How do we make kids love books? I give a lot of credit to my dad for instilling a love of reading in me from a young age. And it’s something I’ve worked to cultivate in my own kids. Here are my tips for encouraging a love of reading in your own learners.

Celebrate the Spoken Word

It’s a pretty common practice to read to our kids when they are little. I have fond memories of curling up with my dad, listening to him read Black Beauty or A Dangerous Journey. Sometimes, we stop when our kids learn to read. But I beg you: Keep reading aloud! When I taught sixth graders, I read to them every day. Every afternoon, after lunch, they sprawled on the carpet while I read to them from a novel. Their favorites were The Mysterious Benedict Society and A Bridge to Terabithia. The latter we read at the end of the school year, and they begged me to keep reading and reading. We read the entire book aloud in two days!

Don’t underestimate the power of audiobooks. They have a great capacity to bring classic literature to life or spur vocabulary growth far beyond reading levels. And after all, many adults love audiobooks while doing mundane tasks like laundry or commuting. Why not make cleaning their rooms just a little bit better by letting them listen to an engaging audiobook?

Make Books a Treat

We love our adventures to bookstores and libraries. And I remember my dad taking me to both independent bookstores (The Little Professor in Reston, Virginia) and chains like Borders and Barnes and Noble. We’d go and spend hours browsing books and then bring home something new. I still get the same joy going to the library and bringing home a huge stack of books. My kids each got their own library cards when they were about six years old, proudly handing them over on our once-weekly trips.

Surround Them with Books

The previous section leads to the next important part: surround them with books! Every bedroom has a bookshelf, plus we have bookshelves in our living spaces. We delight in taking a load of books to the used bookstore and trading them in for fresh reads. We give books on all of our gift-giving occasions and delight in hand-me-down books from older cousins. We occasionally visit a Little Free Library. The kids are now regular users of their school libraries too.

When I was old enough to put myself to bed, I went in to say goodnight to my dad. He was usually reading a nonfiction book. It was a running joke in our house that if we brought up a topic, he told us he “had a book upstairs.” The idea of filling a house with knowledge appealed to me from the very beginning.

And then there was the magnet on the fridge: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” No soulless rooms in my house!

Create Traditions

I mentioned Poetry Teatime in another post, and it was a valuable tradition for our family. It protected my daughter’s love of poetry even in the face of standardized testing. As I mentioned, our kids know they will receive books on their birthdays and Christmas. For many years, audiobooks were part of our road trips.

Avoid Gatekeeping

I can’t stress this enough. Audiobooks count. When one of my kids struggled with reading, audiobooks saved their love of literature. Another kid devours LitRPGs hundreds of pages long. Another loves graphic novels. All of them are keeping a positive association with books, keeping the door open to exploring other types of reading. Along the way, they are absorbing concepts about plot and character development, rich vocabulary, and insights into the minds of others.

Build a Literary Community at Home

This isn’t a tip so much as a wish for you. The best way to preserve a love of books in your kids is to create a home environment that nurtures and celebrates reading. It starts in the earliest of years, snuggled up on the couch and reading beloved picture books together. But it evolves over time. My teens and tweens lend me books and ask me to read them so we can talk about the books together. You better believe those books are at the top of the TBR pile! They talk to me about their books and ask questions about things they have read.

Yesterday, we walked into a bookstore, and my eldest and I found a book we both want to read. I know it will be coming home with us soon, and we’ll have a debate about who gets to read it first. I’ll probably let her win…and count it as a win for myself that she is anxious for a new book to read.