How I managed to raise a little bookworm in the age of smartphones and tablets | Books - The Guardian

Donna Ferguson, The Guardian says, Most children now prefer screens to books but it is possible to nurture a passion for print.

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My eight-year-old daughter, Flora, is a bookworm. She reads everywhere: in the bath, at the table and, if she can get away with it, at night under her duvet with a torch. At least twice to my knowledge, she has injured herself walking along the pavement while reading. “I’m OK, Mummy,” she told me brightly, the first time she did it, stepping back from a lamp-post in surprise. 

It is World Book Day on Thursday, a day when children everywhere are encouraged to celebrate books and take pleasure in reading. This year it focuses on the joy of sharing stories with others, but I feel sad about how necessary it is – and how surprised people often are to see Flora enjoying a book in public. 

When she reads in restaurants, for example, waiters tell me how rare it is to see a child immersed in a book, instead of glued to a phone. In small shops, she often quietly tucks herself away in a corner to read – and then, when I call her to leave the shop with me, the assistants will intervene and beg me not to disturb her further. “Look at her, she’s reading,” they’ll whisper to me, in a tone of wonder, as if I did not have eyes.

At first, I found this quite strange. Flora’s behaviour seems entirely normal to me – perhaps because I was a bookworm myself, as a child in the 1980s...

By the time Flora started learning to read at school, she had a wide vocabulary and a strong understanding of plot. That made the process easier. When she struggled, I told her that being able to read was like having a magic key – it would open up new worlds – and I think she understood what I meant. Instead of just reading aloud, she would make her own “audiobooks”, recording herself reading to me and then listening back, following the text with her finger. It seemed to make reading more fun for her.
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Source: The Guardian