How my children learnt to read, Part 1
My two children learnt to read in different ways and at different ages. I hope that sharing their stories will serve as a reminder about what really matters when teaching a child to read, and perhaps dispel some myths about how difficult it is. Susan Wise Bauer insists that ‘reading is simple’. I think that for the majority of children she is right, and that a lot of the perceived difficulty comes from the anxiety we dedicate to it as parents, and our idea that there is a timetable our child should follow.
Child 1
When we started homeschooling, my daughter had spent two terms in Reception (4-5 years old). She had learnt all her sounds using phonics and could read things like ‘Zip is a pig and Zap is a rat’. I was determined not to lose the benefit of all the hard work the school and my daughter had put in, so I planned on a daily reading session. Perhaps one reading book a day.
This met with extreme resistance. Maybe I had unrealistic expectations? How about one page a day? No. One page was also unacceptable. In the end I was suggesting she read one sentence from any book she liked. No dice.
We have always read to the children. There probably hasn’t been a day of their lives when they haven’t had at least one book read to them. I realised I had a daughter who loved books, but hated reading. And I realised I had a choice: I could force her to read (withdrawing TV and/or sugar isn’t normally my style, but it would do the trick), or I could back off. One of my most important aims for my children is not to put them off reading. They don’t have to grow up to be bookish, and they don’t have to love the same books that I love. But I really don’t want to inadvertently put them off and close that door for them.
So I backed off. I read whatever she wanted and didn’t ask her to read anything. I did try to sneakily run my finger under the words but she would brush my hand away so I had to stop even that. After a while I noticed, but didn’t let on, that she would read things like the signs at the train station. A while after that she started to read, haltingly, the Biff and Chip books, aged nearly 6. She still much preferred me to read them to her, but if I had something else to do at that moment she would occasionally read one to herself. She was easily frustrated by things that were too difficult, and would go for weeks without opening a book.
Then, when she was 6 1/2, we were at the British Museum and I said I would buy them each a book of their choosing. She chose The Minotaur, an Usborne Young Reading Series 1 book. (Stay tuned for Part 2 to find out what her 4 year old brother chose.) She was engrossed. I had to guide her around lamp posts on the way home. She couldn’t read every word but she wanted to read it. To this day, a year later, she gets a little jealous if her brother tries to read this book which is clearly extremely important to her.
I can’t pretend that she then went on to read every day and keep a commonplace book of favourite sentences. But she was out of the starting blocks and buying/borrowing reading books became a serious occupation. She read all the Biff and Chip books and recently finished, for the second time, the Biff and Chip chapter book series, The Time Chronicles (which I would highly recommend for bridging the gap between reading books and ‘normal’ books). She is now onto chapter books like Flat Stanley and My Naughty Little Sister.
She would probably still prefer me to read everything to her, and she can still happily go for days without reading to herself. She can be engrossed but can also struggle to settle down with a book. No matter. When I see my daughter stretched out on the sofa, oblivious to everything around her and laughing her head off at something she’s just read, I’m so pleased I didn’t decide to make reading a hated chore to be completed in return for a biscuit.
For Part 2—my second child—click here.
I’d love to know your experiences of teaching a child to read. Please share in the comments or send me an e-mail.
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You mentioned the difficulty children sometimes have in bridging the gap between reading picture books, and chapter books. I have become, somewhat accidentally, an expert in this transition, so, if you are interested, I will share what I've learned with you and your readers.
Picture books usually have 32 illustrated colour pages, with very few words on each page, because that format, historically, allowed the publisher to print the whole book in full colour on one very large sheet of expensive, high-quality, often glossy, paper (and then cut it up – 2, 4, 8, 16 – and assemble the book). More pages would have made the book much more expensive.
Chapter books, however, have always been printed in the normal way, on normal, cheap, matt, wood-pulp paper. As a result, they usually have only a small number of black and white pictures, and often none at all. And they are much longer, often over 100 pages.
But this divide, between picture books of 500 or so words, and chapter books of at least 20,000 or so words, is purely an artefact of technology, and the limitations of early full-colour printing presses (Nowadays, with modern presses, it should be easier, and somewhat cheaper, to print longer, fully illustrated books.)
However, over the years, this divide became deeply embedded inside publishing companies. Children's publishing was internally subdivided into picture books (32 pages, full colour, very few words), and an entirely separate publishing section, with different editors, that published longer and less illustrated books for older children.
It is this entirely artificial gap which causes so many of the problems children encounter when they first attempt to read for themselves.
They are expected to abruptly leap from heavily illustrated books with very few words (where the pictures give you a great deal of assistance in understanding the text), to far longer books with hardly any illustrations to help with understanding. No wonder children struggle to make that transition; they simply shouldn't have to do it all in one leap, it's absurd.
My own background is as a novelist, writing for adults, so when I wrote my first book for children, I had no idea how rigid this divide was. I wrote the book to be the length it needed to be – which was about five times longer than a standard picture book, but a couple of times shorter than a standard chapter book. The dead zone in children's publishing!
This is where I learned all the above, because the feedback, when my agent submitted it, was fascinating. Children's publishers all wanted it to be either much longer, or much shorter – not because there was anything wrong with the story, but to suit their existing formats.
I said no to their suggested changes, because I liked it just the length it was: a 500 word version would have compressed and simplified the story to death, and a 20,000 word version would have stretched and diluted it to death.
But, as a result, it took over two years to find a publisher. Finally, we found a wonderful editor called Rachel Wade at Hodder Children's Books, who loved it BECAUSE it was that in-between length. She was extremely aware of this bridge problem – that traditionally there had been no bridge between picture books and chapter books – and she'd recently had great success with a series by Alex Smith about a dog called Claude, fully illustrated, but 100 pages long, that bridged the gap.
So I signed a deal with Rachel, and Hodder; they got the magnificent Jim Field to illustrate it; and Hodder published Rabbit's Bad Habits in 2016. The story has a happy ending, because it is now published in 36 languages, has won a number of awards in various countries, and continues to sell extremely well. (And I've gone on to write four more Rabbit & Bear books with Jim: all 100 pages long, all fully illustrated.)
Which leads me to another reason I am so aware of this bridging problem: I have received SO MANY messages from parents saying that their son or daughter had always struggled to read, or been reluctant to read – but that a Rabbit & Bear book was the first "long" book they had finally managed to read on their own, and the child was so proud of their achievement, and now they were addicted to books. Providing bridge books makes a real difference...
Anyway, the situation is definitely improving. (Rachel just got nominated for Editor of the Year at the Bookseller Awards, so she is finally getting proper recognition for her pioneering work!) More and more long, complex, but fully illustrated books for five- and six- and seven- and eight-year olds are now being written and published, to help children bridge that artificial gap; but I just thought I would tell you about the problem, and its historical roots, because I have found it so interesting myself, as a writer and as a parent, to discover all this. It's in some ways an invisible problem in the culture, and it causes children and parents to blame themselves for something that simply isn't their fault.