Category Archive: Interactive Reading

Reading Books Changes Kids & Parents

Reading books doesn’t just change the kid. It changes parents too. I’ve spent years talking about how reading books with kids can improve language and emotional development, but a brand new study out of Rutgers focused on how reading changes parents.

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Best Interactive Print Books for Kids

Reading a book to a child is a lot harder than it looks. While writing Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age, all the experts told me to be more interactive when reading. However, not all books will create an enthusiastic reading experience. At the American Library Association annual conference, I had the awesome privilege to […]

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Creating Talk Time

How much “talk time” do you spend while reading with the kids in your life? The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) just released “How To Advise Families on Media Use,”a set of helpful guidelines for doctors, parents and caregivers. The new paper stressed how kids learn best through interactive experiences: “Neuroscience research shows that very young children learn […]

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Drawing Contest Craft

How can you keep kids reading once the book is closed? I’ve never been much of an artist, but I created a simple game I call “Drawing Contest” to keep reading experience going in our house. Basically, my daughter and I take one of our favorite books and try to draw a picture of the main […]

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Sight Word Resources for Young Readers

From kindergarten onward, many parents will learn about “sight words.” These are common words that many school kids will be expected to recognize on sight as they learn how to read. If you need a simple introduction to sight words, start with The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss.

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B.J. Novak Illustrates Interactive Reading

Actor and author B.J. Novak demonstrated the art of interactive reading in a video about his new kid’s book, The Book with No Pictures. Despite the fact it doesn’t have a single illustration, the book has interactive reading techniques literally built into the pages: dramatization, questions for the kids, and plenty of opportunities to stop and discuss what […]

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Crafts Based on Children’s Books

“Follow the things your child loves” is the foundation of Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age. When your kid loves a particular book, you should go online and find more activities related to that book. Most authors have websites these days, loaded with free activities, games, crafts and pictures. Below, I made […]

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Betsy Bird & Julie Danielson Share Reading Advice

This week, New York Public Library’s Youth Materials Collections Specialist Betsy Bird and Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blogger Julie Danielson published Wild Things! Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature (co-written with Peter Sieruta). Betsy wrote a fabulous introduction to Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age, so I caught up with the two authors to get some interactive reading advice from […]

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The Art of Interactive Reading

In Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age, I help parents and caregivers master the art of interactive reading. By following my simple “Born Reading Playbook,” anyone can turn storytime into a rich, participatory experience. These techniques are more than 25 years old. Dr. Grover Whitehurst, a child development expert who would go […]

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Born Reading Playbook

While writing Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age, I interviewed teachers, librarians, child development experts, neuroscientists and many other professionals. In the book, I distilled their advice about interactive reading into a simple “Born Reading Playbook” for parents to use when reading. To supplement that material, I created the free Born Reading: Storytime Tips […]

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