Do you know of young people reading a lot?

[Argus Skyhawk]

My sister recently posted this on Facebook and I thought it was interesting.

For a school assignment my fourth grader had to list all the books she's read this year. There were 50 of them including all the Harry potter books, a little house book, and the hobbit.
When I was in fourth grade I read call of the wild and where the sidewalk ends. That's it. I'm pretty impressed by her. And she's not alone. She talks to the kids in her class about the books she's reading because they've all read them as well!
Maybe we should stop making fun of the rising generation now.

I hear now and then about how young people don't read enough, but I seem to keep encountering kids that are reading a lot. How about you guys? Would you say you know of a lot of young people that are avid readers?

 

[Miss Chicken]

I don't really have many children in my life at the moment but of those children I do know I would say 50% are readers, and of those a couple are avid readers.

The children who I know rarely read come from homes where there are little or no books. One mother told me it was useless to buy books for her children as they (the children) would only tear them up or draw on them.

The most avid child reader I know gets told off for reading instead of doing his homework. He reads a wide range of topics/genres.

 

[Greg Cox]

I have a small army of nieces and nephews, most of them still in grade school, and they are all avid readers, with a couple of them crossing into voracious . . . .

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

80% of it is the parents, with some kids never taking to it because of reading problems or just personalities that make sitting down doing "nothing" an awful thing. Parents expect their kids to do chores, sport, scouts, music.. whatever but they don't have an expected reading time. If they are reluctant you could even offer rewards for every finished book. One thing you have to do is research what books are out there for kids currently and go and actually buy them or borrow them which takes some parental investment in time.

It always irritates me when I meet luddite parents who think newer books are rubbish and their kids should be reading Hardy Boys instead of the latest swords and vampires trilogy.

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

My youngest is 11 and was noted in the school yearbook this year for checking out 93 books from the school library in the first semester. So I'd say he reads, as do many of his friends.

 

[Velocity]

My granddaughter is 7 and she loves to read nonfiction more than fiction. She doesn't always like the fiction that she is supposed to read for first grade, but she will devour books about animals, the ocean, space, etc.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

My son Ian who is 7 is also a voracious reader. He has been since learning to read. He tears through books at an incredible rate. He has library at school where he take two books out a week. He usually reads at least one on the bus ride home Monday afternoon and reads both books several times in the week before returning them. We also have many books at hand at home and are always buying new ones based on his interest at the time. Either through book sales from school, our local Barnes & Nobles. Which he asks to go to all the time. What we order on Amazon or his new favorite thing, going to the town library when they have their book sales. We also make it the town library about every two weeks to borrow books as well.

For Ian, reading brings so much focus. He reads at a really high level and has an amazing vocabulary. The downside is that he's often reading when he should be going to sleep. We limit him to one book at night during the week and two on Friday and Saturday at bedtime. Even with that we often have to go into his room and tell him to put the book down and go to sleep. We have a rule of no electronics after dinner, which is around 5:30/6pm. So no tv, Wii or iPads and he's often in his chair reading. If not, he's playing with his toys or coloring.

 

[cultcross]

I was sat near three girls on the bus the other day, must have been about 9, having a really in depth discussion of the Hunger Games trilogy, and I mean the books - they were quite disparaging of the movies, and film adaptations in general. I think the idea that kids don't read because of iPads and phones and Facebook is no more true than the same things that were said of the last generation because of game boys and MSN and the one before that...

 

[1001001]

Both of my kids read all the time. My son has multiple books at a time stationed throughout the house.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

I used to work in the children's section of a public library, so I knew a lot of kids who were pretty voracious readers. And yes, they were my favorites. I don't know if there's actually a connection between being a big reader and being an agreeable child in general, but there sure seemed to be a correlation to me.

On the other hand, I was an insanely active reader as a child - reading at 2, reading at a "college level" by 4th grade, pulling in a novel a day - when I could find something interesting - in 8th grade, and so on - but look at me NOW.

I have a nephew, he's 7. He doesn't like to read. It's driving me nuts because I have a PILE of good books I want to give him as gifts, and he seems utterly uninterested. I blame his dad.

 

[Relayer1]

My son's reading age was 15 when he was 10. He's doing fantastically well at school and college and has been accepted at university to study physics unconditionally (before his A level results are known). He's into sci-fi in a big way and he's grown up with parent's who are both voracious readers. The house is literally full of books.

He's never read a novel in his life. God know's we've tried...

 

[Spot261]

I used to work in the children's section of a public library, so I knew a lot of kids who were pretty voracious readers. And yes, they were my favorites. I don't know if there's actually a connection between being a big reader and being an agreeable child in general, but there sure seemed to be a correlation to me.

I'd suspect given the nature of the board and the personality types it attracts (ie star trek fans with a tendency to spend spare time doing cerebral and literary things) it's likely that children who read a lot are more agreeable to us in particular.

I have three, of whom two are old enough to read and do so on a daily basis. I've no reason to suspect my youngest will break the mold.

 

[sbk1234]

My three kids (17, 13, 11) all devour books.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

I have no kids of my own but I quite frequently supervise kids' and young adults' scientific projects or BSc/MSc theses. It strikes me how badly developed their abilitiy to express themselves is, both in written and spoken language. Many of them hardly ever read in their spare time. They just read what they must for school and university. It's utterly disturbing and many employers complain that their apprentices are unable to make simple calculations or follow written instructions. And we're not talking of foreign workers but native speakers of this language. I have to admit that the prospect that these people must run my country in a few years is somewhat scary.
Come to think of it: I can't recall when I've last seen a kid with a non-school book. Definitely not since smartphones were invented

If you catch me without a book I'm either in the water or dead (or possibly both). I guess I needn't be buried or cremated one day but just pressed in a big coffee table book

 

[Timewalker]

I have a small army of nieces and nephews, most of them still in grade school, and they are all avid readers, with a couple of them crossing into voracious . . . .

Have they started reading your books yet?

Or are they part of that strange subspecies that doesn't get science fiction?

I don't know if there's actually a connection between being a big reader and being an agreeable child in general, but there sure seemed to be a correlation to me.

"Agreeable" is a relative term. I actually clashed with my family a lot over reading, when they didn't approve of my choices for whatever reasons.

The only instance in which I give my grandfather a pass on this is when my grandmother went to the weekly Farmers' Market and saw a book that she assumed must be a Tarzan novel (she knew I was collecting those). So she brought it home, and as usual, my grandfather got to it first (he was also an avid reader and would read just about anything). Then he flipped out, declaring this novel to be one of the "filthiest" books he'd ever seen.

Thus was our family's introduction to the Gor series. The cover art on the book was similar to the Tarzan novels, and my grandmother hadn't noticed the different authors. Since I was only 13 or 14 at the time, I can't really blame him for being upset. But it wasn't more than another couple of years before I put my foot down and told him that he did NOT get to dictate what I could and could not read.

I have a nephew, he's 7. He doesn't like to read. It's driving me nuts because I have a PILE of good books I want to give him as gifts, and he seems utterly uninterested. I blame his dad.

You never know what might spark an interest in reading. Does he say he doesn't like to read because his dad has told him this (or said negative things about reading)?

I've read anecdotes about kids who weren't interested in reading until they heard about Harry Potter. Then suddenly they started reading Harry Potter books and branching out to other kinds of children's fantasy literature. All it takes in some cases is finding exactly the right catalyst to turn a non-reader into a reader.

My son's reading age was 15 when he was 10. He's doing fantastically well at school and college and has been accepted at university to study physics unconditionally (before his A level results are known). He's into sci-fi in a big way and he's grown up with parent's who are both voracious readers. The house is literally full of books.

He's never read a novel in his life. God know's we've tried...

It seems odd that he wouldn't have read novels in school.

 

[Relayer1]

It seems odd that he wouldn't have read novels in school.

Oh, he studied novels in his English Literature course, which he passed with flying colours (although I'm not sure he read the texts all the way through), but he's certainly never pread a book for pleasure...

 

[Starkers]

The eldest daughter of some friends of mine is nearly nine and she always has her nose in a book, she's a voracious reader and is now even writing her own stuff!

 

[Ghost07]

My mother started us out early, by reading to us every night before we could even talk. I started reading on my own when I was 4 years old...I think, if the parents set aside an hour a day for reading, the kids will read voraciously.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

"Agreeable" is a relative term. I actually clashed with my family a lot over reading, when they didn't approve of my choices for whatever reasons.

When I was a librarian, "agreeable" was defined as "knows how to use his/her indoor voice, doesn't rampage through the library pulling books off the shelves and leaving them in piles on the floor, is polite (for their age), doesn't bully other children, and can be reasonably trusted to return the books they borrow." Fairly low expectations, but you'd be surprised how many fail to meet ANY of them.

You never know what might spark an interest in reading. Does he say he doesn't like to read because his dad has told him this (or said negative things about reading)

I know he CAN, read, he just refuses to. My mother (main source of information) says he just ignores - or tries to cheat his way around - reading assignments in school. (And like any kid whose divorced parents babysat him with electronic devices, he's just addicted to those.) His father is a failed chiropractor, anti-vaxxer woo-monger. We haven't gotten along since childhood. I could be a better influence on the kid if I didn't live a bit too far away (and if his mother didn't randomly change what weekends she wants to have him on.)

 

[Relayer1]

My mother started us out early, by reading to us every night before we could even talk. I started reading on my own when I was 4 years old...I think, if the parents set aside an hour a day for reading, the kids will read voraciously.

Nope.