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Summer was grand when I
was a kid in rural Ohio: playing freeze tag with the neighborhood kids;
picking blackberries with purple-stained fingers; finding tadpoles in the
ditch in front of our house after a hard rain.
But, Thursday mornings
were the best. The bookmobile would come rumbling down our street, filled
with row after row of adventures and characters I couldn't wait to take home:
Pippi
Longstocking, Nancy
Drew, The
Cat in the Hat, I loved them all, and I knew I had all the lazy,
homework-free time I wanted to lose myself in a grand, or just plain silly,
story every day of summer vacation.
Don't Lose it Use
it
That kind of free,
unstructured time for reading is crucial for nurturing a child's reading
skills during the summer, says reading expert Jim Trelease, author of The
Read-Aloud Handbook (4th Ed.) (Penguin U.S.A.; 1995). It's true what they
say about use it or lose it, he adds "Reading skills, if they're not used,
do drop off by summer's end."
Fortunately, it's not
hard to keep a child's vocabulary, reading skills and love of reading
flourishing during summer vacation. Here are some tips from the experts:
Make Summer Reading
Fun
Every child should read
a minimum of six books, or have six books read to him, during the summer,
Trelease says. Judith
Krantz or Tom
Clancy!
Summer reading shouldn't
be an extension of school, says Trelease. It's OK to read a little junk
during the summer. He remembers one of the best parts of his own summer
reading as a child. "I chose the book," he says. It gave me a sense of ownership.
Ask the children's
librarian at your local library for a list of age-appropriate books, suggests
Lisa Falk, a children's librarian for the Los
Angeles Public Library. Many libraries also provide information or
workshops on reading aloud to your child, she adds. More Tips
from the Experts4
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