Reading and Children - A Passionate Interest

When are they ready? Several conversations with parents reminded me how wonderfully peculiar our system of reading is. In Europe and the Americas, we accept it as given that when we look at the front of a book, the spine is on the left. When we open it, we read left to right. Weve learned to associate the illustrations on a page with the text, can handle a narrative sustained from page to page. We accept 26 letters in myriad combinations as abstract representations of things, ideas, actions.

There is nothing self-evident about this, yet once we have learned to read, it seems so. Our family lived in Japan for three years. I remember the sense of shock when we first arrived and I found out what it was like to be truly illiterate. There was not one Japanese book, newspaper, magazine, or even street sign I could read and no letters and words recognizable to me so that I could look them up in a dictionary, as I could when I lived in Germany.

When I studied Japanese I was intrigued to discover that Japanese books usually opened the opposite way from our English books, and usually read from right to left and from top to bottom, with no spaces between words. I say usually, because Japanese can be written in practically any direction.

In Japan, family names that we call last names are written first, and personal names come second. Instead of letters, a complex system of two syllabaries, each having 46 characters, and thousands of Chinese characters (Kanji) were used. The Kanji are not letters like those in our alphabet. Instead, they are pictographs that actually visually (though abstractly) represent the word. I was learning all over again what it means to read, and I found it fascinating.

I wish I could say that I learned Japanese! Unfortunately, I can only claim to have learned a little, but the process of learning taught me a lot about what it must feel like to learn to read in any language. Until you learn, accept, and use the system so well that it means reading to you, the whole idea and system must seem strange and difficult. Imagine that someone has suddenly invented a new alphabet and tomorrow everything you try to read has been transcribed into this new code. Same language, same words, same syntax, but with different marks on the paper representing them. You'd be lost.

Someone commented to me that she couldn't wait until her toddler was old enough to read to. The same day, another parent of a boy the same age said shed been reading to him since he was born. The mother of a five-year-old says she can't read to her son because he wont sit still and listen. There are several factors coming into play here. First, what are the parent's expectations for reading to a young child; second, what are the developmental capabilities of the child; and third, what books is the parent choosing?

To a very young child who has not been read to a lot, a book is simply an object. It might be interesting enough to look at, handle or manipulate, perhaps even taste or chew, but there would be no knowledge about reading it, turning pages, focusing on listening to or reading the narrative that accompanied the illustrations. A long narrative above his understanding will be tuned out. Reading childrens books that are chosen for the developmental age and attention span of the child provide entertainment, information, an interpersonal interaction with the reading adult, and invaluable training in following a narrative, exploring illustrations and seeing a variety of art styles, finding details, linking words and pictures, increasing vocabulary, and experiencing the joy of language.

In other words, it teaches beginning reading readiness skills; most important, it teaches what it means to read, and the joy of it. It's not unusual for very young children to memorize their favorite books. When my granddaughter was two years old, she memorized Eric Carle's The Very Quiet Cricket right down to the expression I used when reading it to her. When my son was two, he had memorized Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, and turned the page at the appropriate time while reciting it to himself.

When are they ready? Right now! You just need the books appropriate for their age, attention span and interests. Ask your children's librarian to help you find the best and introduce children to the world of ideas, stories, the joy of language. It's a gift to few children receive in these days of television and computer games.