Too Young for Books?

Yesterday at the library, after I returned our books, I stopped briefly by the board books and found a few appropriate book for my eight-month-old. I gave him The Airplane Book as he sat in the stroller. He grabbed it and held on.

I found the book I was looking for in the fiction aisle and was turning to go when a grandmotherly lady stopped and looked at my son. I’m used to this at the library: grandmothers, kids, toddlers. Everyone loves a baby! She asked if he’s a boy or a girl. I told her he’s a boy and smiled at her.

“Humph. A book for him! He’s a bit too young, don’t you think?” she said in a low voice as she turned away.

I had already started pushing the stroller to the checkout when I realized what she had said.

Too young for a book?

I read my son Winnie-the-Pooh when he was 4 months old and I’ve read to him every day since. Granted, most days now he “talks” loudly over my voice or ignores me or tries to eat the book, but I still read to him every day.

Is there such a thing as too young for books?

I think not.

HTR&W Preface and A Challenge

I like to read. I’ve decided it’s time I learn how to read.

I don’t know when I first figured out how to read the written word, but I’ve always been a reader. When I was young, I’d ride my bicycle to the library and return home with my backpack full of books. I’d devour each one and then return to the library for my next batch. I was a compulsive page-turner, finishing a book so I could read the next. Once I entered high school and then college, my “compulsive” reading slowed to only “assigned” reading. I was trying to pass my classes. I did well, and I graduated. It’s been a few years since school. Last year, I realized I was back to my schoolgirl habit: “page-turning,” not reading.

I realized I wasn’t really ingesting the books I read. How can I really “read” a book, even fiction, to get something out of it? Continue reading »

Trends in Reading

Have your book tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance? Continue reading »

What is Reading? and Audiobook Review of The Book Thief

Suggested by: Thisisnotabookclub

What is reading, anyway? Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? Are they all reading? Only some of them? What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading” — why? If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance. Continue reading »

Blogging as Storytelling and Blogging Tips from an Unprofessional

Dewey at Weekly Geeks asked us what other forms of storytelling we enjoy. I certainly love reading books, stories, poems, nonfiction, etc. Some people are discussing theater and that is certainly on my list: the performance of great literature. I’ve never been a fan of television (we don’t even have one right now), and I don’t usually enjoy movies.

In a world besides books, however, I think the story telling I would rely on is blogging. Continue reading »

Reading Habits: Who What When Where Why How?

I am often in the middle of a half a dozen books: I can’t understand people who are reading just one thing at a time. I enjoy a variety of books, and I feel like I need a variety of books in my head at one time. I don’t try to rush through books, but sometimes I can’t put them down. Continue reading »

Booking Through Thursday: Manual Labor

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries – if any – do you have in your library?

Continue reading »

Booking Through Thursday: Mayday!

Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??

And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember….

Continue reading »