves. She also emphasized that it doesn't really matter what kids read, (magazines, comic books, etc.), as long as they're reading, they're headed in the right direction. There was also a lot of discussion about getting boys into reading--since it's becoming a dying art among younger male generations. Although I don't have boys, I'm pretty sure we'll have at least one somewhere along the way, so I filed the information into the "very useful in the future" section in my brain.

There were several breakout sessions to choose from after the keynote speech was over--and I chose to attend "Books for Boys and Books for Girls," which basically taught about the differences in what boys and girls like to read. They illustrated the point very well by starting off with a story called "Once upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude"--a story told from the perspective of a girl and then a boy and finally both. It's a really cute read! (I have to admit, out of all of the books we talked about, I was a bit more interested in the boy books...there were some really fun stories!) Overall, I enjoyed the evening and feel that I learned a lot about making my home a reader-friendly environment.

The best part of all of this, though, happened today. Even before the conference, I felt it was important for my kids to enjoy reading. They're going to have to read at some point for school, so they might as well view it as an enjoyable activity instead of drudgery. So, this afternoon, while Ryan and I were watching President Hinckely's funeral, Kallie disappeared into her room and closed the door. She was quiet for a while...and I realized it was a little TOO quiet, so I went in to investigate. I opened the door and said, "Kallie, what are you doing?" And she replied, "I'm just readin', Mom." I love that she took her doll stroller full of books into her bedroom and sat in the quiet to enjoy "reading" her books. I really hope she will keep this habit up for the rest of her life!