No Joy in READING?!  Librarians to the Rescue!

Recently,  People for Education released a startling report, ”Reading for Joy",  that reveals that while reading scores have increased in elementary school, children’s enjoyment of reading has gone down.  The percentage of students in grade 3 who report they “like to read” has dropped from 75% in 1998/99 to 50% in 2010/11 and the number of students in grade 6 who “like to read” fell from 65% to 50% during the same period.

While reading enjoyment is not only associated with high school achievement, research shows that "engaged" readers tend to be more socially and civically engaged as well.  How do we nuture the joy of reading?  Supportive parents and teachers;  free choice of reading materials in and out of school;  access to a wide and varied choice of wonderful reading materials;  and knowledgeable and passionate librarians.


Everyday at my Library, I bear witness to the joy and excitement of children who have received their copy of the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Percy Jackson,  or 39 Clues and I am proud to see the work of Library Staff who strive in various ways to encourage a passionate connection with reading in the children of our community.

2011 Reading and Remembrance

In 2005, Angie Littlefield and Mary Cook of the Durham West Arts Centre developed a youth-based education initiative for Remembrance Day and Veteran’s Week which provided free online ready-to-teach lesson packages focusing on Canada’s heroic veterans and wartime stories.  This initiative, called Reading and Remembrance has become an award-winning national program supported by Veterans Canada as well as Ontario Power Generation.

Reading and Remembrance focuses on a different theme each year.  The 2011 program – Peacekeeping and Peacemaking, features the changing nature of war, peacekeeping and peacemaking from WWII into the present.  It is a complex world with dedicated individuals – well worth investigating.

Imagine thousands school children learning to honour those who served and serve in different countries all over the world and appreciate the many different ways individuals and countries can make a different for the good.

To register as a participating school or to find out more about the program contact ReadingAndRemembrance.ca

The Pickering Public Library supports this excellent program and congratulates Angie Littlefield and Mary Cook for their work!

 

How Children Become the Storyteller

Most of us know that reading to children is important. But how we read to children is also important. When most adults share a book with a preschooler, they read and the child listens. However, with dialogic reading, (interactive reading) the adult helps the child become the teller of the story. The adult becomes the listener, the questioner, the audience for the child.


An article by Reading Rockets notes “children who have been read to dialogically are substantially ahead of children who have been read to traditionally on tests of language development. Children can jump ahead by several months in just a few weeks of dialogic reading.”


If book sharing is not intuitive for parents, they would benefit by observing a library story time where library staff demonstrate how books can be used comfortably as a basis for conversation and learning.

Your Library = Your Community

There has been lots of discussion lately about the role of public libraries in the 21st century and I have re-tweeted quite a few of these discussions  (which you will find in the twitter feed on the right).

It is, and has always been, true that people can buy resources on their own rather than go to the public library.  In fact, access to these resources, for people who can afford them, has never been easier.

Those of us who can afford this richness in stimulating content available through Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, tend to forget that it can get quite expensive when you add up your ipad, laptop, Rogers account, along with  payments for music, books and videos.

One of the founding principles of public libraries is that everyone in a community should have the same access to ideas, culture,  information and the same opportunities for personal growth which result from this access.     Why?
Because a literate population is decidedly healthier, more community-minded, informed, engaged and employable.  

Aside from access to resources,  is the role of the library as a physical space open and welcoming to all that nurtures individuality, inclusion and social cohesion, civic identity and pride, democracy and citizenship. 

The library isn’t simply a social service in a bricks and mortar shell: it has a wide social impact that can’t possibly be accounted for within the confines of a city budget. Libraries promote and represent everything that’s good for and about a city, if not a country. 

Libraries are quite simply --- A Treasured Public Good which we erode at our own peril.

Summertime and the Reading is Easy!

Many kids and adults are looking forward to long lazy summer days with nothing much to do  - except read.

For kids, nobody is pestering them about school work and assignments. Finally they have time to spend as many hours as they want in the Library, combing the shelves for stuff that looks interesting to them.
They can check out books, magazines and other things like DVDs and ebook readers. Then, unless family obligations interfere, they can hole up someplace comfortable and explore the whole world.

Many adults look forward to summer reading with great anticipation.  Choosing just the right summer read is a major preoccupation in the weeks before vacation.  We ask friends, librarians, colleagues for their recommendations, then place a bunch of books on hold at the Library,  stake out a favorite place in the shade or a comfortable chair, open a bag a gummy worms, and get lost .... in the story... Ahhhh!

This summer, I plan to read:   A Secret Daughter, A Game of Thrones: A Song of Fire and Ice; and The Art of Racing in the Rain.