Sarah Mackenzie (00:00):
We all want our kids to read, right? I think everybody listening to this podcast, it’s safe to say, wants our kids to read probably more than the average adult typically reads when they grow up. We all know that most adults don’t read many books, if any books. I won’t get into the statistics here, but we do want our kids to read a lot and we want them to be lifelong learners. We want them to love reading and to do it for pleasure. We also do this curious thing where we treat our kids reading lives pretty differently from how most voracious adults reading lives are. I think this is interesting. It’s a weird paradox thing that happens. One of the things I think is worth considering is how we might help cultivate habits of real readers in our kids so that the habits they’ll need to continue to be real readers as adults, they’ve got practice developing those skills as kids. And a lot of times those are in direct opposition to how we actually approach reading with our kids. It’s just really interesting. Let’s talk about it, shall we? Let’s do this.
(01:19):
Hey, there. Welcome to the Read Aloud Revival, the show that helps your kids fall in love with books and helps you fall in love with your ordinary bookish homeschool life. I’m your host, Sarah McKenzie.
(01:35):
Okay, so let’s think through how we often treat our kids’ reading and how that is alike or different from how our own reading lives are, or other adults that we know who have voracious reading lives, how their reading lives are. Let’s just consider to start here; what are some of the things most of us do, or a lot of us do, in our kids’ reading lives? For the most part, we very often choose the books they read. We assign books. We say, “You’re going to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” or, “you’re going to read Charlotte’s Web,” or “you’re going to read The Outsiders.” We pick the books and then we say you’re going to read them. We choose the titles, and by default, we pick the amount of time they’re going to spend reading. We might even give them reading logs that say you have to read for a certain amount of time, or that reward them for reading a certain amount of time, or the worst, I think, which is rewarding them for the number of books that they read. We can talk about that another time. I don’t want to get off on a tangent, even though I can feel myself being pulled toward that rabbit trail.
(02:41):
We dictate what kind of books they should read in their downtime. We pick the books and we assign them. So just imagine for a second, you have just finished a book that you loved. It was a book you want to reread. You loved everything about it. Maybe it was really sad, maybe it was really joyful, maybe it was hilarious, but you’re like, oh my gosh. So you call your best friend and you tell her, “I just read this amazing book,” and she immediately responds by saying, “Okay, let me ask you a few questions to make sure you really read the book and understood it before we go any further.” How would you respond to that, really? Or what if when you said, “Oh, I just read this amazing book,” her response was, “Okay, so tell me about the theme. Was it man versus man or man versus nature?” No one does this. Literally, no adult readers do this.
(03:37):
We do this to our kids all the time. We say, Read this book and write a book report, read this book and write a paragraph, read this book and make a diorama about it.” Then they get older and we make them write essays on it and discuss the themes like these. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these things. It’s just not how we treat our reading lives at any other part of our life, and I think that’s really interesting because if we were to think through what’s the goal here, our kids are going to do, well, they should do most of the reading in their life after they leave our homes.
(04:11):
When you think about it, we only have them for the first 18 or so years. Most of their lives, God willing, happen after they leave our home, which means if we’re raising readers and lifelong learners, most of their reading should happen after they leave our home. This takes the pressure off, I think, because it means now I don’t have to make sure I get all the right books in. I don’t have to make sure that we cover a certain kind of book or the certain canon of books, literature, before they leave home. But it also means that it’s even more important that we create the circumstances that help them become lifelong readers and we give them the skills that they’re going to need to be adult readers.
(04:51):
Now, think about the most voracious reader, adult reader I mean. So it might be you, it might be your sister, it might be a friend, someone who reads more than most people. Do you got someone in mind? Okay, how does she choose her books? I bet there’s a few different ways. I bet she gets recommendations. I bet she probably keeps a TBR, a To Be Read list, she probably peruses the library or the bookstore, reads books by authors that she’s read and loved before, asks friends what they’ve been reading and loving, looking around online for if you really loved this book, maybe you’ll like that one.
(05:32):
But I also bet that she doesn’t start her year with a reading syllabus, at least not for all of her reading. Nobody’s assigning everything she’s reading. Some of it, sure, if she has opted into a book club or a reading group where they’re all reading the same thing, so everybody’s reading whatever it is, Hard Times or Jane Austen, something by Jane Austen. Everybody’s reading the same thing like a book club. That’s, I guess, a version of self-selected assigned reading because an adult so nobody can make her, so she gets to pick that. She wants to read this book, so it’s still self-chosen. Just really interesting.
(06:10):
What I’m saying is real readers, real adult readers, choose books. They’re not assigned most of their books, and choosing books is a skill. You can’t just waltz into a bookstore or a library and successfully choose books that you’re going to love. We all have different reading tastes, so if we assign our kids every book that they’re reading as they’re growing up, they really never develop this skill of developing their own reading taste, learning how to choose books. I would venture that even adults who don’t read much now but wish they did, wish they were more avid readers, they wouldn’t really know where to start if they did walk into a library or a bookstore. How do they find something they like? That’s really overwhelming. If you walk into a bookstore and you think, I haven’t read in a while, but I want to find something I’m going to love, that’s a really hard thing to do without anybody helping you choose something.
(07:08):
I’m an avid reader, obviously, but I don’t read horror. That is just a genre I don’t read. I would not like reading at all if that was all there was to read. If that was the only option I was given, I would not be a reader. But in order to figure that out, I need time and space to practice developing my habit of choosing books, developing that skill. I have to choose books from the shelf that I’m like, oh, not this one, oh, that one was super slow and boring, oh my goodness, this really long character driven novel might be a little on the slow side for me. I’m not a big mystery reader. I don’t really love mysteries, and that’s just something I’ve figured out by reading a bunch of them and being like, that was fine, but it’s not the same as when I read a character driven historical fiction novel. Oh my goodness, and I have a complete life changing experience, I feel like a different human at the end of the book than I was when I started it.
(08:06):
Why? How do I know that? I know that because I had the chance to choose some books and learn and practice. So I think it’s worth helping our kids develop that skill so that they get practice at it, so that by the time they get to an age where nobody’s assigning books to them at all, they still read it. Because imagine if you live your whole life where you’re being assigned all of your reading in school, and that’s really all the reading you do, and then you go to college, maybe, and you’re assigned reading, and then you graduate from college and nobody’s assigning your reading, how do you know how to choose books? And real readers choose books so that’s a skill worth practicing with our kids worth developing in them. Choosing books.
(08:49):
Okay, so that’s one habit. Choosing books is a habit of real readers. I can think of a few others. Maybe you can think of a few others, too. Think back to that adult you thought of earlier, who reads more than most people you know. What else do they do? What other habits do they have? If you are a reader, think about your own reading life. What are your own habits? I can give you a few examples from the people I know in my life who are readers, avid readers, because not only do they tend to choose their own books, they have discovered their reading taste, like I mentioned. I don’t like horror, I do love historical fiction, I’m not a huge sci-fi fan, although sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised. I do love middle grade family stories. All of this is knowledge I’ve gotten from my own reading life, so I have reading taste.
(09:34):
I read every day. So a lot of avid readers read every day, or read most days, to someone who’s in the habit of reading every day, it feels as weird as it would be to not brush your teeth. To go to bed without reading something would feel very strange. So they read most days, maybe they always have a book with them. You’ll probably never catch me without a book, or at least an ebook that I have easily available, because there’s nothing worse to me than getting to a waiting room where I’m by myself, like at the dentist, let’s say, and I’m sitting in there for 15 minutes and forgot my book. Worst possible scenario.
(10:13):
I’m always in the middle of a book. I’m never really in between books. I’m always in the middle of something. A lot of the readers I know read multiple books at once. So I do. So I’ll read something fiction. I’m also reading usually a couple of nonfiction books at the same time. Maybe a collection of essays, maybe something on parenting or spirituality or something. So that’s also how I’m always in the middle of a book because I might finish one, but I’m also in the middle of these other two books, so before I start the other one, I’m still.
(10:41):
A lot of them keep a TBR, a To Be Read list. We keep them in a whole bunch of different ways, but a lot of us do that. Avid readers tend to have the habit of talking to friends about what they’re reading, finding other readers and talking about it, talking about their favorite books, recommending their favorite books. I started a podcast basically because I couldn’t keep my recommendations to myself. This is normal for readers.
(11:05):
Also, most adult readers I know ditch books that aren’t a good fit for them, and there’s a reason for this, I think, why the people who read the most are also often, not always, but often, the people who ditch books easily, and it’s because we all have more books on our TBR, on our want To Be Read list than we have time, and so there’s just no reason to read a book that we just absolutely hate or that’s a slog. And also because if you’re a busy mother and you do not enjoy the book you’re reading, you are not going to get back to it. There’s just way too many other demands on your time and attention, and so it makes it more likely that you’ll read more if you just ditch books that are like, yeah, that wasn’t a good fit. And don’t let that be a judgment call on your reading taste, but just let it be like a thing. And sometimes it’s even just not right now.
(11:55):
There’s a lot of World War II historical fiction that I love, but I have to be in the right mind for it. So there are some, the newest Susan Meissner, I still haven’t read. Oh, I don’t even know if that one’s World War II, now that I say that out loud. I will soon. It’s coming up soon, I’m going to read it. But I haven’t been in the mind space where I wanted a book that I knew was going to take my heart out, so I’ve been waiting. So sometimes it’s not just that we ditch books, but that we ditch books for now. Maybe we just go, you know what? I’m going to put this one aside, I’ll come back to it later.
(12:27):
Most of the avid readers I know also read books outside of their normal genres sometimes. Like I said, Sci-Fi is not my genre. I don’t usually love it. Once in a while, I am delightfully surprised. I remember I was like 25 when I read The Andromeda Strain by Michael Creighton. I have no idea why I read it or who recommended it, definitely didn’t pick that puppy up on my own recommendation, and I couldn’t put it down. Middle grade novels by Laura Martin, The Edge of Extinction, The Arc plan, those are sci-Fi, and I love them. So you can be delightfully surprised everyone. The Wild Robot, sci-fi, I love that middle grade novel. So when we try books outside of our normal genre, sometimes.
(13:13):
Again, revisiting this idea that most of the reading our kids will do should come after they leave our homes, then turns us to this question of how do we create an environment where kids get the chance to practice skills they’re going to need in their adult reading life? And it also actually helps us make decisions, because then when you’re considering something in your family’s reading life, let’s say you wonder, should I assign this book, or should I require my kids to write book reports? The answer is no, by the way, but I’ll let you. Instead of answering for you, why don’t I let you answer it? Should I read aloud this classic? Should I sign up for the summer reading program? Whatever the question is. Should I blank? Should I make my kid read this book? Should I make them read it with me? Should I let them read it on their own or should we read it aloud altogether? You can ask all those questions through the lens of this idea that our goal is to help our kids become avid readers so that once they’re not being assigned books anymore, and once they’re not under our roof anymore, they’re still reading and they have the skills they need to be avid readers. Because we all know that just because they can read doesn’t mean they will.
(14:36):
Now, if any of this is inspiring to you, if you’re like, yeah, I like this idea, then I highly recommend a book by Donna Lynne Miller. It’s called The Book Whisperer. It was actually written for classroom teachers, but it’s very easily adapted for the home and it is chockfull of great ideas that help you develop real readers. Not kids who read because they have to, but kids who read because they want to and they have the skills to do it, and they become adults who keep reading. So Donna Lynne Miller’s The book Whisperer, highly recommended. We read it in RER premium as a mama book club once, so our forum is chockfull of ideas for how to implement the ideas in that book into your homeschool. But her goal, she’s a middle school reading teacher and the goal being, we want to set our kids up to become readers in their adult life. How do we do that? How do we give them the skills to do that?
(15:30):
Now, it’s been a while since I’ve taken any questions from the voice mailbox, but a few questions relate to this idea of helping kids develop habits of real readers. So I thought maybe we should take a few of those. So let’s turn to Joanna.
Joanna (15:48):
Hi Sarah. My name is Joanna and I’m calling from Western North Carolina in the mountains. So when I read a book, I tend to read the first couple of chapters and then I skip and read the last chapter, and my husband teases me mercilessly about this, especially since some of our kids have displayed a willingness to do the same. And I guess I was just, maybe, looking for affirmation that this is a good pre-reading strategy or is this the type of thing we want our children doing? Just looking for thoughts. Thank you so much.
Sarah Mackenzie (16:36):
Yeah, this is a great question, Joanna. I think it begs the question of what you’re reading for. Usually the first time we read a story, our brain wants to know the plot, what happens next? This is why it’s really common for a reread of a book to be a much better read, a deeper read, and it’s because we miss a lot the first time we read a book. We miss a lot because our brain has a primary question, and that question is what happens next? And so we keep reading to get the answer to that question. When we reread a book, we’re able to pick up a lot more of the nuanced language syntax, a lot of the beauty symbolism, a lot of the literary devices we miss entirely the first time we read a book, because now our brain knows what happens next and so now it’s free to explore other areas. I have a whole podcast episode on why rereading is probably the best reading we do, so go listen to that one if you haven’t, yet.
(17:37):
But I think your question actually relates to the same idea. If you read the first chapter or your first few chapters and then you turn to the end, it’s almost like you want your brain to know what happens next or how this thing ends so that your brain’s free to explore the other things happening, the language and the syntax. So that’s really interesting. I don’t think you’re unusual, if that helps. And I’m always happy to affirm you if your husband’s teasing you. Hi, husband. I don’t think you’re unusual. I actually think you’re in really good company. I think many adult readers have this habit of, I know several who will look at the beginning of the book and then turn to the back before and read the ending page or last few pages before they read the rest of the book.
(18:24):
So I think in the spirit of like, well, this is a habit of a lot of adult readers, so I don’t think there’s a problem with it. I know a lot of readers who are like, no spoilers, please do not tell me any spoilers. And then I know readers who are like, I don’t have a problem with spoilers. So that’s me. I don’t have a problem with spoilers. You can tell me what’s going to happen in any book or any movie or any show, and I will still read or watch it because I’m usually more interested in something else that’s happening. I don’t know, the language if it’s written, the interplay of character development, and I don’t know, scene design and stuff, if I’m watching a really beautiful movie or something. So I don’t care about spoilers. I have no problem with any spoilers at all. My daughter Allison is very anti-spoiler. You will ruin a book, movie, show, anything for her if you tell her what happens. So I think it’s just personal preference, but there’s certainly nothing you’re losing from reading the back of the book first, really, there’s not.
(19:26):
It actually reminds me that Jonathan Auxier, who’s the author of Sweep, The Night Gardener, Peter Nimble and his Fantastic Eyes, Fabled Stables, a whole bunch of others, he’s a read aloud revival favorite, too, and he teaches in his writing classes that you want the beginning and the ending to, he says, “rhyme.” You want your beginning lines and your ending lines in a book to rhyme. He doesn’t mean rhyme like cat, sat, hat, that, he doesn’t mean it like that, he means echo each other, mirror each other. And so it’s so interesting knowing that if you have a Jonathan Auxier book on your shelf, go look at the first couple lines and the last couple lines. It’s poetic what he does there. It’s really beautiful and it doesn’t rhyme in the classic sense of rhyming, but it echoes it and it brings you full circle. So that just came to mind as I was thinking about you reading the first and the last part of a book.
(20:23):
Anyway, I hope that helps some, Joanna, thanks for your question. Now let’s take a question from Rosie.
Rosie (20:29):
Hi, Sarah. My name is Rosie and I live in Texas. My question is, when I am reading aloud to my son, is it a problem if he is looking at other books while being read to? I’m thinking not just because I know that boys are more apt to take in and absorb more information when they are busy doing something. But as the reader, I wonder if it just doesn’t feel all that great to think that he’s not listening to me, and I’m wondering if he is being distracted by the other pictures and books that he’s looking at. So, just wondering what you would say on that, if it’s something that I need to address or just let it be and keep reading to him. So thank you so much.
Sarah Mackenzie (21:13):
Yeah, I think you know what to do here, Rosie. I can hear it in your voice, that confidence of I’m pretty sure he’s fine. I think it just depends on whether he’s taking it in, which you can find out in a really casual, non-confrontational way.
(21:29):
I was just thinking the other day, the kids and I were listening to an audio book working on a puzzle. I realized I’d tuned out, do you ever do that with audio books? I’d tuned out and it was the beginning of the book and I thought, oh no, I don’t know who that character is. So then I paused the audio book and said, shoot, I don’t know who that character is, I wasn’t paying attention. Could any of you tell me? And then they all told me who it was. And this is a great casual, non-confrontational way to get a little narration in, a little casual narration in, too. But you can even just go like, gosh, I can’t remember who that character is, do you remember? Or, oh, what happened before we stopped reading yesterday, does anyone remember? Or you could even just say, I don’t remember why he wants to, why he’s on this journey, or whatever the thing is. Do you remember? Just to gauge, because I think for a lot of kids, brains are really interesting.
(22:24):
And I will tell you that for years, when I was reading aloud, my son, who’s now 18, when he was like seven, eight, he wanted to jump on the trampoline while I read aloud. It made me a little nuts, actually, but I let him, he would remember more than anybody else did. So the very next day I’d sit down to read Wonderful Wizard of Oz or whatever, Trumpet of the Swan, whatever we are reading aloud, and I would say, who remembers what happened last? And sometimes my girls, who had been sitting very primly and listening very attentively, sometimes they would remember, but always, he would. He could remember all these details that nobody else could and he was jumping on the trampoline.
(23:05):
So I think brains are interesting. I think your kid best, I think if it makes you uneasy, then just in some casual non-confrontational way, find out if he’s actually retaining what you’re reading. Not word for word, not every detail, but is he getting it? And if he is, then I would not worry about it. All right, let’s take another one.
Tiffany (23:26):
Hi, Sarah. My name is Tiffany and I am from North Carolina. I have three kids, 11-year-old twin boys and a 14-year-old daughter, and they all have very strong opinions about the books we read. Do you have any suggestions for helping them develop appropriate language and skills for giving Good book reviews them that they are not required to like every book we read, but I do want to help them develop those opinions into more constructive feedback. Thank you so much for all that you do.
Sarah Mackenzie (23:56):
Opinionated children, I don’t know anything about those. Thanks for this question, Tiffany. This reminds me of a story that Nate Wilson told me once. Andy Wilson, who’s the author of a whole bunch of books, probably his most famous is A Hundred Cupboards or Hello Ninja. Anyway, he tells a story of when his dad would assign especially classics when he was younger, and he did not like to read them. He said he hated reading, or he at least hated these horribly boring books, and his dad would say, “Okay, I want you to read this book,” so I don’t know, I’m going to, David Copperfield, I don’t even know if that’s one of them. Robinson Crusoe, like whatever book it was. Oh, Heidi, right? “And tell me how you would change it to make it better.” So Nate says he would add pirates, kill everybody, he would make it some adventure gruesome tale or something. For me, it would be add mice in suspenders, put it in a mushroom sized house and I will love it.
(25:04):
So actually that’s an interesting question, though. Nate talks about how that changed the way he approached books. Now he’s like this very prolific, extremely successful bestselling author because he trained his brain to think about different endings and how stories were flowing and how he would do it differently. Saying, I like it or I don’t like it about a book that doesn’t say anything. So I think pressing on that a little bit. If my kids just say, “I didn’t like that book”, a lot of times I’ll ask some follow-up questions to try to dig out, that’s valid, they don’t have to like everything, so that’s one thing that’s really important to know. I don’t like a lot of books that I’m supposed to like. I don’t really want to name any because I’m going to get in trouble, but there are some books that I just think are boring. But if I was just to say I don’t like it, that doesn’t tell me anything, as a reader.
(25:54):
As we were talking earlier in this episode about developing the habits of readers. If you want to develop the skill of being able to tell when you’re going to like a book and when you’re not so that you have a better chance of picking up more books that are good fit for your reading taste, then it’s good practice to clarify what it is that you don’t like or do like about a book. You could even ask a question, what would’ve made this book more appealing to you? If they could say, “Oh, if it had been set on a seafaring voyage or if it had been set on a tropical island, or if it had been set in 1920s New York or something,” it helps them think through what is it about the books that I really like? What would make this book more appealing to me? Give them a band of siblings instead of an only child. Something like that.
(26:40):
And someone else will have the opposite answer, but it helps them get clear on what it is that appeals to them, which is worth knowing about your own self. Just like we all have different tastes for food, we all have different reading tastes, too, which is part of the beauty of the way God made us and the wide range of books that are out there. So you could, what did you love or not love about this book? And in a list, and a bullet point list, this can be really helpful. I have discovered over decades of being a reader that I really love short chapters. I will read books with longer chapters, but if you tell me, read this book, it has short chapters, that’s a selling point for me. I don’t know. I love those. I love short chapters.
(27:21):
I get bored with long descriptive passages about scenery, but not so much with long descriptive passages about historical figures. That’s interesting, right? I really don’t want to read about the hills for three paragraphs, but if you want to tell me about Eleanor Roosevelt for three paragraphs, I’m here for it. So that’s just an interesting reader preference that’s good to know. It doesn’t mean I never read books with long descriptive passages, it means I just am figuring out my own reading taste.
(27:54):
Taking it outside of whether your kids like it or don’t like it at all, you could also ask like, okay, so I understand you don’t like this book. Let’s say you’ve just read Tom Sawyer and your kids are like, super boring, didn’t like it. Okay, and then you could go that route of what would you have done differently if you were writing this book? What would’ve made it interesting to you? What did you love and not love about it? Or you can take it in a completely different direction that takes it outside of your kids’ preferences at all, because reading isn’t necessarily about us anyway. And say, well, what do you think the author might’ve been trying to do with Tom Sawyer? Do you think he accomplished that? What do you think Kate DiCamillo was trying to do in Because of Winn-Dixie? And we might be wrong, but let’s think about it. What do we think she might’ve been trying to do here? Did she accomplish that? That makes it more about the work and less about your kids’ preferences.
(28:52):
But I don’t want to completely sidestep the preferences because I think it’s important to develop reading taste. So you could ask both of these in tandem, as well, and say, okay, so what do you think this author was trying to do? Did he or she accomplish that? And what would’ve made it more appealing to you? And now we’re doing both. We’re taking it outside of just our own preferences and really trying to get an understanding of the work itself, which, if we’re getting an understanding, it means we’re under someone else for a minute. We’re willing to get under their umbrella and see the world from their eyes for a few minutes. And sometimes that’s uncomfortable. I don’t like books with war, like descriptive incidences of war. I love World War II historical fiction novels, but I prefer my stories to be not on the front lines. But sometimes, in order to expand myself, in order to see the world through someone else’s eyes to understand, I have to come under the umbrella of the author and look out at the world through a different pair of eyes. And that’s partly what reading does.
(30:03):
So I think yes, we can ask questions that help them to find their own reading taste, but also give them the practice of walking a mile in another person’s shoes even when it’s uncomfortable or not our preferred way to spend a half an hour. Those things are all important. So I don’t know if any of that is helpful, Tiffany. I hope some idea in there is either helpful or is a kernel for something that you can come up with that will be more helpful in your home.
Rachel (30:27):
Hi, Sarah. My name is Rachel. I live in Missouri, and my question is about kids commonplace books. My kids are ages nine, seven and four, and I imagine keeping a commonplace book might look a bit different for that 10 and under crowd than for older children, but I would still like to hear some about when and how you introduced your kids to commonplace books and what elements you include in them. I’m also wondering if making entries in their commonplace books is part of your kids’ homeschool routine or if that’s left to be done at whim as part of their personal reading lives. Thanks.
Sarah Mackenzie (31:00):
Rachel. I love this question. Okay, so for listeners who aren’t familiar with the term commonplace books, commonplace books can take a lot of different forms. Usually when we’re talking about reading and we’re talking about commonplace books, those are collections. These are in their historical, people have been doing these forever, readers, I should say, have been making these forever, and it’s like a collection of quotes, passages from your reading that you want to remember. Sometimes those quotes and passages also have a reflection and sometimes they do not. So I might be reading a book by CS Lewis and run across a passage that I don’t want to forget because I love either the beauty of the language or the idea that it came across in that. Actually let me, a friend sent me one this morning.
(31:50):
My friend, hold on, sent me this in text this morning that came right out of her own reading and I said, “I’m going to put that in my commonplace.” This comes from CS Lewis in a collection of his essays on writing. I can’t remember what the collection is actually called. Maybe we can find it and put it on the show notes, but it’s something like CS Lewis on writing something like that. And this is what it said, “What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page, either of prose or a verse with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.” Okay, my friend, Tish, loved that quote, so she saved it and then she sent it to me and I loved it.
(32:36):
I’m putting it in my commonplace, which is journal, a notebook for me. It’s in Notes app. I keep all of my commonplace entries these days in a Notes app in my phone. People do all this in all different kinds of ways in bullet journals or beautiful reading journals or however they, you, want to do it. And I keep that and I might add a little reflection or reason why I kept it, or I might just not. I might just leave it and make sure I’ve sourced it so I’ve written down where it comes from. With kids, this is a fantastic habit because as we’re talking about, a lot of adult readers recommend books, talk about books, keep TBRs, To Be Read lists, and also record their reading, keep a log of it or keep a log of their favorite passages. Certainly not all readers do this, but many do. And so this is a great habit for adult readers and having a childhood commonplace would be such a gift to be able to look back on, I wish I had kept one as a kid.
(33:29):
So if you just kind of think about this as an adult reader, what do you want in a commonplace? And you can ask your kids, there’s a lot of different ways you could do this. I do not assign commonplace entries to my kids. I give them all reading journals and I tell them, and they watch me as we’re reading aloud, I will oftentimes go, oh my gosh, hold on one second. I got to add that to my commonplace, and I’ll read the sentence again. So it’s very common for my kids to say that while they’re reading, we’ll all be sitting around the living room reading and one of them will say, Oh my goodness, I have to keep this one.” And then they’ll read it aloud to everyone. If you model that, your kids will start doing it, probably. And then it’s almost like a treasure box because it’s not a sign and because my modeling it, I think the kids get excited about keeping their own.
(34:14):
Now, I do assign it occasionally, and this is the framework I use now. You could do this a lot of different ways so I’m definitely not prescribing how to do this. I lead a book club for eight to 10 year olds, or I guess eight to 11 year olds, at our homeschool co-op and I did, this semester we are reading A Place to Hang the Moon in our book club, and I gave each kid a reading journal and I have assigned them each to save one passage from their weekly reading. So I’ve given them, I read aloud a chapter in class, and then I assign a couple of chapters for them to either read or listen to at home. And I’ve told them, look for a passage to bring to me.
(34:52):
In that way, I feel like I’m giving them the habit of looking for good language. That is a habit we need to cultivate. It doesn’t necessarily come naturally to everyone, so giving them practice, but I’m not telling them they have to look for a certain thing. I tell them just, if there’s a passage that speaks to you, something that’s beautiful, something that’s funny, some of the kids in there pick the shortest passage they can, and you know what? I’m fine with it. They’re getting in the habit of looking at language and thinking about language. And then I usually ask in class, “Does anybody want to share the passages they saved in their commonplace?” So you could do this at home, too. You could say on Sunday night or at the dinner table, whatever you could say, “Does anyone have anything they want to share from their commonplace?” And that can be really fun, especially if you ended up saving the same passage as someone else, it feels like an instant connection.
(35:45):
So that’s just a very low pressure way to do it. And in that case, I just gave the kids in my co-op a blank spiral bound journal, and that is it. Some stickers to put on the front, but it was it. They just copy a passage they love from the book inside their book, and I teach them to write the name of the book and the page number at the bottom, and that’s as simple as it gets.
(36:06):
I do have an older masterclass called Simple Reading Journals for Kids. I taught this class on Zoom several years ago, and I’ve gotten a little more relaxed. Shocking. I’ve gotten a little more relaxed in how I do this with my kids, but in that Simple Reading Journals for Kids class, we do explore different ways that kids can keep reading journals. And that’s a free class, I’ll put it in the show notes. We’ll make sure that the link to that gets in the show notes for this episode, episode 239. So readaloudrevival.com/239. Check the show notes for a link to that Simple Reading Journals for Kids Masterclass. It’s an hour long zoom replay where I’m walking through some different ideas that you could use to help your kids keep reading journals, including commonplace books. If you want to dive in a little deeper.
(36:54):
Like I said, I think you could keep this pretty simple, though. I don’t think you need a class. So if you like the idea of just giving your kids a spiral notebook, and even giving them an assignment, pick one passage from something you read this week. It can be from your own reading, it can be from assigned reading, it can be from the read aloud, it can be from your history book. It doesn’t matter. Pick one passage that you’re going to share at dinner on Sunday night. That’s a great way to encourage your kids to develop the habit of looking for good language. Saving passages, these are habits of real readers without being really prescriptive or a dogmatic or taking the joy out of it.
(37:28):
All right, I think that’s about all the time we have today, but I’ll try to answer some more questions soon. Of course, if you have a question you would like me to answer on the podcast, you can leave a message at readaloudrevival.com/message.
(37:47):
Speaking of messages, let’s listen to some messages from the kids, shall we?
JJ (37:54):
My name is JJ, I’m from Colorado. My favorite book is North! Or Be Eaten by Andrew Peterson, and my favorite thing about it is that it’s got all these cool creatures and the main character is Janner Igibi.
Evera (38:12):
Hi, I’m Evera, I’m seven years old. I live in Spokane, Washington. My favorite book is The Wild Robot. I like how Roz is wild, and I like The Gothling.
Julianna (38:26):
Hi, my name is Julianna. I’m nine years old. I live in Everett, Washington. My favorite books are Stella Bats. I like them because bad things happen and get solved. Thank you.
Rosie (38:42):
My name is Rosie. I am from Colorado, and my favorite book is Wing Feather Saga. It’s magical, but still honoring Jesus.
Lucy (38:53):
Hi, my name is Lucy and I live in Colorado, and my favorite book is Snazzy Cat Capers by Deanna Kent, illustrated by Neil Hooson. And what I love about it is this funny cat goes on these really cool capers and she’s very snazzy and bold, and she wants to work alone, but she has an inventor, so I recommend that book. Bye.
Brooklyn (39:16):
Hi, my name is Brooklyn and I live in Mount Vernon, Washington. I’m six years old and my favorite book is A Kingdom of Wrenly. What I like about it is a castle and adventures that they go on. Bye.
Raven (39:31):
Hi, I’m Raven, I’m four years old and I live in Spokane, Washington. My favorite book is Nibbles: The Book Monster and because he nibbles.
Sarah Mackenzie (39:46):
Thank you, kids. All right. Show notes for this episode are at readaloudrevival.com/239. If you haven’t yet, you can get a custom book recommendation on the Read Aloud Revival website. You’ll see where you can do that if you go to readaloudrevival.com. You basically answer three quick questions about your kids’ ages and interests, and in about 30 seconds, you’ll get a couple of custom book recommendations from me. It’s pretty cool. So that is that. Readaloudrevival.com, and it’s totally free.
(40:26):
Okay, I will be back with another episode for you in two weeks, but in the meantime, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.
