This book gives advice for encouraging a child to read at every stage of their lives into adulthood. There are guidelines for reading to newborn babies and toddlers, guiding a child to read on their own, encouraging a middle grader or preteen to love reading, and influencing a teenager in their reading choices. There are chapters for each age group with suggestions on when to let a child explore books on their own, and when to step in with a subtle influence and inspire them to read.

There were some things that I liked about this book. The writing style is good, but a little pretentious in places. The authors write as if they know everything there is to know about parenting, reading, and which books are best.
They criticized some of my favorite childhood books as being too “preachy” and “moral”, so right away they lost my respect for their opinions. They would have done better to be more accepting of different tastes in books, instead of being so quick to judge certain books as “boring” or unappealing to children. Well, those books were appealing to me when I was a child, and they are STILL my favorites! Continue reading →