Do you and your partner have different approaches to raising readers?

Notes From the Reading Nook: January 9

Jan 09, 2024

Good morning, you lovely human.

I find myself less inclined to type a bunch of words up here lately — not least because I lose subscribers every time it’s more than a paragraph or two, but also because I’ve been questioning my purpose, and how best to serve you.

What started out, years ago now, as a personal project that kept me going during pandemic lockdown has turned into something different in my brain — it’s true that I write many personal things here, and work through my thoughts and the various things on my heart during different seasons of my life, but I recognize, increasingly clearly, that most people who sign up for a newsletter about children’s books aren’t here for my world and musings on it, at least not beyond reading.

So my new goal for this newsletter — not one that meets many of the acronymic criteria of SMART goals — is to write less about myself and stay as focused as possible on the reason you’re here. (A side goal is just to write less here in general — no one has ever complained about my reviews being too short — but that’s ongoing.)

I’m telling you all this because… telling you is a hard habit to break 😉 and I am a work in progress, as we all are.

The Winter Bear by Ruth Craft
Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold by Joyce Sidman

I originally published this post on September 21, 2021. I’ve edited and updated it here as needed.

📫 Questions from you

Periodically I answer questions from readers (which I love doing, fwiw!) Here’s an oldie but goodie:

Do you and your partner have different approaches to raising readers?

💌 Dear Reader,

The answer is yes. But also no.

Let me clarify:

I was definitely, absolutely raised a reader. My mother began reading to me nightly when I was three months old and continued without pause until I could read on my own. My dad read to me sometimes, and when I stayed at their house, my grandparents read to me, but my mom was the one showing up night after night after night, year after year. She took me to the library as soon as I could write my own name, helped me get my own library card, and then brought me back regularly.

Additionally, my dad took me along to used bookstores constantly, all over the country, everywhere we went, because he was and is a bibliophile and this is what bibliophiles do. Both my parents were and still are avid readers. And they bought me every book I ever asked for (I was always the kid with the tallest stack on my desk whenever the Scholastic Book Club orders came in. I’d fill out the brochure and hand it to my mom, who would then write a check without question. It went the same way when we went to bookstores, used or new. I know how lucky I was.)

My parents — and their willingness to share their interest in books and support mine — are undoubtedly the reason I love language and probably the reason I became a writer.

My husband was not raised a reader. Instead of reading books at bedtime, his father told him stories (I have mentioned the importance of Brer Rabbit in his life before). I’ve never asked him, but if I had to bet, my money would be on his never having set foot in a public library or bookstore before adulthood (and probably not until he met me, either).

He had many childhood experiences that I did not — his life brimmed with nature and the kind of semi-dangerous adventure kids in the 80s were allowed to have; it was varied and utterly different from mine — but they did not include books. He has become a reader by gist of lying next to me in bed before turning out the lights for 19 years (many of which have been spent reading aloud to him, before we became parents), but he does not come by it via a foundation built early on.

You might be able to imagine a bit of what happened when we had our first baby:

I filled a dresser with board books.

I started reading to our daughter nightly when she was three months old.

We completed our local library’s 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program at 14 months.

My husband thought this was nuts. Maybe it was a little nuts 🤷🏻‍♀️ but I was just doing for my sweet babe what I understood had been done for me.

Fast forward through the years, past black-and-white images for newborns, and touch-and-feel titles for babies, and an explosion of books for toddlers, and onto our second baby: by this time I’d been reading to my 2.5yo, since, as I said, three months old. Every day, every night, not skipping it (ever) when I felt tired (always). My youngest daughter arrived and just slid right into our routine: at first she rested on my chest and then eventually grew down to my lap. Now I had two children, and we read and read and read.

Photo by my dear Jen Lucas of Jen Lucas Photography

Sometimes my husband called it an obsession (he’s not wrong — this newsletter is a culmination of years of this obsession).

Sometimes he called it indoctrination ( 🤔 And your point is?)

But mostly, he just accepted that this was my thing — the thing I loved, still love, to do with my kids more than anything else. If he ever disagreed with any part of it strongly, he never said anything about it (which means he never disagreed with any part it strongly, because he is not a person who says nothing about it).

And eventually he joined in, in his own way, first by taking over bedtime with our toddler when I had a nursling, and then reading to two littles at once when we started sharing bedtime duties more equitably (which was every other night for awhile and is still my task five nights a week and his the other two).

Once, we had one of those super fun never-ending marital fights where you argue over who is doing what, when, and how often, and bedtime came up — as in, he said, “I’m not doing bedtime anymore,” and I said fine (it was more like, “FINE!”)

The next day after we’d cooled down and repaired, I asked him, “Did you mean what you said about bedtime? Do you want to be done?”

And he said, “No. I can’t be done. They need it. I need it. That’s important bonding time.”

He gets it. It took him a bit longer to travel from where he started in childhood to where he is in adulthood, but he’s here now, and he gets it.

Which just goes to show that it’s never too late to become a reader or to raise readers of your own.

Do you have a question for me that you’d like to see featured in an upcoming issue like this? Good, because I need more questions. Hit reply or leave a comment and ask away.

Can we read?

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