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How reading comprehension can boost math scores

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How reading comprehension can boost math scores

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For months last year, my son listened avidly as I read him J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, sometimes requesting we begin the next book immediately at the close of the previous one. Finally, in August, as the fan whirred and Felix rested his head on my chest, we reached that penultimate point when Harry walks through the Forbidden Forest to sacrifice himself to the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Terrified, Harry finds the loving ghosts of his parents and mentors accompanying him, providing him comfort and support.

As I read, my voiced thickened. I had already read this chapter years ago, long before thinking I'd ever be a dad, but had forgotten all about it. Now, the emotions-a child asking for assurance, parents who wish they could do something but can only offer words-resonated. When the spirit of his father tells Harry he'll be with him "until the very end," I cried. I mean I really cried. I ugly cried.

Felix, taken aback by how upset I was, gave me a tissue then patted my hand. "It's going to be ok," he told me, playing the role of parent.

The next morning, over breakfast, I asked him if that part made him feel as sad as it did me. It didn't. "He's the hero, so he'll have a happy ending."

"Maybe," I said, impressed at how well he already picked up the conventions of hero tales, but dismayed that he couldn't appreciate the bittersweet sorrow of the moment. "But this part is pretty sad, right?"

He shrugged. "I just want to find out how he kills Voldemort!"

As I'd read him the series, book after book, I noticed how arriving at the end seemed to make a greater impact than the journey itself. Not because he didn't like the story but because he really liked the feeling of completion and moving ahead, ticking the titles off one by one. A similar thing happens when Felix is doing his own reading. His teacher asks that Felix reads for thirty minutes every evening. Sometimes, he'll shut the book mid-sentence when the allotted time is up. The quantifiable goal - reaching the last page, or the final minute - provides more pleasure than the text itself.

For a while, I thought that this was a quirk of Felix's personality. He loves schedules and lists, crossing things off and getting things done. Then I realized that the culture of the school played a part as well. He's in second grade, and since kindergarten, has been very aware of his "reading level," which is measured, appropriately enough, by letters instead of numbers. The further along in the alphabet a student is, the better she or he is at reading, according to the school's rubric, anyway. Reading levels are made very public, so Felix not only knows that he's a level L or M or whatever, he knows that his friends are either above or below him. For an observant, quiet kid like Felix, this has had some profound effects on how he approaches reading.

Whether intentionally or not, the practice of leveling students' reading encourages our children to see themselves in relationship to their peers in a kind of competition. They can also imagine that there's an end point, a final goal, a reading level Z to reach at which point they'll have "mastered" reading. Any lover of literacy knows that isn't the case-we all turn to the dictionary every now and then and read things which challenge us intellectually or emotionally; reading is a lifelong journey, not a destination. Imagining it an activity with levels makes it yet another academic hoop through which a student must leap, and implies that getting better at reading is more important than the act of reading itself. This is a hollow kind of joy. It's also one that can be put aside, like long division, when the unit is done and school closes shop for the summer. Instead of creating a habit of mind, the leveling system makes reading a chore to strike from the list of to-dos.

What's more, Felix, like many quiet kids, tends to be hypersensitive about his abilities, particularly when he feels like he's performing for an audience. His teacher assesses his reading level by having him read aloud and then quizzing his comprehension, and he seems to think that every time my wife and I ask about his reading we're doing something similar. He clams up, becomes self-conscious. Reading, a great love for us, seems fraught for him; his bookshelf is a minefield for his self-esteem. For example, after reading my wife a book before bedtime a few nights ago, she told him that he reads very well.

He replied, "That's what people tell me, but I don't think I do. There are kids in my class who read so much better than I do. I'm just ok."

Combatting this sentiment is tough, because it feels like the school has given him data to support it. Also, we tell him to heed and respect his teachers, and he hears them encouraging him to improve his level, which he interprets as a criticism. The larger problem is more insidious and difficult to explain to a seven-year-old, and it's one I struggle with even as a sensitive, introverted adult. Our culture is obsessed with quantification, and our success is nearly always measured in comparison to others. Reading levels are not much different than social media stats, in a way. They encourage us to focus on how others assess our performance, and not on our experience of performing itself. Even my word choice feels corrupted by this measurement - I just described the act of being social online as performing, the same way my son sees reading aloud as a form of performing. If only we could just be, without feeling self-conscious!

So what is to be done when you've got an introverted emerging reader struggling to feel confident in what feels like the high-stakes world of books? I've done a few things that have helped.

First, I turned off the timer when he reads. Instead, of having him read for thirty minutes, I tell him to read as much as feels right - a chapter, say, or maybe two, or maybe even more if he's loving the book.

Then, rather than doing chores while he reads, or surfing the Internet, I'll open up a book beside him. I try not to look at my phone or manage my time, I give myself permission to sink into the story.

Finally, I reject the language of the school, which asks he finds "just right" books [aka books on his teacher-assessed reading level], and instead tell him to find something that he likes. Sometimes that's a novel, other times it's a comic book, or even a picture book. We don't always need to push ourselves to be reading harder and harder things, sometimes we can just enjoy a good tale or re-read an old favorite.

And of course we make sure to have plenty of narrative fiction and nonfiction around the house for him to choose from - some from our favorite neighborhood used bookstore, others from the library, and still others that he brings home in his book baggy. Having a word-rich environment with a lot of options is key, I think, so that he can find the books that speak to him.

Yesterday afternoon, Felix and I sat together on the couch, listening to ambient music and reading, for almost an hour. Afterward, we talked for a little bit about his book - Beverly Cleary's Ramona the Brave - which I remember loving and reading several times as a kid. He likes how pesky Ramona is, and how she and her sister Beezus get into fights all the time. "That was really nice," I told him. "Just sitting here, you in your book, me in mine."

He agreed, and a bright smile flashed across his face. That unguarded expression, more than any grade, score, or level, was a beautiful reflection of something true-though what that truth was, exactly, I don't care to pin down. Love of books, of companionship, of entering a story for a little while and enjoying the world an author created out of words? Perhaps.

Or maybe he recognized that the silence between us wasn't silence at all, but the sound of two minds humming their own tunes in tandem, a vibration felt more than heard. We were a duet that required no words to pass between us, just the presence of our imaginations in close proximity. That's not something taught in school or able to be measured, but it's a wonderful part of being human-creatures made as much of imagination as of skin and bone.

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Encouraging a Love of Reading in a Culture of Assessment - Quiet Revolution

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For months last year, my son listened avidly as I read him J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, sometimes requesting we begin the next book immediately at the close of the previous one. Finally, in August, as the fan whirred and Felix rested his head on my chest, we reached that penultimate point when Harry walks through the Forbidden Forest to sacrifice himself to the Dark Lord, Voldemort.

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There is a cultural narrative about how electronic devices are pulling children away from books. When I meet with other university professors they often tell me that the students don't read anymore because their eyeballs are glued to their phones. Technophobes think we are raising a generation that doesn't understand the value of literature.

The polarization of old and new continues. Maybe it is leftover sediment from an anti-screen mindset that was always on the fringes of the golden age of television. It is a trite myth-like story that attempts to cast books as the underdog in battle against thechno-imperialism. Paper is the good guy and Gorilla Glass is the villain.

Common Sense Media's new report, entitled "Children, Teens, And Reading," attempts to offer a "big-picture perspective on children's reading habits in the United States and how they may have changed during the technological revolution of recent decades." The big scary takeaway:

According to government studies, since 1984, the percent of 13-year-olds who are weekly readers went down from 70% to 53%, and the percent of 17-year-olds who are weekly readers went from 64% to 40%. The percent of 17-year-olds who never or hardly ever read tripled during this period, from 9% to 27%.

These statistics are startling. But I'm not sure what this has to do with technology. The framing doesn't make much sense to me.

It seems to me that we currently live in a culture that is more heavily text based than any other time in history. People read all day long. Google, Twitter, and Facebook deliver words. People can't peel their eyes from the smartphone--essentially a text and information distribution mechanism. We actually have trouble NOT reading. Folks are always checking their email and their text messages. Sometimes it is hard to pull away from this matrix of letters.

Still, what are people reading? It seems like they don't read many books. I'm not talking about kids, but rather adults. Even the technophobes don't read books.

I've met highly educated elite individuals who have told me they just don't have time to read books. They skim the NY Times book review so they can participate in cocktail party conversations. They buy executive summaries from the back of in-flight magazines. I'm shocked by the number of people who ask me if there are audio versions of my books available.

Is the problem that kids don't read books, or is the problem that nobody reads books because our culture has become anti-academic and anti-intellectual? We'd prefer to read magazines and blogs that are subtly self-promotional in their incessant questioning the value of the humanities, liberal arts education, and those university degrees that are more dependent on books than algorithms and databases. The popular rhetoric tells us we need more STEM education, more engineers, more entrepreneurs. We're surrounded by an implicit anti-book agenda, and still we wonder why kids don't read books.

I'll admit that I'm biased. I'm an academic. I get paid to read. But my kids (6 and 8) also read a lot on their own. Not only because I require it--30 minutes of reading is a prerequisite to video game time--but also because their dad models good reading behaviors. Dad is always ordering new books; dad is always reading them. In my household, being an adult means feeling comfortable with books. Maturity means having excessive familiarity with long-form written word.

The Common Sense Media report agrees. "Parents can encourage reading," they explain, "by keeping print books in the home, reading themselves, and setting aside time daily for their children to read."

Strong correlations exist between these parental actions and the frequency with which children read (scholastic, 2013). For example, among children who are frequent readers, 57% of parents set aside time each day for their child to read, compared to 16% of parents of children who are infrequent readers.

When it comes to books, however, most studies show that the text delivery method is irrelevant. Good reading behavior has nothing to do with technology. E-readers, tablets, laptop screens are all capable of delivering long-form text. Books have nothing to do with paper. In fact, electronic devices only increase access to books. A report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center released earlier this year explains that "a majority of children ages 2 to 10 have access to a device for electronic reading: 55% have a multipurpose tablet in the home, and 29% have a dedicated e-reader (62% have access to at least one of these devices). Among children with one of these devices in the home, half (49%) engage in electronic reading, either on their own or with their parent (30% of all children)." Books matter; how kids read them doesn't.

My kids read on the iPad, the e-reader, and paper. I make sure of it. I read to my kids every night. I read with my kids during the day. I do it because I see it as a crucial piece of their education. I can't just outsource the raising of my children to specialists--and then complain that those teachers are failing. It is obvious to me that parents also need to be involved. They need to make sure their children read books.

Of course, it is easier to frame the story as paper vs. digital. It gives us permission not to engage with our kids. We can blame the video games and apps rather than blaming ourselves. Parents need to take responsibility for raising thoughtful, empathic, open-minded adults. Books are a crucial part of the equation. But even if we eliminated every digital technology from our lives, our kids still won't read books unless we tell them in no uncertain terms that books are an important part of being an adult.

Teach your kids to read. And teach your kids that it matters what they read. Renaissance Learning's annual " What Kids Are Reading Report " tells us a lot about what kids are currently reading and it is not all pretty. Their huge study "does not summarize sales or library data. It uses data from 318 million books read by 9.8 million students in the U.S. to determine what the most popular books are in a given year. It is the most extensive report in the U.S. that reflects K12 reading trends."

Three interesting findings:

1. Gendered reading starts as early as first grade. Elementary-school boys read tons of "Captain Underpants," but it doesn't even make it to the girls' top 20 list. We're conditioned to read statistics like this as proof that girls and boys have different preferences, tastes, and attitudes. I don't believe it. Alternatively, we might read this as evidence that we are creating an increasingly gendered world where roles and intellectual expectations are divided according to biological reproductive organs. If this is really what you want, by all means, keep at it. If not, there are plenty of books that are non-gendered; let your kids know that you think more highly of these.

2. Middle schoolers (in particular 6th graders) are reading the most words per student. The average words per student increases through middle school and then starts decreasing again in high school. I see this as evidence that parents are sending the wrong message about books to their children. We value literacy, cheering on small kids to learn to read as quickly as possible. But when these kids become adolescents they attempt to directly emulate their adult role models. If adults don't read books then trying to act like an adult means not reading books.

3. Books like Twilight and Hunger Games are more popular than literary classics. These days, teachers assign these more often than Shakespeare or Don Quixote. Most of them will tell you that it is because they figure any reading is good reading and books like these increase student engagement. On the one hand, this makes sense. On the other hand, we should remember that popular fiction prioritizes sales over content. They are revenue generators first and literary explorations of the human condition only afterward. This doesn't necessarily mean popular fiction is bad, but there's also a reason that certain books have transcended the economic, political, and epistemological trends of particular centuries.

At the end of the day, how our children read and what our children read says a lot more about adult attitudes about books than it does about the kids'. Model the behaviors and attitudes you want your children to emulate.
Jordan Shapiro is author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide to Maximum Euphoric Bliss, and MindShift's Guide To Games And Learning For information on Jordan's upcoming books and events click here.

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Kids Don't Read Books Because Parents Don't Read Books

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There is a cultural narrative about how electronic devices are pulling children away from books. When I meet with other university professors they often tell me that the students don't read anymore because their eyeballs are glued to their phones. Technophobes think we are raising a generation that doesn't understand [...]

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, May 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For kids, few moments in life are more glorious than the end of the school year and the start of summer vacation. Hooray! Three whole months of sweet freedom!

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130530/DC23228-INFO )

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20101214/DC17316LOGO-b )

But when school's out, kids from low-income families have a real problem on their hands.

Unlike their more affluent peers, most of them don't spend summer break at the library or reading books in the backseat on family trips. In fact, many of them won't open a book until school starts up again.

Those three months off take a disastrous toll. Experts call the effect "summer slide" and it erases months of hard-earned progress in school, lost ground that kids in need can't afford.

Books are the answer. Studies show that kids from low-income families who have access to books over the summer not only beat the summer slide, but make even greater gains than kids from wealthy and middle-class families.

First Book, a nonprofit social enterprise that provides new books to kids in need, has published an original infographic illustrating this problem - and its solution.

The infographic is available here, and is free for editorial use by bloggers and media outlets.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For a higher-resolution version, please contact Brian Minter at bminter@firstbook.org or 202-639-0115.

SOURCE First Book

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[INFOGRAPHIC] Kids Who Read Beat Summer Slide

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May 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For kids, few moments in life are more glorious than the end of the school year and the start of summer vacation. Hooray! Three whole months of sweet freedom! (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130530/DC23228-INFO ) (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20101214/DC17316LOGO-b ) But when school's out, kids from low-income families have a real problem on their hands.

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First Book and our corporate partners take summer slide seriously. And we all should! It accounts for two-thirds of the achievement gap between poor children and affluent children in the communities we call home. Two of our corporate partners, CBS...

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At 11-years-old, Marley Dias was frustrated about being given books she couldn't relate to at school, prompting her to start the now widely-recognized campaign #1000blackgirlbooks.

Dias, who created the campaign in the fall of 2014, set a goal to collect 1,000 "black girl books" by the following February -- and succeeded at doing so.

But that was just last year.

See photos of Marley Dias

Dias has since far exceeded her goal with more than 4,000 books and counting. She now has plans to author her own book with Scholastic.

"In her forthcoming nonfiction book for ages 10 and up, Marley Dias, the powerhouse girl-wonder who started the #1000blackgirlbooks campaign, shows kids how to make their own dreams come true. In this accessible "keep-it-real" guide, Marley tells how she's turned her passion into a literacy crusade that has captured the attention of the media, policymakers, and young people throughout the world," the Scholastic announcement stated.

Dias told NBC News she is excited to be doing business with the new parter.
SEE ALSO: Black girl magic moment: Marley Dias and #1000BlackGirlBooks
"All my friends can probably only name one publishing house and that is Scholastic; they are everywhere," said Dias. "Scholastic is the perfect partner for spreading my message of diversity, inclusion and social action."

Dias' new book is slated to hit shelves in spring 2018.

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Read Full Story

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Marley Dias, 12-year-old who found #1000BlackGirlBooks, gets a book deal

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At 11-years-old, Marley Dias was frustrated about being given books she couldn't relate to at school, prompting her to start the now widely-recognized campaign #1000blackgirlbooks. Dias, who created the campaign in the fall of 2014, set a goal to collect 1,000 "black girl books" by the following February -- and succeeded at doing so.

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The Trump campaign ran on bringing jobs back to American shores, although mechanization has been the biggest reason for manufacturing jobs' disappearance. Similar losses have led to populist movements in several other countries. But instead of a pro-job growth future, economists across the board predict further losses as AI, robotics, and other technologies continue to be ushered in. What is up for debate is how quickly this is likely to occur.

Now, an expert at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania is ringing the alarm bells. According to Art Bilger, venture capitalist and board member at the business school, all the developed nations on earth will see job loss rates of up to 47% within the next 25 years, according to a recent Oxford study. "No government is prepared," The Economist reports. These include blue and white collar jobs. So far, the loss has been restricted to the blue collar variety, particularly in manufacturing.

To combat "structural unemployment" and the terrible blow it is bound to deal the American people, Bilger has formed a nonprofit called Working Nation, whose mission it is to warn the public and to help make plans to safeguard them from this worrisome trend. Not only is the entire concept of employment about to change in a dramatic fashion, the trend is irreversible. The venture capitalist called on corporations, academia, government, and nonprofits to cooperate in modernizing our workforce.

To be clear, mechanization has always cost us jobs. The mechanical loom for instance put weavers out of business. But it's also created jobs. Mechanics had to keep the machines going, machinists had to make parts for them, and workers had to attend to them, and so on. A lot of times those in one profession could pivot to another. At the beginning of the 20 th century for instance, automobiles were putting blacksmiths out of business. Who needed horseshoes anymore? But they soon became mechanics. And who was better suited?
A Toyota plant, Japan. Manufacturing is almost fully automated today and so many other jobs are not far behind.
Not so with this new trend. Unemployment today is significant in most developed nations and it's only going to get worse. By 2034, just a few decades, mid-level jobs will be by and large obsolete. So far the benefits have only gone to the ultra-wealthy, the top 1%. This coming technological revolution is set to wipe out what looks to be the entire middle class. Not only will computers be able to perform tasks more cheaply than people, they'll be more efficient too.

Accountants, doctors, lawyers, teachers, bureaucrats, and financial analysts beware: your jobs are not safe. According to The Economist, computers will be able to analyze and compare reams of data to make financial decisions or medical ones. There will be less of a chance of fraud or misdiagnosis, and the process will be more efficient. Not only are these folks in trouble, such a trend is likely to freeze salaries for those who remain employed, while income gaps only increase in size. You can imagine what this will do to politics and social stability.

Mechanization and computerization cannot cease. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. And everyone must have it, eventually. The mindset is this: other countries would use such technology to gain a competitive advantage and therefore we must adopt it. Eventually, new tech startups and other business might absorb those who have been displaced. But the pace is sure to move far too slowly to avoid a major catastrophe.

According to Bilger, the problem has been going on for a long time. Take into account the longevity we are enjoying nowadays and the US's broken education system and the problem is compounded. One proposed solution is a universal basic income doled out by the government, a sort of baseline one would receive for survival. After that, re-education programs could help people find new pursuits. Others would want to start businesses or take part in creative enterprises. It could even be a time of the flowering of humanity, when instead of chasing the almighty dollar, people would able to pursue their true passions.
The first fully automated restaurant opens in San Francisco.
On a recent radio program, Bilger talked about retooling the education system in its entirety, including adding classes that are sure to transfer into the skills workers need for the jobs that will be there. He also discussed the need to retrain middle-aged workers so that they can participate in the economy, rather than be left behind. Bilger said that "projects are being developed for that." Though he admits that many middle-aged workers are resistant to reentering the classroom, Bilger says it's necessary. What's more, they are looking at ways of making the classroom experience more dynamic, such as using augmented reality for retraining purposes, as well as to reinvent K-12 education. But such plans are in the seminal stages.

Widespread internships and apprenticeships are also on the agenda. Today, the problem, as some contend, is not that there aren't enough jobs, but that there aren't enough skilled workers to fill the positions that are available. Bilger seems to think that this problem will only grow more substantial.

But would those who drive for a living, say long haul truckers and cab drivers, really find a place in the new economy with retraining, once self-driving vehicles become pervasive? No one really knows. Like any major shift in society, there are likely to be winners and losers. This pivot point contains the seeds for a pragmatic utopia, or complete social upheaval, but is likely to fall somewhere between.

Bilger ended the interview saying, "What would our society be like with 25%, 30% or 35% unemployment? ... I don't know how you afford that, but even if you could afford it, there's still the question of, what do people do with themselves? Having a purpose in life is, I think, an important piece of the stability of a society."

To learn why employment should be a basic human right, click here:

employment-a-basic-human-right

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47% of Jobs Will Disappear in the next 25 Years, Says Oxford University

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The Trump campaign ran on bringing jobs back to American shores, although mechanization has been the biggest reason for manufacturing jobs' disappearance. Similar losses have led to populist movements in several other countries. But instead of a pro-job growth future, economists across the board predict further losses as AI, robotics, and other technologies continue to be ushered in.

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SITTING IN AN office in San Francisco, Igor Barani calls up some medical scans on his screen. He is the chief executive of Enlitic, one of a host of startups applying deep learning to medicine, starting with the analysis of images such as X-rays and CT scans. It is an obvious use of the technology. Deep learning is renowned for its superhuman prowess at certain forms of image recognition; there are large sets of labelled training data to crunch; and there is tremendous potential to make health care more accurate and efficient.

Dr Barani (who used to be an oncologist) points to some CT scans of a patient's lungs, taken from three different angles. Red blobs flicker on the screen as Enlitic's deep-learning system examines and compares them to see if they are blood vessels, harmless imaging artefacts or malignant lung nodules. The system ends up highlighting a particular feature for further investigation. In a test against three expert human radiologists working together, Enlitic's system was 50% better at classifying malignant tumours and had a false-negative rate (where a cancer is missed) of zero, compared with 7% for the humans. Another of Enlitic's systems, which examines X-rays to detect wrist fractures, also handily outperformed human experts. The firm's technology is currently being tested in 40 clinics across Australia.

A computer that dispenses expert radiology advice is just one example of how jobs currently done by highly trained white-collar workers can be automated, thanks to the advance of deep learning and other forms of artificial intelligence. The idea that manual work can be carried out by machines is already familiar; now ever-smarter machines can perform tasks done by information workers, too. What determines vulnerability to automation, experts say, is not so much whether the work concerned is manual or white-collar but whether or not it is routine. Machines can already do many forms of routine manual labour, and are now able to perform some routine cognitive tasks too. As a result, says Andrew Ng, a highly trained and specialised radiologist may now be in greater danger of being replaced by a machine than his own executive assistant: "She does so many different things that I don't see a machine being able to automate everything she does any time soon."

So which jobs are most vulnerable? In a widely noted study published in 2013, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne examined the probability of computerisation for 702 occupations and found that 47% of workers in America had jobs at high risk of potential automation. In particular, they warned that most workers in transport and logistics (such as taxi and delivery drivers) and office support (such as receptionists and security guards) "are likely to be substituted by computer capital", and that many workers in sales and services (such as cashiers, counter and rental clerks, telemarketers and accountants) also faced a high risk of computerisation. They concluded that "recent developments in machine learning will put a substantial share of employment, across a wide range of occupations, at risk in the near future." Subsequent studies put the equivalent figure at 35% of the workforce for Britain (where more people work in creative fields less susceptible to automation) and 49% for Japan.

What determines vulnerability to automation is not so much whether the work concerned is manual or white-collar but whether or not it is routine

Economists are already worrying about "job polarisation", where middle-skill jobs (such as those in manufacturing) are declining but both low-skill and high-skill jobs are expanding. In effect, the workforce bifurcates into two groups doing non-routine work: highly paid, skilled workers (such as architects and senior managers) on the one hand and low-paid, unskilled workers (such as cleaners and burger-flippers) on the other. The stagnation of median wages in many Western countries is cited as evidence that automation is already having an effect-though it is hard to disentangle the impact of offshoring, which has also moved many routine jobs (including manufacturing and call-centre work) to low-wage countries in the developing world. Figures published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis show that in America, employment in non-routine cognitive and non-routine manual jobs has grown steadily since the 1980s, whereas employment in routine jobs has been broadly flat (see chart). As more jobs are automated, this trend seems likely to continue.

And this is only the start. "We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. No office job is safe," says Sebastian Thrun, an AI professor at Stanford known for his work on self-driving cars. Automation is now "blind to the colour of your collar", declares Jerry Kaplan, another Stanford academic and author of "Humans Need Not Apply", a book that predicts upheaval in the labour market. Gloomiest of all is Martin Ford, a software entrepreneur and the bestselling author of "Rise of the Robots". He warns of the threat of a "jobless future", pointing out that most jobs can be broken down into a series of routine tasks, more and more of which can be done by machines.

In previous waves of automation, workers had the option of moving from routine jobs in one industry to routine jobs in another; but now the same "big data" techniques that allow companies to improve their marketing and customer-service operations also give them the raw material to train machine-learning systems to perform the jobs of more and more people. "E-discovery" software can search mountains of legal documents much more quickly than human clerks or paralegals can. Some forms of journalism, such as writing market reports and sports summaries, are also being automated.

Predictions that automation will make humans redundant have been made before, however, going back to the Industrial Revolution, when textile workers, most famously the Luddites, protested that machines and steam engines would destroy their livelihoods. "Never until now did human invention devise such expedients for dispensing with the labour of the poor," said a pamphlet at the time. Subsequent outbreaks of concern occurred in the 1920s ("March of the machine makes idle hands", declared a New York Times headline in 1928), the 1930s (when John Maynard Keynes coined the term "technological unemployment") and 1940s, when the New York Times referred to the revival of such worries as the renewal of an "old argument".

As computers began to appear in offices and robots on factory floors, President John F. Kennedy declared that the major domestic challenge of the 1960s was to "maintain full employment at a time when automation...is replacing men". In 1964 a group of Nobel prizewinners, known as the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, sent President Lyndon Johnson a memo alerting him to the danger of a revolution triggered by "the combination of the computer and the automated self-regulating machine". This, they said, was leading to a new era of production "which requires progressively less human labour" and threatened to divide society into a skilled elite and an unskilled underclass. The advent of personal computers in the 1980s provoked further hand-wringing over potential job losses.

Yet in the past technology has always ended up creating more jobs than it destroys. That is because of the way automation works in practice, explains David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Automating a particular task, so that it can be done more quickly or cheaply, increases the demand for human workers to do the other tasks around it that have not been automated.

There are many historical examples of this in weaving, says James Bessen, an economist at the Boston University School of Law. During the Industrial Revolution more and more tasks in the weaving process were automated, prompting workers to focus on the things machines could not do, such as operating a machine, and then tending multiple machines to keep them running smoothly. This caused output to grow explosively. In America during the 19th century the amount of coarse cloth a single weaver could produce in an hour increased by a factor of 50, and the amount of labour required per yard of cloth fell by 98%. This made cloth cheaper and increased demand for it, which in turn created more jobs for weavers: their numbers quadrupled between 1830 and 1900. In other words, technology gradually changed the nature of the weaver's job, and the skills required to do it, rather than replacing it altogether.

In a more recent example, automated teller machines (ATMs) might have been expected to spell doom for bank tellers by taking over some of their routine tasks, and indeed in America their average number fell from 20 per branch in 1988 to 13 in 2004, Mr Bessen notes. But that reduced the cost of running a bank branch, allowing banks to open more branches in response to customer demand. The number of urban bank branches rose by 43% over the same period, so the total number of employees increased. Rather than destroying jobs, ATMs changed bank employees' work mix, away from routine tasks and towards things like sales and customer service that machines could not do.

The same pattern can be seen in industry after industry after the introduction of computers, says Mr Bessen: rather than destroying jobs, automation redefines them, and in ways that reduce costs and boost demand. In a recent analysis of the American workforce between 1982 and 2012, he found that employment grew significantly faster in occupations (for example, graphic design) that made more use of computers, as automation sped up one aspect of a job, enabling workers to do the other parts better. The net effect was that more computer-intensive jobs within an industry displaced less computer-intensive ones. Computers thus reallocate rather than displace jobs, requiring workers to learn new skills. This is true of a wide range of occupations, Mr Bessen found, not just in computer-related fields such as software development but also in administrative work, health care and many other areas. Only manufacturing jobs expanded more slowly than the workforce did over the period of study, but that had more to do with business cycles and offshoring to China than with technology, he says.

So far, the same seems to be true of fields where AI is being deployed. For example, the introduction of software capable of analysing large volumes of legal documents might have been expected to reduce the number of legal clerks and paralegals, who act as human search engines during the "discovery" phase of a case; in fact automation has reduced the cost of discovery and increased demand for it. "Judges are more willing to allow discovery now, because it's cheaper and easier," says Mr Bessen. The number of legal clerks in America increased by 1.1% a year between 2000 and 2013. Similarly, the automation of shopping through e-commerce, along with more accurate recommendations, encourages people to buy more and has increased overall employment in retailing. In radiology, says Dr Barani, Enlitic's technology empowers practitioners, making average ones into experts. Rather than putting them out of work, the technology increases capacity, which may help in the developing world, where there is a shortage of specialists.

And while it is easy to see fields in which automation might do away with the need for human labour, it is less obvious where technology might create new jobs. "We can't predict what jobs will be created in the future, but it's always been like that," says Joel Mokyr, an economic historian at Northwestern University. Imagine trying to tell someone a century ago that her great-grandchildren would be video-game designers or cybersecurity specialists, he suggests. "These are jobs that nobody in the past would have predicted."

Similarly, just as people worry about the potential impact of self-driving vehicles today, a century ago there was much concern about the impact of the switch from horses to cars, notes Mr Autor. Horse-related jobs declined, but entirely new jobs were created in the motel and fast-food industries that arose to serve motorists and truck drivers. As those industries decline, new ones will emerge. Self-driving vehicles will give people more time to consume goods and services, increasing demand elsewhere in the economy; and autonomous vehicles might greatly expand demand for products (such as food) delivered locally.

Only humans need apply

There will also be some new jobs created in the field of AI itself. Self-driving vehicles may need remote operators to cope with emergencies, or ride-along concierges who knock on doors and manhandle packages. Corporate chatbot and customer-service AIs will need to be built and trained and have dialogue written for them (AI firms are said to be busy hiring poets); they will have to be constantly updated and maintained, just as websites are today. And no matter how advanced artificial intelligence becomes, some jobs are always likely to be better done by humans, notably those involving empathy or social interaction. Doctors, therapists, hairdressers and personal trainers fall into that category. An analysis of the British workforce by Deloitte, a consultancy, highlighted a profound shift over the past two decades towards "caring" jobs: the number of nursing assistants increased by 909%, teaching assistants by 580% and careworkers by 168%.

Focusing only on what is lost misses "a central economic mechanism by which automation affects the demand for labour", notes Mr Autor: that it raises the value of the tasks that can be done only by humans. Ultimately, he says, those worried that automation will cause mass unemployment are succumbing to what economists call the "lump of labour" fallacy. "This notion that there's only a finite amount of work to do, and therefore that if you automate some of it there's less for people to do, is just totally wrong," he says. Those sounding warnings about technological unemployment "basically ignore the issue of the economic response to automation", says Mr Bessen.

But couldn't this time be different? As Mr Ford points out in "Rise of the Robots", the impact of automation this time around is broader-based: not every industry was affected two centuries ago, but every industry uses computers today. During previous waves of automation, he argues, workers could switch from one kind of routine work to another; but this time many workers will have to switch from routine, unskilled jobs to non-routine, skilled jobs to stay ahead of automation. That makes it more important than ever to help workers acquire new skills quickly. But so far, says Mr Autor, there is "zero evidence" that AI is having a new and significantly different impact on employment. And while everyone worries about AI, says Mr Mokyr, far more labour is being replaced by cheap workers overseas.

Another difference is that whereas the shift from agriculture to industry typically took decades, software can be deployed much more rapidly. Google can invent something like Smart Reply and have millions of people using it just a few months later. Even so, most firms tend to implement new technology more slowly, not least for non-technological reasons. Enlitic and other companies developing AI for use in medicine, for example, must grapple with complex regulations and a fragmented marketplace, particularly in America (which is why many startups are testing their technology elsewhere). It takes time for processes to change, standards to emerge and people to learn new skills. "The distinction between invention and implementation is critical, and too often ignored," observes Mr Bessen.

What of the worry that new, high-tech industries are less labour-intensive than earlier ones? Mr Frey cites a paper he co-wrote last year showing that only 0.5% of American workers are employed in industries that have emerged since 2000. "Technology might create fewer and fewer jobs, while exposing a growing share of them to automation," he says. An oft-cited example is that of Instagram, a photo-sharing app. When it was bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion, it had tens of millions of users, but only 13 employees. Kodak, which once employed 145,000 people making photographic products, went into bankruptcy at around the same time. But such comparisons are misleading, says Marc Andreessen. It was smartphones, not Instagram, that undermined Kodak, and far more people are employed by the smartphone industry and its surrounding ecosystems than ever worked for Kodak or the traditional photography industry.

Is this time different?

So who is right: the pessimists (many of them techie types), who say this time is different and machines really will take all the jobs, or the optimists (mostly economists and historians), who insist that in the end technology always creates more jobs than it destroys? The truth probably lies somewhere in between. AI will not cause mass unemployment, but it will speed up the existing trend of computer-related automation, disrupting labour markets just as technological change has done before, and requiring workers to learn new skills more quickly than in the past. Mr Bessen predicts a "difficult transition" rather than a "sharp break with history". But despite the wide range of views expressed, pretty much everyone agrees on the prescription: that companies and governments will need to make it easier for workers to acquire new skills and switch jobs as needed. That would provide the best defence in the event that the pessimists are right and the impact of artificial intelligence proves to be more rapid and more dramatic than the optimists expect.
Read on: Implications for education and policy >>
Artificial intelligence More in this special report:

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The impact on jobs: Automation and anxiety | The Economist

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SITTING IN AN office in San Francisco, Igor Barani calls up some medical scans on his screen. He is the chief executive of Enlitic, one of a host of startups applying deep learning to medicine, starting with the analysis of images such as X-rays and CT scans.

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THINK EQUAL works towards a world in which children of all genders, ethnicities, religions and other backgrounds have optimal opportunities to develop their full potential, have their views respected, respect one another, live free of discrimination and violence, become youth leaders, and active participants of a free and equal world.

A pervasive, discriminatory mindset is the root cause of human rights violations across our world. We can only break the cycles of violence, negative stereotypes, and prejudicial judgements, if we invest in encouraging values, empathy, and respect for the dignity and equality of others.

Our purpose is to add social and emotional learning as a compulsory component of education curricula around the world, starting from the first day of every child's formal education. We aim for a system change in education by bringing a new subject into schools, from the Early Years, when the child's personality and moral framework is still developing. We must ensure that our children's hearts are educated, and not just their heads.

Education - and equal access to it - is a long-standing goal of the UN and a number of progressive governments across the world. THINK EQUAL is not an attempt to address the issue of access to education, rather it is concerned with contents and quality of education, in pursuance of changing a dominant mind set.

THINK EQUAL is a global initiative which constructs and delivers an equality studies curriculum, that is as fundamental as literacy and numeracy. We must commit to a holistic approach to education which will result in a new generation of equal thinkers - global citizens - who can rise to the challenges of the 21st century.

THINK EQUAL embraces the latest visionary philosophies on inclusive, value-based, quality education. We have gathered together a committee of the world's top experts on education, human rights, gender, psychology and neuroscience.

THINK EQUAL is a revolutionary transformational agenda, which is tangible, sustainable and comprehensive. It is conceived as a model for the UN's post-2015 development agenda, which meets, head on, 6 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

THINK EQUAL is a clear strategy for investing in people, in synergy with the UN Secretary- General's report 'The Road to Dignity by 2030'

THINK EQUAL is a not-for-profit organisation registered in the UK.

PRESIDENT JOYCE BANDA
Malawi's First Female President,
Former Foreign Minster & Minister of Child Welfare

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PRESIDENT JOYCE BANDA Malawi's First Female President, Former Foreign Minster & Minister of Child Welfare

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For their Writers Workshop, the Y2s are studying Authors as Mentors. There are three parts to this unit:

1. Crafting books - study one author to see how and why they write the way they do.

2. Working with a new text structure - how moments in a story are connected

3. Finding Writing Mentors in All Authors and Preparing for Publication - focusing on authors that students love and understanding what they do

Each Y2 class is focusing on one writers. As a provocation to this unit, Y2 teachers and I agreed that Lynley Dodd would be studied during the library lesson. Dodd is the author mentor for Y2.2 so for this class, they have multiple copies of several of her books.

Before reading Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy, I showed the book cover and asked students what they already knew about this book. Since many of them were already familiar with the series, their prior knowledge was fairly detailed.

After reading the story, students were asked what they noticed about the story. This showed their understanding of the writing style of Dodd with individual and varied responses to the story.

To hone students' critical thinking skills, I also asked them what they did not like about the story. Students were able to highlight what did not appeal to them and why.

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For their Writers Workshop, the Y2s are studying Authors as Mentors. There are three parts to this unit: Crafting books - study one author to see how and why they write the way they do.

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First Book and our corporate partners take summer slide seriously. And we all should! It accounts for two-thirds of the achievement gap between poor children and affluent children in the communities we call home. Two of our corporate partners, CBS...

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It's no surprise that the initial craze for ebooks is correcting itself. They have benefits, and so are unlikely to die out completely: e-readers are light to carry on holiday, for instance, plus they let you download and begin a book the instant you decide you want it. I have an e-reader and have read all kinds of books on it, as well as in conventional paper form. But, after several years, it's become clear that real books definitely have the edge. Here are 10 reasons why.

1. We have enough screens, thanks

Most of us now spend large chunks of the day reading screens. If you work in an office, this is particularly true, but almost every modern career now has screens shaping how we work. Outside work, TVs and smartphones are omnipresent. Our brains crave variety, and when it comes to staring at screens we've definitely reached saturation point.

On a related point, most ebooks are all formatted in the same way. It's just boring to read 10 of them in a row.

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From baths to bookshelves: 10 reasons ebooks suck

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It's no surprise that the initial craze for ebooks is correcting itself. They have benefits, and so are unlikely to die out completely: e-readers are light to carry on holiday, for instance, plus they let you download and begin a book the instant you decide you want it.

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Here are some things that you can't do with a Kindle. You can't turn down a corner, tuck a flap in a chapter, crack a spine (brutal, but sometimes pleasurable) or flick the pages to see how far you have come and how far you have to go. You can't remember something potent and find it again with reference to where it appeared on a right- or left-hand page. You often can't remember much at all. You can't tell whether the end is really the end, or whether the end equals 93% followed by 7% of index and/or questions for book clubs. You can't pass it on to a friend or post it through your neighbour's door.

A few years ago, I was given a Kindle. I had become a student again. I was reading lots of books and I needed them cheap and light. But now the Kindle has slipped to the back of the desk drawer behind the Blu-Tack that comes out only at Christmas. Meanwhile, the stack of hardbacks and paperbacks on the bedside table has grown so tall it has spawned sub-stacks on the floor; when I get into bed at night, it is like looking down on a miniature book city. I don't want to speculate about what goes on in other people's bedrooms but I suspect it might be something similar, because figures published today by the Publishing Association show that sales of consumer ebooks have dropped by 17%, while sales of physical books are up 8%. Consumer spending on books was up £89m across the board last year, compared with 2015. So why is the physical book winning through?

Ten years ago, when the Kindle launched, the idea was miraculous. Here was the ability to carry hundreds of books enfolded in a tiny slip of plastic, countless stories in a few hundred grams. It seems hard to believe when you look at the thick, black plastic surround - stylistically it bears more resemblance to a cathode ray tube TV than a tablet - that it predated the iPad by two years. Within five hours, it had sold out, despite a price tag of $399 (then £195). A decade on, lay a Kindle next to a smartphone or tablet and it looks so much older, while the reading experience it delivers has scarcely progressed.

"It was new and exciting," says Cathryn Summerhayes, a literary agent at Curtis Brown. "But now they look so clunky and unhip, don't they? I guess everyone wants a piece of trendy tech and, unfortunately, there aren't trendy tech reading devices and I don't think people are reading long-form fiction on their phones. I think your average reader would say that one of the great pleasures of reading is the physical turning of the page. It slows you down and makes you think."

Indeed, the take-up of tablets among book buyers has slowed since a flurry between 2012 and 2014, according to Steve Bohme, UK research director at Nielsen, which conducted the research for the Publishing Association. There are fewer new readers of digital books, and they tend to consume physical books as well. Oyster, the so-called Netflix for books, folded after a year.

Another thing that has happened is that books have become celebrated again as objects of beauty. They are coveted in their own right, while ebooks, which are not things of beauty, have become more expensive; a new digital fiction release is often only a pound or two cheaper than a hardback. "Part of the positive pressure that digital has exerted on the industry is that publishers have rediscovered their love of the physical," says James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones, which published a special Christmas edition of Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent, more than 80,000 copies of which have been sold by the chain. (He, in common with most people involved with the publishing of physical books, reads on a Kindle, but afterwards buys the books he loves.)

"The physical book had become quite a cheap and tacky thing at the turn of the millennium," Daunt says. Publishers "cut back on the quality of the paper, so if you left a book in the sun it went yellow. They were gluing, not sewing. They would put a cover on a hardback but not do anything with the hard case underneath. Nowadays, if you take a cover off, there is likely to be something interesting underneath it."

And that something interesting is likely to gain traction on #bookstagram, a celebration of the aesthetics of books, where books are the supermodels and where readers and non-readers can see cats and dogs reading books, books photographed in landscapes, books posed with croissants, sprays of flowers, homeware, gravestones and cups of coffee, colour-matched and colour-clashed with outfits, shoes, biscuits and in what can only be described as book fashion shoots. You just can't do a shelfie with an e-reader.

Physical books even feature in this spring/summer's Fantastic Man magazine, which advises its fashion-literate readership to take five unread books to the sofa and spend five minutes with each one. "The difference between having read Proust for five minutes and for zero minutes is small, but it is also significant." (This is how I'm going to crack my lifelong embarrassment about never having read Proust.)

Once upon a time, people bought books because they liked reading. Now they buy books because they like books. "All these people are really thinking about how the books are - not just what's in them, but what they're like as objects," says Jennifer Cownie, who runs the beautiful Bookifer website and the Cownifer Instagram, which match books to decorative papers, and who bought a Kindle but hated it. Summerhayes thinks that "people have books in their house as pieces of art". One of her authors' forthcoming works features cover art by someone who designs album covers for Elbow. "Everyone wants sexy-looking books," she says. She distinguishes these from "coffee-table books", which is what we had before #bookstagram. This helps to explain the reinvigoration of independent bookshops, which offer a more styled, or curated, experience.

"We had a near-death experience," Daunt says, referring to the recession. But, he adds: "When you come under pressure, you have to raise your game, and that's what has gone on throughout the industry."

There are other reasons for the decline of consumer ebooks. Children's books, which represent an area of significant growth, just don't work well on e-readers (although there are lots of children's reading apps). Neither do young adult titles, even though this age group might be expected to opt for the most technological reading experience. Daunt's children "can stick their noses in a book and they are lost in that book". But when they try to read on a digital machine, "the allure of Snapchat pinging away, it's a disaster. They think it's a disaster."

However, none of this is to say that digital publishing is the enemy of physical book publishing. At Forum Books in Corbridge, Northumberland, founder Helen Stanton has recently collaborated on a Silent Book Disco at the Biscuit Factory art gallery in Newcastle, where visitors could wander around and look at books (rather than works of art) while listening to an appropriate playlist. "A lot of my customers have bought e-readers and are now coming back to books," she says; the shop is regional winner for the north of England in the Independent Bookshop of the Year category of the Nibbies. "We do a lot of events. We are really trying to connect readers with the author, to bring the book to life."

Stanton is talking on the phone from a train down to London, where she hopes "to buy equipment" so she can do more silent book discos. Maybe, she says, customers could wander around the bookshop and hear poems at certain places on National Poetry Day. "It's totally wireless, and if customers didn't want to hear it, they wouldn't hear it."

Fuelled by the success of podcasts such as Serial, the rise of audio is one area of digital success, with downloads up 28%, according to the Publishing Association. Audio is becoming something of a new battleground in publishing, where audio publishers want to see books on submission at the same time as physical publishers, while physical publishers have become disinclined to acquire books without audio rights. In the US, the Audible Originals programme is commissioning new work - such as Tom Rachman's interconnected short stories about Donald Trump - which is debuting in audio before print.

To complicate matters, some publishers of physical books are treating ebooks "almost as a marketing tool" before a book comes to print, says Summerhayes. One recent title, for instance, had little interest in its forthcoming print publication, so the publisher released it as an ebook for 99p. It began to sell, to be noticed and get reviewed. At which point the publisher went to the supermarkets that had previously spurned it and they took it up. (In music, this idea echoes how the first releases by artists such as the Weeknd and Frank Ocean were mixtapes given away online; by the time they released "proper" albums for conventional labels, they already had a big fanbase.)

The figures from the Publishing Association should be treated with some caution. They exclude self-published books, a sizable market for ebooks. And, according to Dan Franklin, a digital publishing specialist, more than 50% of genre sales are on ebook. Digital book sales overall are up 6%.

"It's not about the death of ebooks," Daunt says. "It's about ebooks finding their natural level. Even in the years when ebook sales were rising greatly - and clearly cannibalising physical book sales - it was always very clear that we would have a correction and reach an equilibrium." The UK, he says, has "adopted" ebooks and they will remain a substantial market (while in France, for instance, ebooks are only 3% of the overall market). The last thing he - or any seller or publisher of physical books - wants is the death of the ebook. "We want people to read. We don't mind how they read," he stresses. He knows that people who read, sooner or later, will buy books.
Paula Cocozza's novel, How To Be Human, is published by Hutchinson at £12.99 rrp. To order for £11.04 with free UK p&p, visit bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.

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How eBooks lost their shine: 'Kindles now look clunky and unhip'

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Here are some things that you can't do with a Kindle. You can't turn down a corner, tuck a flap in a chapter, crack a spine (brutal, but sometimes pleasurable) or flick the pages to see how far you have come and how far you have to go.

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Information Fluency | Global Digital Citizen Foundation

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Information Fluency gives you the skills you need to search for information and create useful knowledge for effective real-world problem solving.

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Children may actually prefer reading books the traditional way. from www.shutterstock.com

There is a common perception that children are more likely to read if it is on a device such as an iPad or Kindles. But new research shows that this is not necessarily the case.

In a study of children in Year 4 and 6, those who had regular access to devices with eReading capability (such as Kindles, iPads and mobile phones) did not tend to use their devices for reading - and this was the case even when they were daily book readers.

Research also found that the more devices a child had access to, the less they read in general.

It suggests that providing children with eReading devices can actually inhibit their reading, and that paper books are often still preferred by young people.

These findings match previous research which looked at how teenagers prefer to read. This research found that while some students enjoyed reading books on devices, the majority of students with access to these technologies did not use them regularly for this purpose. Importantly, the most avid book readers did not frequently read books on screens.

Why do we think children prefer to read on screens?

There is a popular assumption that young people prefer to read on screens. This was mainly driven by education writer Marc Prensky who in 2001 coined the term "digital natives". This term characterises young people as having high digital literacy and a uniform preference for screen-based reading.

But young people do not have a uniform set of skills, and the contention that screens are preferred is not backed up by research.

Despite this, the myth has already had an impact on book resourcing decisions at school and public libraries, both in Australia and in the US, with some libraries choosing to remove all paper books in response to a perceived greater preference for eBooks.

But by doing this, libraries are actually limiting young people's access to their preferred reading mode, which in turn could have a detrimental impact on how often they choose to read.

Young people are gaining increasing access to devices through school-promoted programs, and parents face aggressive marketing to stay abreast of educational technologies at home.

Schools are motivated to increase device use, with Information and Communication Technology being marked as a general capability to be demonstrated across every subject area in the Australian Curriculum.

The drivers toward screen-based recreational book reading are strong, but they are not well-founded.

Why are students more likely to prefer paper books?

Reading on devices through an application leaves more room to be distracted, allowing the user to switch between applications.

For students who already experience difficulty with attention, the immediate rewards of playing a game may easily outweigh the potentially longer-term benefits of reading.

Digital literacy could also be an issue. In order to use a device to read books, children need to know how to use their devices for the purpose of reading books.

They need to know how to access free reading material legally through applications such as Overdrive or websites such as Project Gutenburg.

Tips for encouraging your child to read

Research shows that reading books is a more effective way to both improve and retain literacy skills, as opposed to simply reading other types of text. Yet international research suggests that young people are reading fewer and fewer books.

While equipping children with devices that have eReading capability is unlikely to encourage them to read, there are a number of strategies, supported by research, that can help encourage children to pick up a book. These include:

Be seen to enjoy reading. This study found that a number of students did not know if their literacy teachers actually liked reading. Teachers who were keen readers inspired some students to read more often and take an interest in a broader range of books.

Create (and regularly access) reading-friendly spaces at home and at school. Loud noises, poor lighting and numerous distractions will not help provide an enjoyable reading experience, and are likely to lead to frustration.

Encourage regular silent reading of books at school and at home. Giving children time to read at school not only encourages a routine of reading, but it also may be the only opportunity a child has to read self-selected books for pleasure.

Teachers and parents should talk about books, sharing ideas and recommendations.

Continue to encourage your child and students to read for pleasure. While we know that children tend to become disengaged with books over time, in some cases this can be due to withdrawal of encouragement once children can read on their own. This leads children to falsely assume that reading is no longer important for them. Yet reading remains important for both children an adults to build and retain literacy skills.

Find out what your child enjoys reading, and support their access to books at school and at home.

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Children prefer to read books on paper rather than screens

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There is a common perception that children are more likely to read if it is on a device such as an iPad or Kindles. But new research shows that this is not necessarily the case.

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Teaching Resources | Shared reading between older and younger... | Guardian Teacher Network

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Shared reading between older and younger pupils. A free teaching resource from the Guardian Teacher Network

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There is no greater joy than being immersed in a good book - and the school holidays are the perfect time to get reading. As the long summer days ramble on, there's no better time to inspire young imaginations with tales of great romances, talking animals, marauding buccaneers or even warring nations.

But the benefits of a good read go far beyond pure enjoyment. Getting children diving into the world of literature can also help combat the summer slide - that dip in reading skills that often occurs during the holiday period.

To aid parents in their quest to encourage summer reading, the Guardian Teacher Network has gathered some useful resources and ideas. Some of these tips can also be used by teachers looking to inspire a love of reading throughout the year.

Getting started

Don't worry: you're not expected to put together a rigorous summer reading schedule. Instead, start small, and use the holiday to build reading into everyday life. Simple activities such as getting younger children to read out a shopping list or a quote of the day can help integrate new words into their vocabulary.

It's also important to stock your bookshelves with a good list of novels, comics and other stories. Tom Nicholson, professor of literacy education at Massey University in New Zealand, says the summer is a wonderful opportunity for children "to enjoy the books they didn't have time or inclination to read during the school year". So pick something they don't get to read in term-time.

The Guardian children's books site has lots of great recommendations for under eights, eight- to 12-year-olds and teenagers. The teens section includes An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir and Fire Colour One by Jenny Valentine. Another great way to browse for the right story is with Reading Rockets' themed booklist. It includes stories on the seasons, taking action, creatures and friends and family.

Keep it in the family

Show children the value of reading by picking up a book yourself. Nicholson says: "It is always better if the child is reading but parents can assist by reading the book to them when they first join in. Make the process as engaging as possible. Remember, the first line of the story should sound really exciting. Change your voice according to the characters and the action. Pause at the end of sentences. Read the last line slowly and with feeling."

The Discover Centre, the UK's first hands-on story museum, has some story book activity cards, which offer handy advice on enjoying books. They give tips on how to share and engage a child in a story. For example, you can get kids to create a story box containing items that relate to a book they've read. It's also a fun idea to get them to decorate the box.

If you have both older and younger children, encourage them to help one another. The Scottish Book Trust has a great handout that introduces the concept of shared reading and gives suggested approaches. It advises asking students to do an active reading of a poem and discuss which poems they liked the best and why. Having older children reading aloud to younger ones is also a great way to develop talking and listening skills.

Family outings can also inspire literature. Get young readers to keep a diary of what they get up to over the break and read aloud what they have noted down. Get started with this template for keeping a diary.

You might also want to reward children for picking up a book. Nicholson recommends making your own incentive card and drawing a star on it everytime a child reads for 20 minutes. When they have five stars, Nicholson says, give them a reward.

Use games and hobbies

Like anyone, children respond well to reading when it's on a topic or subject that they love. Encourage football fans to read by sharing the books their favourite Premier League stars are reading. Having positive role models is hugely important when it comes to inspiring and engaging reluctant bookworms.

You might also want to try something a bit more lively, such as this trading card activity. Simply ask kids to read a book and then use the trading card creator from Read Write Think to create cards with their favourite characters on. The trading cards should include vital information about different figures from literature. You can also get children to create completely new characters, based on members of the family; they can then use these characters to create their own stories.

If you're sick of friendly games of Monopoly turning into bitter family feuds, then it might be worth playing a different game over the summer. You could try one with a literary twist by putting together your own Battle of the Books-style challenge with older children. All you have to do is get everyone to read a set of books and then compile a list of questions on them. Ask, "In what book did ..." or "Which character said ..." Whoever has paid the most attention can be crowned reading champion.

Get out and about

Lots of outdoor reading events are taking place over the summer. The Guardian is holding its first ever children's literary festival later in August. Tickets are free but will need to be booked in advance to avoid disappointment. The National Literacy Trust has also put together a guide to the literary calendar from January to October.

Another way to get teenagers out is by encouraging them to set up a reading group. They can head to a local cafe or coffee shop and discuss the latest additions to their bookshelf. The Reading Agency charity has put together a nifty guide on how to get started with this. You could set eager readers the challenge of publicising their new group, using social media and making flyers. Think about how many people should be part of it, how long the meet-ups should be and how frequently. The guide also includes tips on what to think about for your first meeting.

For more ideas on summer reading check out our how to teach articles on reading for pleasure and the summer slide in literacy. Teachers also offer advice on how to encourage boys in particular to read for pleasure.

Follow us on Twitter via @GuardianTeach. Join the Guardian Teacher Network for lesson resources, comment and job opportunities, direct to your inbox.

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A guide for parents and tutors: how to get children reading this summer

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There is no greater joy than being immersed in a good book - and the school holidays are the perfect time to get reading. As the long summer days ramble on, there's no better time to inspire young imaginations with tales of great romances, talking animals, marauding buccaneers or even warring nations.

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Closetful of Books is the children's books specialist that aims to push for extended literacy for all children and to share the unadulterated delight one experi

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Some things are so obvious that they hardly need pointing out. Like the fact that young fathers today are idiots for not reading bedtime stories with their children.

Distressing isn't it? But apparently true. According to new Booktrust figures, only 19 per cent of 16-24 year-old fathers say they enjoy reading at bedtime with their children. That's compared to 78 per cent of fathers aged 55 and over. Bedtime stories, it seems, are dying out.

Well, young dads don't know what they are missing out on. Bedtime stories are bliss.

For once the children are not running around filthy, naked, clawing at each other's eyes, drowning in tears and snot and fighting to play with the steak-knife set that you forgot to put away.

Instead, for a brief moment, they are cosy, inquisitive and content. Their teeth are brushed, pyjamas are on, faces are scrubbed, even their stubby little devils' horns are temporarily concealed by angelic golden curls still gleaming from the bath. Chaos is distilled into order.

The storytime that follows is a humdrum yet powerful moment of communion between father and child, a moment when a bond of learning and trust is built. All feels deeply right with the world.

No wonder that, for children, the benefits are obvious and astounding. Booktrust says that reading every day to pre-school children gives them a 12-month head start by the time they arrive in the classroom.

But who cares about the children? We men should realise that the fun in bedtime stories is for us. I mean, how often do you get a concentrated 15-20 minutes to pass on your utterly biased view of the world to your totally focussed two year-old.

Normally when you are together you have to do what your child wants - something ghastly like playing in the park. Or going to birthday parties. Ack.

The rest of the time you're at work. It's terrible to think that a childminder, or God forbid, even your wife, might be shaping your child's imagination.

As a result your two-year old son might not currently be referring to all the characters in Peppa Pig by the names of footballers included yesterday by Roy Hodgson in the England World Cup squad.

Imagine the damage to his tender imagination if you were not casually to pass on the information, while reading The Hungry Caterpillar, that some creepy crawlies are themselves delicious to eat, particularly with a little garlic. You might never have the joy of being told the following day that he repeatedly tried to eat slugs off the pavement. Calamity.

So I say: fathers, get reading at bedtime with your children. They bear the imprint of your genes. Make sure they also bear the imprint of your character, with all its flaws, corruption and mischief. It couldn't be more urgent. Soon they'll be at school and learning proper stuff instead of all your nonsense.

And remember: once you've shared storytime, and the children have polished off their beakers of milk, be sure to pour yourself a glass of something cool and refreshing too. Because you're worth it.

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Dads who don't read to their kids are idiots

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Some things are so obvious that they hardly need pointing out. Like the fact that young fathers today are idiots for not reading bedtime stories with their children. Distressing isn't it? But apparently true. According to new Booktrust figures, only 19 per cent of 16-24 year-old fathers say they enjoy reading at bedtime with their children.

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Singapore | United Arab Emirates | United States of America | Philippines

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Bookworms rejoice! A new study in the journal Social Science and Medicine just discovered that people who read books live longer than people who don't.

Researchers at Yale University asked 3,635 participants over 50 years-old about their reading habits. From that data, they split the cohort into 3 groups: non-readers, people who read less than 3.5 hours per week, and people who read more than 3.5 hours per week. The researchers followed up with each group for 12 years. The people who read the most were college-educated women in the higher-income group.

Over the course of the study, the researchers consistently found that both groups of readers lived longer than the non-readers. The readers who read over 3.5 hours a week lived a full 23 months longer than the people who didn't read at all. That extended lifespan applied to all reading participants, regardless of "gender, wealth, education or health" factors, the study explains. That's a 20% reduction in mortality created by a sedentary activity. That's a big deal, and a very easy fix for improving quality of life in anyone over 50.
Credit: Social Science and Medicine
The results get better. "Compared to non-book readers," the authors continue, "book readers had a 4-month survival advantage," at the age when 20% of their peers passed away. "Book readers also experienced a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of follow up compared to non-book readers." The authors continue:
"Further, our analyses demonstrated that any level of book reading gave a significantly stronger survival advantage than reading periodicals. This is a novel finding, as previous studies did not compare types of reading material; it indicates that book reading rather than reading in general is driving a survival advantage."
The reason books had greater gains than periodicals is because book reading involves more cognitive faculties. The readers didn't begin with higher cognitive faculties than the non-readers; they simply engaged in the activity of reading, which heightened those faculties. "This finding suggests that reading books provide a survival advantage due to the immersive nature that helps maintain cognitive status," said the study's authors.

As any book lover knows, reading involves two major cognitive processes: deep reading, and emotional connection. Deep reading is a slow process where the reader engages with the book and seeks to understand it within its own context and within the context of the outside world. Emotional connection is where the reader empathizes with the characters, and that promotes social perception and emotional intelligence. Those cognitive processes were cited by the Yale team and used as markers for this study. While they apparently offer a survival advantage, "better health behaviors and reduced stress may explain this process [as well]," according to the study. Still, those cognitive benefits are real, as writer Nicholas Sparr explains:

from-papyrus-to-ipad-the-evolution-of-reading

All the data was self-reported via phone survey and it didn't really account for ebooks, but it's still encouraging. There are no real downsides to reading, other than making the time for it. But if you're not convinced and would rather have John Green teach you literature instead of reading the classics for yourself, philosopher and Yale University Dean Jeffrey Brenzel lays out 5 additional pro-reading benefits for you:

the-value-of-forgotten-ideas-2

Happy reading!

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Yale Study: People Who Read Live Longer Than Those Who Don't

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Bookworms rejoice! A new study in the journal Social Science and Medicine just discovered that people who read books live longer than people who don't. Researchers at Yale University asked 3,635 participants over 50 years-old about their reading habits.

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Differences in how we would have used social media compared to modern pre-teens.

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1. I will make time for reading, the way I make time for meals, or brushing my teeth.

2. I will make an effort to carry a book with me at all times.

3. I will read whatever interests me. I will read novels. I will read poems. I will read essays. I will read short stories. I will read memoirs. I will read magazines. I will read newspapers. I will read comic books. I will read self-help. I will read street signs. I will read ads. I will read instruction manuals. I will read old love letters. Etc.

4. I will read whatever the hell I feel like. No guilty pleasures.

5. I will try to clear my mind of expectations before I sit down to read. I will give each book a chance.

6. I will turn off my fucking phone.

7. I will be a good date, but I will not let an author waste my time.

8. I will not finish books I don't like.

9. I will let boredom ring like a gigantic gong.

10. I will throw a book across the room.

11. I will read with a pencil. I will underline. I will dog ear. I will write in the margins.

12. I will massacre a book if I need to.

13. I will copy down favorite passages in my own hand, to know what writing the words feels like.

14. I will re-read favorite books the way I watch favorite movies and play favorite records over and over.

15. I will make lists of books I want to read.

16. I will take a deep breath and understand that it is IMPOSSIBLE to read everything.

17. I will toss "The Canon" out the window.

18. I will keep a list of books I have read. I will share this list.

19. When I find a book I love, I will shout about it from whatever mountaintops I have access to.

20. When I find an author I truly adore, an author who makes my gutstrings vibrate, I will read everything they have written. Then I will read everything that they read.

21. If I hate a book, I will keep my mouth shut.

22. I will make liberal use of the phrase, "It wasn't for me."

23. I will ask people what they are reading. I will take notes.

24. I will keep stacks of unread books at the ready.

25. The minute I finish a book, I will start a new one.

26. I will go to the library. I will go to the bookstore. I will get lost in the stacks.

27. I will read bibliographies. I will let one book lead me to another.

28. If I need to read for information, I will browse and skim and Google book reviews.

29. As often as I can, I will read out loud to someone I care about.

30. I will not lend out a book if I ever want to see it again. If a friend asks to borrow a beloved book, I will buy and mail them a copy.

31. I will not harbor the delusion that being a reader makes me a superior person.

32. I will not suffer under the delusion that the act of reading alone makes me a better person.

33. If I don't feel like reading, I'll go do something else. Maybe even - gasp! - watch TV.

Special thanks to Alan Jacobs, who wrote my favorite book about reading, and the other sources in my "reading" tag.

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I will make time for reading, the way I make time for meals, or brushing my teeth. I will make an effort to carry a book with me at all times. I will read whatever interests me. I will read novels. I will read poems. I will read essays.

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( iStock/xalanx)

Even though Laura Baumert's son Andrew can choose whatever book he likes for the 20-minutes daily sustained silent reading program at his middle school, he still finds reading a chore.

Over the years, the sixth grader from Washington, Michigan, has been on the receiving end of various incentives to gently nudge him into doing more reading: his elementary school used reading logs and rewards for time spent reading, and at home he is allowed to stay up 30 minutes past his bedtime if he reads an actual book. But so far nothing has done the trick, and Andrew rarely reads of his own volition.

Baumert doesn't really know why her second son doesn't like reading but keeps on trying anyway, finding places to fit it in between his other interests, which include typical middle school boy stuff: lacrosse, basketball, riding his bike, and playing video games. She takes him to the library often, and gathers good book recommendations from other parents, teachers and librarians, but stops short of forcing him to read a certain number of pages at home, thinking it will do more harm than good.

Schools have traditionally taught children how to read, and have always tried to encourage reading. But with an understanding that greater literacy is needed for the 21 Century workforce as well as higher benchmarks to meet, schools like Andrew's are coming up with programming that not only supports the nuts-and-bolts of learning how to read, but tries to hook kids as well: giving kids free time during the school day to read what they wish, holding all-family "literacy nights" to give away books, reading contests with prizes, and more.

Parents often want to do the same at home. Some may feel like Baumert, a veterinarian at an emergency clinic, who said that between work, kids and extra-curricular activities, she's often too tired to fight the reading battle. She knows that loving reading has a host of benefits for her son; she is just not sure where to draw the line.
READING ON A GLOBAL SCALE
Despite all the effort poured into enticing kids to read-the prizes, the posters, the contests-many U.S. students say they don't enjoy it. A survey conducted by Scholastic last year found that reading for pleasure drops off drastically for kids after age eight. Only 51 percent of kids surveyed said reading is something they like or love to do, a nine percent drop from when the survey was first conducted in 2010.

And by age 15, the U.S. doesn't even make the top 20 countries in the world who enjoy reading most. University of Virginia professor Michael McKenna, co-author of World Literacy: How Countries Rank and Why it Matters, compared PISA literacy achievement scores to the Enjoyment of Reading Index, in which 15-year-olds answer 11 questions about their reading enjoyment, and found two very different lists. Those who read the "best" - Shanghai-China, Korea, Finland, and Hong Kong - didn't necessarily like it the most. "You don't have to be a world-class reader to be a reader, you just need a modicum of skill and proficiency," said McKenna. Even though the U.S. ranked 17 on the PISA in reading achievement, when it came to reading enjoyment, it didn't even break the top twenty. Who loves to read most? Albania, Turkey, Shanghai-China, and Kazakhstan.*
STEPS TO DEVELOPING READERS
According to the Scholastic survey, three-quarters of parents reported wishing their kids read more for fun. But how exactly do parents do that?

Though there may not be a single secret, there are evidence-based things families can do to encourage kids to read outside of efforts made at school, said University of Virginia psychology professor Daniel Willingham, author of Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do. And the first one is tweaking the reasons behind wanting kids to read in the first place.

Willingham wants parents to re-imagine the act of reading as having less to do with school and more with a life well-lived. Instead of telling kids that reading books will help them get good grades or find a good career, he said, make reading part of a larger family value: loving to learn.

"Reading is part of a broader context of values that parents communicate to children," Willingham said. "These are families who value learning new things. And not just in the context of school."

When learning about the world through books becomes a family value instead of a school responsibility, parents are no longer seen as enforcers: instead they're the enjoyers, Willingham suggests. Kids may then absorb the values message, 'reading is important to who we are; reading is what we do.'
READING AND DIGITAL DEVICES
Modeling good reading behavior also works, said Willingham, in which a child might observe that Mom or Dad must like reading, so maybe I would, too. Modeling can even be done with your cell phone or iPad, said Devorah Heitner, parent of two and author of Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World -just tell your kids what you're doing when you're sitting on the couch, looking at your phone. "I do a lot of my reading on the internet and other forms of screen time," she said, though she spends time on social media and games, too. "So when we're modeling reading habits for our kids [and you're on your phone], let them know what you're reading. They won't be able to tell just by looking [at you]."

One thing Heitner warns against is creating a Screens vs. Books mentality, in which parents may be tempted to reward "real reading" with screen time. (Willingham also advises to tread lightly with any rewards for reading, though he said sometimes they may work.) Yet parents often feel like digital devices compete for the time kids would use to read, and are looking for guidance.

High school English teacher Jarred Amato knows that, for his Nashville freshmen, cell phones are indeed a barrier to reading. In a recent blog post titled "What 100 Ninth Graders Told Me About Why They Don't Read," Amato recounts a survey of students and confirms what he already knew: though students cite many reasons for not reading-can't find a quiet place at home, other responsibilities and activities-cell phones take top priority.

"Cell phone addiction is far and away the number one reason my students said they don't read," Amato said. "They are almost powerless to it. It's not just a kid problem, either-adults and kids are reading less around the world. And I think there's a value to talking to students about that." In hopes of rewiring a habit, Amato has been having students put their phones away and practice reading quietly in his class with whatever book they like, hoping they will do the same-even for a few minutes-at home.

Willingham said that by time kids are teens, when increased autonomy and social activities crowd their days, encouraging reading might be an uphill battle, so it's best to instill the 'family value' early, when children spend more time with parents. And though he said there's research to substantiate how television's arrival changed reading habits, for digital devices, it may not be so cut-and-dried-after all, kids have been finding other things to do for a long time.

"It's not the case that there was this golden age of reading, back in the old days," he said, laughing. "I think of myself growing up in the 70s, and who is kidding who? If I wanted to horse around with my friends, I wanted to horse around with my friends. We didn't like look at each other and say, well we've got nothing to do, let's go read Great Expectations! We had other ways to kill time even though we didn't have X-Box."

Though Baumert knows reading more would improve Andrew's school performance, that's not her number one concern. Critical thinking skills, empathy and a method of relaxation rank high on her list. For now Andrew reads only because he has no choice, but Baumert is optimistic that he will find the book that 'ignites' a love of reading. She also loved reading as a kid, and still finds that reading helps her relax and decompress.

"I read a lot as a kid. I still remember trying to read through the tears at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows," she said, "and being disgusted at the abuse Buck suffered at the beginning of White Fang. So many books had such a huge impact on me."
Willingham's Tips for Raising Older Readers:
* Make sure kids have access to books. Drop by the library often. If it's affordable, leave books lying around the house, in the car, even in the bathroom.

* Don't control kids' reading. The temptation to "put the hammer down" for a page count may only result in a reaction and pushback. Comic books, graphic novels, and books below reading level all count.

* Get kids involved in a peer network of readers. For example, teen author John Green has created an incredible network of readers and fans that connect online.

* Offer reading material that draws on something they're already interested in. If there's a movie they already love, get the novelization of the movie, or a book about backstage gossip on set.

* Don't forget that as the parent, you are the cheerleader, not the literature judge. Don't worry if it's not Shakespeare, the point is to show kids that "interesting things are found when you read print."
*This post has been updated to clarify Shanghai as Shanghai-China in the PISA results.
How to Help Students Develop a Love of Reading

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How to Help Students Develop a Love of Reading

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Even though Laura Baumert's son Andrew can choose whatever book he likes for the 20-minutes daily sustained silent reading program at his middle school, he still finds reading a chore.

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New York University professor Adam Alter, author of " Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked," explains why Steve Jobs never let his kids use an iPad. Following is a transcript of the video.
Steve Jobs in 2010 was on the stage at the Apple event releasing the iPad and he described it as a wonderful device that brought you educational tools. It allowed you to surf the web, it allowed you to watch videos, it allowed you to interact with other people. And he basically said it's the best way to do all those things. Two years later when he was asked "Your kids must love the iPad?" He said "Actually we don't allow the iPad in the home. We think it's too dangerous for them in effect." The reason why he said that was because he recognized just how addictive the iPad was as a vehicle for delivering things to people. That once you had the iPad in front of you, or when you took it away from the home with you, you'd always have access to these platforms that were very addictive. That were hard to resist. So where his kids were very well adapted, well adjusted, may not have been prime targets for say substance abuse, they like everyone else, are susceptible to the charms of something like an iPad and what it delivers.

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Here's why Steve Jobs never let his kids use an iPad - Business Insider

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Please enable Javascript to watch this video New York University professor Adam Alter, author of " Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked," explains why Steve Jobs never let his kids use an iPad. Following is a transcript of the video.

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This is the third entry in a series we're calling How We Got Here, where students and families explain how they chose, or ended up at, the schools they did. You can see the whole series here.

I knew schooling would be a sticky issue for my husband and me. He was raised by two public school teachers, opted out of his zoned school to go to a less well resourced one, and saw active engagement in the public school system as a duty of citizenship.

Meanwhile, I had been raised by striving parents and sent to the infamously elite Horace Mann School, where I was decidedly not in with the in-crowd - and I loved it. I loved that if I could dream it, I could write up a proposal and get a budget for it. I loved that I found my home in the out crowd, the goths and punks and nerds and theater kids. But I don't think Horace Mann ensured my or my classmates' success later in life.

So when we realized late last year that my daughter, born in the last week of 2012, could be entering kindergarten in 2017, I tried to keep an open mind, unclouded by the terrible things my mother had always said about public school. The fact was, my husband and I shared the primary goal of finding an educational setting that would first and foremost support our daughter's social and emotional development. We realized this might have been different from our (and especially my) parents' goals. We decided to first look at public schools, since we figured we would have the option of starting her a year later if she went to private school.

We started with P.S. 145, the school across the street from our apartment in the Manhattan Valley neighborhood of the Upper West Side. We see into the classrooms from our windows, and occasionally hear music classes in the morning. I didn't expect to like it, not because of anything I had observed, but simply because no one I knew liked it. Anyway, the test scores were abysmal, some of the lowest in the district. I figured we would do our due diligence, then send her to private school next year or push for a spot at the progressive and beloved Manhattan School for Children, a public school that accepts students from across our district. That's what so many other families like ours do, including our neighbors whom the New York Times profiled recently in a story about the complexity of school choice.

When we went to P.S. 145, I was stunned. Where were the disciplinarian teachers yelling at the kids? The overcrowded classrooms? The sheer lack?

The fact is, I was charmed by the abundance and diversity of student artwork, not only in classrooms but throughout the common spaces. I was impressed that each student has art, music, and dance each week, and that the goal is to build kids' confidence not only as artists, but as people. The Studio in a School art teacher explained how they do an art school-style critique at the end, where students are encouraged to make observations about their classmates' work. She also told us that they displayed not only works the students were most proud of, but also pieces they might feel ambivalent about, to show that all kinds of artistic expression can be appreciated. There was a new TV studio with a dedicated and very enthusiastic educator, Mr. Hunter, who would help teachers and students integrate video projects into their academic work. There were two dual language tracks. The teachers seemed happy and kind, and the students did, too.

But there were a few things that irked me. First, there was the giant "Merry Christmas" banner that greeted me in the lobby. Yes, there were some nods to Hanukkah and Kwanzaa throughout the school, but as a religious Jew, I was uncomfortable with how Christmassy it all was. Second, because of timing, we hadn't seen a lot of actual classroom instruction. Moreover, there was a typo in an assignment posted on the wall. I'm nitpicky like that.

Still, the arts programming and the overall positive environment attracted me for our daughter. People had warned us that P.S. 145 was the bottom of the barrel - so I was excited to move on to the higher-tier public schools!

Manhattan School for Children was next on our list. It was recommended by parents that we love and respect as friends and mentors. The parent volunteers spoke my language: "progressive education," "constructivist philosophy," "integrated curriculum." I was swooning.

But, by and large, I did not see it borne out in the instruction. Yes, the school was lovely (oh, that greenhouse!), but I didn't see the progressive instruction I was craving. I saw frontal instruction over and over again. And while the parent volunteers talked about process-over-product oriented arts, the integrated curriculum meant that the arts (at least what we saw) were in service of the academics. Instead of seeing students given materials and challenged to create, we saw assignments that asked them to, for example, make a cloud out of cotton balls or build papier mache globes. And the classes were so big - 27 kids per classroom, as compared to the 18 kids in P.S. 145 classrooms. My daughter tends to get lost in the crowd - and lost in her inner thoughts - so opportunities for an adult to make eye contact with her were important to me.

Then, my husband pointed out that of 27 kindergarteners, only two were kids of color. I wondered how that could be, given the school's blind admissions lottery and the demographics of the people we see in the neighborhood every day. Again, the school was fine, but after all the hype, I wondered: Is this really what we wanted?

My mom used to say, "People in New York always talk about real estate and schools." This year was the year of the latter for me. I talked to everyone I could. On the street, a friend introduces me to an Manhattan School for Children parent: "They are really trying to reduce the amount of homework they were giving, because studies show homework doesn't really help elementary school kids." Hey, I said to my friend, who still has a few years before this applies to her, P.S. 145 also doesn't emphasize homework for that very reason! She shakes her head. "So it's all art and no work?"

At kiddush (the post synagogue social-hour), I overhear a parent talking about P.S. 145 positively. I am thrilled. As we talk, though, it turns out she is only considering the pre-K. "I would never send her there for elementary school."

While out sledding, my daughter befriends a Upper West Success Academy student. Her dad tells me that he's concerned about the amount of homework at the charter school, but they didn't want to send her to a school with no homework, and while there were some OK public schools in Harlem, where they lived, he didn't want his daughter to be the only white kid. "Why not?" I ask. I really want to know - after all, that might well be the situation for my daughter - and when choosing a school, I thought all questions were on the table. All of a sudden though, it got cold and everyone decided to go their separate ways without addressing the question. I had killed the conversation.

After more and more school visits, my husband and I narrowed down our options to P.S. 145 and Beit Rabban, a progressive, private Jewish school that we also fell in love with. Of course, as a Jewish school, Beit Rabban had limited diversity, but it offered an outstanding Jewish and general education. We knew everyone there. And yet.

A rabbinic colleague of mine suggested sending my daughter to public school - there was no loss for us if it didn't work for our family and we switched to Beit Rabban further along, which was what happened (at a different Jewish school) for her family. She had also felt strongly about public education, but it wasn't right for her son. That sounded sensible enough, but before committing, I wanted to meet P.S. 145's principal, Dr. Russo, who hadn't been on the tour.

My husband and I arrived and sat at a large table in her office. I noted a sign reading, "I'm silently judging your grammar." Snarky meme though it may have been, it spoke to me. I mentioned that I liked it to break the ice. "Me too," she said. "Most people don't, though."

We sat awkwardly looking at each other. She seemed so much younger and more serious than I was expecting. Also, she didn't seem to have a pitch. "So ... what brings you here?" she asked. "We are prospective parents, and we wanted to know whether this school would be a good fit for our daughter," I prompted her. "What would you like to know?" she asked. I was panicking. This was bad. At this point, we had seen so many eager-to-please-and-run-to-their-next-meeting principals that this was a stark contrast. My husband started with some softball questions, then I got more detailed. Soon enough, she took the lead, and laid out an impressive vision for a school that could meet the needs of children from all economic backgrounds, including those in temporary housing. She talked about how class sizes were intentionally kept small, and how she used a discretionary budget to have a long term substitute as a second teacher in the already small classrooms. She talked about continuing education for teachers. She said all the teachers knew all the students. On top of that, there was time every Tuesday for parents to meet with their children's teachers. I was impressed that she had planned and implemented so many positive initiatives.

We enrolled my daughter in the public school across the street. I am not going to pretend to know I have made the right decision. No one making a match for a four-year-old should have the hubris to believe they know for sure. And I recognize that I hold a tremendous amount of privilege to have the certainty of a private school Plan B if anything, including supplementary Jewish education, isn't working right for our child.

One thing I am pretty confident about? I've spent more time inside P.S. 145 than the finance lawyer who was recently quoted in the New York Times as saying, "I feel like it would almost be malpractice to send my kids to school" there.

And as I saw a group of kids and teachers make their way from the school into Silver Moon Bakery for a kitchen tour, it seemed the loveliest thing to imagine my daughter joining them and exploring the world around her.

Mia Simring is a rabbi living in her native New York City, where she and her husband are raising two fourth-generation New Yorkers.

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First Person: What 100 ninth graders told me about why they don't read

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This is the third entry in a series we're calling How We Got Here, where students and families explain how they chose, or ended up at, the schools they did. You can see the whole series here. I knew schooling would be a sticky issue for my husband and me.

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Literacy: Free Voluntary Reading

Literacy: Writing

Letters to the Editor

Literacy: Free Voluntary Reading

Bilingual Education

Letters to the Editor

Literacy: Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

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Literacy: Free Voluntary Reading Literacy: Writing Letters to the Editor Literacy: Free Voluntary Reading Bilingual Education Letters to the Editor Literacy: Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

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When I was eight years old, I still couldn't read. I remember my teacher Mrs Browning walking over to my desk and asking me to read a few sentences from a Dick and Jane book. She pointed to a word. "Tuh-hee," I said, trying to pronounce it. "The," she said, correcting me, and that's when it clicked - the moment when I learned to read the word "the".

Growing up in Teaneck, New Jersey, in the 1960s, I was what Mrs Browning called "slow". During a parent-teacher meeting, she told my mother: "Daniel is a slow learner." I sat during lunch in the gymnasium with the - forgive the term - dumb kids. I was grouped with them during reading and maths: the "slow group".

And then, a year later, I was rescued by Spider-Man. My best friend Dan, who was reading chapter books by kindergarten, had started reading Spider-Man and other comics with some other kid, and together they began drawing and writing their own comics. In response to this loathsome intruder's kidnapping of my best friend, I began reading comics, too, and then began scrawling and scribbling my own. Soon, Dan and I were happily spending every afternoon on our masterworks, while the interloper was never heard from again.

By age 11, I was getting straight As. Later in my teens, I took a college admissions course in the US, and scored the equivalent of 136 on an IQ test. So what happened there? Was Mrs Browning right - was I actually "slow" when I was eight - and did I somehow become smarter because I immersed myself in reading and writing comic books?

In part to answer that question, I spent three years interviewing psychologists and neuroscientists around the world, reviewing their studies and testing new methods they claim can increase intelligence. And while nobody would ever call reading a "new" method for improving the mind, recent scientific studies have confirmed that reading and intelligence have a relationship so close as to be symbiotic.

That goes for all three meanings of the word "intelligence" widely recognised by psychologist. First, there is "crystallised intelligence" - the potpourri of knowledge that fills your brain. When you learn how to ride a bicycle, or the name of a new friend, you are gaining not just information but potentially useful knowledge that, in aggregate, forms the backbone of your ability to navigate and thrive in the world. By adding to that storehouse, reading increases your crystallised intelligence. That explains why some IQ tests include vocabulary words, which generally serve as a reliable proxy of how clever you are.

But all of us know people with little "book knowledge" who are nonetheless sharp and insightful. "Fluid intelligence" is that ability to solve problems, understand things and detect meaningful patterns. Of course, you can read little or nothing at all and still be brilliant at "reading between the lines" of a conversation. But in today's world, fluid intelligence and reading generally go hand in hand. In fact, the increased emphasis on critical reading and writing skills in schools may partly explain why students perform, on average, about 20 points higher on IQ tests than in the early 20th century. The so-called Flynn effect is named after James Flynn, a New Zealand professor who has devoted much of his career to studying the worldwide phenomena of increasing IQ scores. But if reading can increase fluid intelligence, the converse is also true: increased fluid intelligence also improves reading comprehension, according to studies by Jason Chein of Temple University in Philadelphia. He used "working memory" tasks that train people's ability to juggle and continually update multiple items of attention - to keep track of a moving dot, for instance, and recognise when it lands on a spot it occupied two, three or more moves ago. In papers published in scientific journals in 2010 and 2011, he showed that as both younger and older adults improved their performance on working-memory tasks, they were better able to comprehend reading materials.

A third type of intelligence has gained widespread interest of late: "emotional intelligence", the ability to accurately read and respond to your own and others' feelings. It may seem odd to imagine that reading can improve your emotional intelligence. But in October, the journal Science published an extraordinary study showing that reading literary fiction can improve people's theory of mind (ToM) - their ability to understand others' mental states. David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano, both of the New School for Social Research in New York, enlisted hundreds of participants online to read examples of either non-fiction, popular fiction or literary fiction, and then to take tests measuring the accuracy of their ToM. In five experiments, they showed that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of both emotional and cognitive ToM compared with reading non-fiction, popular fiction or nothing at all.

The literary fiction found to increase people's ToM included A Chameleon by Anton Chekhov, The Runner by Don DeLillo, and The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht. The study did, however, contain a glaring omission: it failed to measure the extraordinary impact of Spider-Man by that great literary genius, Stan Lee.

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When I was eight years old, I still couldn't read. I remember my teacher Mrs Browning walking over to my desk and asking me to read a few sentences from a Dick and Jane book. She pointed to a word. "Tuh-hee," I said, trying to pronounce it.

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I know, I know: This sounds like a fogy's crotchety lament. Or, worse, like self-interest. Professional writers arguing for vigorous reading are dinosaurs begging for a last breath. We're panhandlers with a better vocabulary.

But I'm coming at this differently, as someone persuaded that reading does things - to the brain, heart and spirit - that movies, television, video games and the rest of it cannot.

There's research on this, and it's cited in a recent article in The Guardian by Dan Hurley, who wrote that after "three years interviewing psychologists and neuroscientists around the world," he'd concluded that "reading and intelligence have a relationship so close as to be symbiotic."

In terms of smarts and success, is reading causative or merely correlated? Which comes first, "The Hardy Boys" or the hardy mind? That's difficult to unravel, but several studies have suggested that people who read fiction, reveling in its analysis of character and motivation, are more adept at reading people, too: at sizing up the social whirl around them. They're more empathetic. God knows we need that.

Late last year, neuroscientists at Emory University reported enhanced neural activity in people who'd been given a regular course of daily reading, which seemed to jog the brain: to raise its game, if you will.

Some experts have doubts about that experiment's methodology, but I'm struck by how its findings track something that my friends and I often discuss. If we spend our last hours or minutes of the night reading rather than watching television, we wake the next morning with thoughts less jumbled, moods less jangled. Reading has bequeathed what meditation promises. It has smoothed and focused us.

Maybe that's about the quiet of reading, the pace of it. At Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City, whose students significantly outperform most peers statewide, the youngest kids all learn and play chess, in part because it hones "the ability to focus and concentrate," said Sean O'Hanlon, who supervises the program. Doesn't reading do the same?

Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, framed it as a potentially crucial corrective to the rapid metabolism and sensory overload of digital technology. He told me that it can demonstrate to kids that there's payoff in "doing something taxing, in delayed gratification." A new book of his, "Raising Kids Who Read," will be published later this year.

Before talking with him, I arranged a conference call with David Levithan and Amanda Maciel. Both have written fiction in the young adult genre, whose current robustness is cause to rejoice, and they rightly noted that the intensity of the connection that a person feels to a favorite novel, with which he or she spends eight or 10 or 20 hours, is unlike any response to a movie.

That observation brought to mind a moment in "The Fault in Our Stars" when one of the protagonists says that sometimes, "You read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book."

Books are personal, passionate. They stir emotions and spark thoughts in a manner all their own, and I'm convinced that the shattered world has less hope for repair if reading becomes an ever smaller part of it.

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I know, I know: This sounds like a fogy's crotchety lament. Or, worse, like self-interest. Professional writers arguing for vigorous reading are dinosaurs begging for a last breath. We're panhandlers with a better vocabulary. But I'm coming at this differently, as someone persuaded that reading does things - to the brain, heart and spirit - that movies, television, video games and the rest of it cannot.

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In America, kindergarteners are expected to have a firm grasp on literacy. This is not the case in Finland, where students focus on playtime early in their education and go on to excel in reading anyway.

As Helsinki-based teacher and writer Tim Walker explores in a new story published this week by The Atlantic, Finnish schools -- where students begin "preschool" at age 6 -- prioritize play-based learning opportunities such as arts and crafts over desk work like handwriting and reading early in a student's education. In two examples Walker offers, educators set up a make-believe ice cream shop and encourage students to make play forts.

"Play is a very efficient way of learning for children," Arja-Sisko Holappa of the Finnish National Board of Education explained to Walker. "And we can use it in a way that children will learn with joy."

The early focus on playtime doesn't seem to hold students back when it comes to literacy later in their education. According to a Stanford University analysis, Finland is one of the world's most literate societies, with 94 percent of those who begin upper secondary school -- a three- to four-year program students enroll in at the age of 16 or 17 -- graduating. Based on Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test results and graduation rates, the nation's school system is ranked among the world's five best.

That is not to say that reading is banned from Finland's preschools. Teachers can teach reading if they determine it's appropriate after meeting with each student's parents to create a custom learning plan.

While Walker points out that Finland does have some advantages -- such as one of the world's lowest child poverty rates -- that could make it difficult for its early-education success to be replicated elsewhere, he also references research studies that argue there is no long-term benefit to kindergarteners being taught to read so early.

In his work for The Atlantic and his blog, Taught By Finland, Walker has been examining the differences between Finnish schools and schools back in the U.S., where he has previously taught, over the past two years. In January, Walker reported on a promising Finnish physical-activity initiative. In another story last year, he dug into the Finnish practice of giving students and teachers alike 15-minute hourly breaks to socialize and play.

The What's Working Honor Roll highlights some of the best reporting and analysis, from a range of media outlets, on all the ways people are working toward solutions to some of our greatest challenges. If you know a story you think should be on our Honor Roll, please send an email to editor Joseph Erbentraut at joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com with the subject line "WHAT'S WORKING."

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Finnish Kids Don't Learn To Read In Kindergarten. They Turn Out Great Anyway.

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In America, kindergarteners are expected to have a firm grasp on literacy. This is not the case in Finland, where students focus on playtime early in their education and go on to excel in reading anyway.

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Livr, the social network for drunk people, had all the trimmings of an ascendant tech start-up. A slick promotional video featuring two Eisenbergian CEOs. A hip Web site littered with buzzwords and trademarks. Press releases. Stickers. Posters. T-shirts. An auspicious, grass-roots buzz that began in Reddit's technology forums and bubbled into the mainstream press.

Livr's only problem? It was all fake - an elaborate hoax engineered by Brandon Schmittling and Brandon Bloch, two Brooklyn creatives with a lot of free time and little patience for what they call the "absurdity" of modern Internet culture. After dreaming up an idea for a start-up so ridiculous no one would believe it, Bloch and Schmittling set out to entice people to buy in. They bought a domain name, designed a Web site, enlisted actors to play Livr's earnest co-founders; they "leaked" a fake press release on Reddit, promising an improbable "online party at all times," a social network limited only by the user's blood alcohol concentration.

First Engadget blogged about it. Then Next Web. Soon Mashable and CNN. Within hours, one of Silicon Valley's top investment firms contacted the Brandons, asking if they needed venture capital.

"Livr was one of those ideas you have when you're sitting around the bar with your friends, and someone says, 'Wouldn't it be crazy if . . . ?' " laughed Bloch. "But these days there's no such thing as too crazy. The cultural landscape is just getting more and more absurd."

In the purer, wide-eyed days of yore, April 1 marked a once-in-a-year-opportunity to print phenomenal whoppers in newspapers, tell your children penguins can fly and otherwise violate the everyday norms of human behavior. But pranksters hardly need an annual indulgence for their hijinks anymore: On the Internet, after all, every day is April Fools' Day.

In the past week alone, online hoaxers convinced wide swaths of the online world that a deranged man dressed as a clown wandered unchecked around Staten Island; that Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte casually biked to his meeting with Obama; that R&B singer Trey Songz was gay; and that searchers finally found Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 . . . about 15 times over.

There's no denying the reality-bending, eyebrow-arching absurdity of these times, where "reality TV" denotes one of television's more fictionalized outputs and the news swims in headlines too crazy to be true. It's kind of like the classic ice-breaker game two truths and a lie: A bank mistakenly deposited $31,000 in a teen's account, and he spent most of it in days. North Koreans must cut their hair like Kim Jong Il. A major chain restaurant will offer milkshakes made with wine. Can you tell which story is fake?

"I don't see the distinction much anymore, between fantasy and reality," explained Bloch, who spends his days making "corporate documentaries" - a field that surely straddles the two. "In my mind, the line is blurred."

Exactly who is doing the blurring, though, is up for debate. Although it's easy, and perhaps comfortable, to blame the deceivers, the reality is far more complicated. The Web incentivizes page views, no matter how they're racked up. And so hoaxes are hatched not only by lone pranksters but also by Web-savvy marketers and public relations firms eager for attention. They're often propagated by journalists hungry for clicks and starved for time. Then they're swallowed whole by an audience drowning in so much information - such a cacophony of demands on their eyeballs and attention - that only the truly crazy stuff stands out.

"Americans are just bombarded with information," moaned Allen Peterson, the executive director of Wine to Water, a tiny water charity behind the "Miracle Machine" hoax of a few weeks ago, which promoted a newfangled gadget that claimed to turn water into wine. "I mean, to get their attention on something like the water crisis? The question is, how do we even get that in front of them?"

Wine to Water's hoax was perhaps the most forgivable ruse in recent memory. A five-person nonprofit organization based in Boone, N.C., Wine to Water funds clean-water projects in Haiti, Ethiopia and six other countries. It pays for the projects through donations and sales of its branded wine. After a CNN documentary about the group ran in December, the multinational PR firm Publicis approached Peterson with the offer of a pro-bono marketing campaign that would play off the Wine to Water name - and get the water crisis in front of millions of people who wouldn't spend two seconds on it otherwise.

Peterson and his organizatison weren't concerned about the tactics or the implicit commentary on America's painfully short, misdirected attention span. He reasoned that, if the hoax could save one child, the deceit would have paid off.

It did. Water to Wine's donations have shot up more than 20 percent since the hoax; Peterson estimates his charity will reach an estimated 6,000 more people in 2014.

But not all hoaxsters share Peterson's altruism, or Bloch and Schmittling's sense of philosophical inquiry. A number of Web sites that propagate fake stories - including Mediamass, or the dubious News-hound.org - profit from display ads when their frauds go viral. Others redirect to phishing sites that attempt to draw out the gullible clicker's e-mail address and personal information.

But the most common class of Internet prankster overlaps, mundanely enough, with the April Fools' prankster of yesteryear. There is no ulterior motive - unless the pursuit of attention and #lolz constitutes ulterior.

"My friend just has a strange sense of humor and thought it would be funny," Gemma Sheridan, 26, of Britain, wrote in an e-mail in reference to the mysterious creator of News-hound.org. Sheridan's name may seem familiar: A viral story circling the Internet last week claimed she had been stranded on a desert island for eight years, forced to build a hut from clamshells and strangle goats to survive.

"It doesn't matter to me if people believe it or not," she added. "It's just a hoax and people will move on to another one."

They already have. Days after Sheridan's shipwreck story went viral, another News-hound story - this one about the Earth's gravitational field going down for a few minutes on April 4 - took off on Twitter. (Ironically enough, that bit of astronomical urban legend originated as an April Fools' joke . . . in 1976.)

It's easy to condemn the wide-eyed naivete of the Twitter dolts sharing this latest hoax: Haven't they learned yet? Couldn't they just Google it?

But condemnation is futile. The Web, after all, is an organism spun to divert and distract attention. Might as well condemn the entire multibillion-dollar industry of display ads, or the fresh-faced 21-year-olds graduating from journalism school and disappearing into an industry where their worth is judged by the clicks they generate.

Better yet, blame the very foundations of human nature, which wants to trust. To believe. To experience real awe - even for a fiction. As Plato wrote 2,300 years ago, before even the Bible told a story about turning water into wine, "everything that deceives may be said to enchant."

"People are interested in trading this reality for another one," Brandon Schmittling, Livr's co-founder, said simply. "They want life to be entertainment."

It's no wonder one day in April is no longer enough.

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On the Internet, every day is April Fools' Day

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Livr, the social network for drunk people, had all the trimmings of an ascendant tech start-up. A slick promotional video featuring two Eisenbergian CEOs. A hip Web site littered with buzzwords and trademarks. Press releases. Stickers. Posters. T-shirts. An auspicious, grass-roots buzz that began in Reddit's technology forums and bubbled into the mainstream press.

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It is heartening to learn that the National Library Board (NLB) is taking steps to woo readers among the working population and senior citizens (" Big push to kindle love of reading"; Tuesday).

More can also be done to promote the love of reading from a young age. Once the reading habit is instilled in children, it naturally becomes a part of life.

Perhaps the NLB could consider a pre-school version of the Read@Work programme, targeting especially pre-schools and kindergartens with a higher proportion of children from low-income families.

Low-income families on help schemes run by organisations such as the Chinese Development Assistance Council, Mendaki, Singapore Indian Development Association and the Eurasian Association can also be encouraged to take their children to the library.

Perhaps some award - in cash or in kind - can be given to parents who commit to taking their children to the library for a certain number of times or whose children have read a certain number of library books.

Ideally, parents should be the ones to inculcate the love of reading in their children.

But it would be difficult for parents to encourage reading if they themselves do not set an example.

When children see the pleasure their parents take in reading, their curiosity would be piqued and they would be inspired to follow suit.

Unfortunately, reading for pleasure often takes a back seat to more practical things in life.

For students, this means that enrichment and tuition classes - not to mention social media - take precedence over reading.

Hopefully, with the move towards less emphasis on grades, children will have more time to read.

Another item on my wish list is for the NLB to waive the charges for book reservations.

Often, books that I wish to read are available only in selected libraries and a reservation would need to be placed at my nearest library, which incurs a small charge.

To make it even more convenient for readers, perhaps NLB could also deposit reserved books at other common areas, such as POPStations.

As with all habits, embarking on reading may be an uphill task at the beginning, but becomes ingrained with practice.
Maria Loh Mun Foong (Ms)

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It is heartening to learn that the National Library Board (NLB) is taking steps to woo readers among the working population and senior citizens (" Big push to kindle love of reading"; Tuesday). More can also be done to promote the love of reading from a young age.

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Want to read more, but aren't sure how to make the time? Check out these 11 tips busy people use to make time to read.

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Educational Games, Apps & Websites for School | Common Sense Media

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Use our parent guide for teacher-approved educational games, apps, and websites. Get advice to help your kids succeed in school from grade K-5.

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Excite, encourage and engage kids to read! Check out Biblionasium, where young readers connect & share book lists and good reads with friends, teachers & parents. Look up the reading level difficulty of thousands of books and find the right fit books. A powerful teacher tool and valued parent resource.

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Find and read more books you'll love, and keep track of the books you want to read. Be part of the world's largest community of book lovers on Goodreads.

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From bringing specially curated reading materials to offices to transforming an MRT train into a mobile digital library, the National Library Board (NLB) is going all out to get more people to read.

It is starting a National Reading Movement and, on July 30, will mark Singapore's first National Reading Day. It will also conduct a nationwide survey on reading habits to better understand how to promote reading.

The push comes amid survey results that paint a sobering picture of reading habits here.

Only 44 per cent of respondents in a year-long National Arts Council survey that ended last year had read at least one "literary book". And only half of Singapore residents had used library services in the past year, an NLB survey last July found.

Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim told Parliament yesterday that the NLB will focus on three priorities for a start: reaching out to new audiences, encouraging reading in the mother tongue languages, and expanding its network of partners to better court readers.

RICHER VOCABULARY
Instead of using simpler words, he goes for more difficult words. One day, my husband called me to ask: 'Have you heard our son speak Malay? Where is he learning all these words?'
MADAM SITI SAPURA, on how a Malay-language book club has helped her eight-year-old son.

Adults are among those the NLB hopes to get on board, he said. Work commitments might leave them with less time to pick up a book, so the NLB is looking to "bring books to (them), instead of merely encouraging people to come to the books".

BOOKMARK TIME TO READ
We hope to focus the nation's attention on reading, and to encourage busy Singaporeans to set aside time to read by creating opportunities for people to read together.
MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION YAACOB IBRAHIMa

It plans to create more opportunities for reading while on the move and in offices. For one thing, it is looking at curating and pushing out short articles for commuters to access on mobile devices. Later this year, the NLB and the Land Transport Authority will launch a library-themed MRT train, "which not only takes you to the libraries, but will also function as a library", said Dr Yaacob.

Users can scan QR codes with their mobile devices to download e-books over the NLB mobile app, or access content like short essays.

Under a new Read@Work programme, the NLB will also partner firms to curate reading materials tailored to the companies, such as on industry trends or common management topics, and even short pieces of fiction.

It is also reaching out to seniors, a group the survey identified as the least frequent library user. Only 24 per cent of those aged 60 and above visit public libraries while less than 20 per cent borrow library materials.

The NLB plans to expand its range of reading programmes for seniors, and take books to those who may not be able to go to the library. It will start book clubs and set up more reading corners at community spaces, doubling outreach to senior activity centres by 2020.

On efforts to encourage reading in Chinese, Malay and Tamil, Dr Yaacob said the NLB will double the number of mother tongue language reading clubs from the current five to a total of 10 by this year.

The NLB is also assembling teams of advisers to provide recommendations on Chinese, Malay and Tamil collections and reading programmes at the libraries.

Since he joined Malay-language book club Kelab Membaca Wira Pintar at Tampines Regional Library, eight-year-old Dhiya Durrani Ashraf Adri has picked up Malay words that stun even his parents.

His mother, part-time pharmacist assistant Siti Sapura, 46, said: "Instead of using simpler words, he goes for more difficult words. One day, my husband called me to ask: 'Have you heard our son speak Malay? Where is he learning all these words?'"

To kick-start the National Reading Movement, a two-month campaign to get people to pledge to read will run this June and July, culminating in the inaugural National Reading Day on July 30.

"We hope to focus the nation's attention on reading, and to encourage busy Singaporeans to set aside time to read by creating opportunities for people to read together," said Dr Yaacob.

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From bringing specially curated reading materials to offices to transforming an MRT train into a mobile digital library, the National Library Board (NLB) is going all out to get more people to read. It is starting a National Reading Movement and, on July 30, will mark Singapore's first National Reading Day.

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When I was about seven, my dad and I - having gambolled happily through innumerable Ladybirds, all of Milly-Molly-Mandy's adventures (I yield to no one in my love of the little girl in the pink and white striped dress) and a fair proportion of William Brown's - embarked on the weightier matter of Ian Serraillier's The Silver Sword together.

This is the story of the three Balicki children who must fend for themselves in occupied Poland after their parents are taken away by the Nazis. They become friends with an orphan called Jan. Or, as Dad kept calling him, "Yan". Eventually I had to stop him and explain politely that, actually, "J" was pronounced "jay", not "wye". Whereupon he explained, that the vagaries of the Polish language were such that, in fact, a J could be a Y and this is how Jan's name would have been spoken. I forgot all about that until about 13 years later when a university lecturer was trying to teach me about semiotics. He had been talking about signifiers and signifieds for several minutes and then, suddenly, the memory of Jan/Yan popped up and brought the various fragments of knowledge I was gleaning into focus like a twist on a kaleidoscope tube. Nothing is innately or immutably attached to anything. You only have to have a system. As long as A is different from B and Y is different from J and everybody is aware of this, all works smoothly.

It was a tiny but gratifyingly tangible example of the usually amorphous benefits of reading aloud to a child.

Latest research reveals that increasing numbers of children are starting school without ever having been read to at home. Pie Corbett, educational adviser to the government, says: "This isn't just an economic thing - it's across the whole of society. You get a lot of children coming from very privileged backgrounds who've spent a lot of time in front of the TV and not enough time with a good book. The TV does the imagining for you - and it doesn't care whether you're listening or not."

There is an argument to be made in favour of TV's role as a failsafe babysitter, giving frazzled parents restorative breaks, and we should also be wary of characterising the TV as something that injects noxious substances directly into children's brains, and of books as something that are universally capable of transforming the dustiest mental landscape into a lush and verdant pasture.

But perhaps after the revelation that the average adult in the UK watches nearly four-and-a-half hours' TV a day, it is time to remind ourselves of some of the best books out there for our young people.

The following - a combination of personal recommendations, enduring classics and currently popular borrowings from school and public libraries - are suggestions and starting points only, of course (and the age ranges attached even more so), but hopefully there will be something, somewhere for everyone.
Best books: 0-2 year-olds Best books: 2-4 year-olds Best books: 5-7 year-olds Best books: 8-12 year-olds Best books: 12-years-old and over
What did we miss? Share your suggestions below

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Increasing numbers of children are starting school without having been read to. But which are the books to get them - and keep them - hooked? Lucy Mangan introduces our guide to the best

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The Children's Book Review | February 1, 2017

17 New Release Picture Books

From the companion to Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, to a spirited picture book about two adorable badgers who get a little carried away while helping their mom out with the laundry, to a touching tale of a boy and his friendship with a horse, to a rollicking story that shares all of the ways a pet unicorn can ruin your life, these are the picture books that we feel represent the best of February 2017. How will you choose which one to read first?
Written by Sherri Duskey Rinker Illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld
Publisher's Synopsis: At last-here from the team behind the beloved international bestseller comes a companion to Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site. All of our favorite trucks are back on the construction site-this time with a focus on team-building, friendship, and working together to make a big task seem small! Down in the big construction site, the crew faces their biggest job yet, and will need the help of new construction friends to get it done. Working as a team, there's nothing they can't do! The millions of fans of Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site are in for a mighty good time!

Ages 3-6 | Publisher: Chronicle Books | February 14, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1452152165
Written and Illustrated by Jessixa Bagley
Publisher's Synopsis: "I'm bored," said Tic.

"Me too," said Tac.

What do two bored badgers do when they've done everything, including driving their mother around the bend?

Laundry, of course.

What could possibly go wrong?

In this spirited picture book, Tic and Tac, two adorable badgers, get a little carried away while helping their mom out with the laundry.

Ages 3-6 | Publisher: Roaring Brook Press | February 7, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1626723177
Written by Ed Galing Illustrated by Erin E. Stead
Publisher's Synopsis: Tony was all white,
large, sturdy,
with wide gentle eyes
and a ton of love . . .

Follow this touching tale of a boy and his friendship with a horse, by the late poet Ed Galing and illustrated with remarkable tenderness by Caldecott-winning artist Erin Stead.

Ages 3-6 | Publisher: Roaring Brook Press | February 7, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1626723085

Publisher's Synopsis: We're going on an egg hunt.
We're going to find them all.
We're REALLY excited.
Hooray for Easter Day!

Join a family of bunnies as they set off on an exciting lift-the-flap Easter egg hunt. There are ten eggs to find and count-but watch out for the obstacles along the way . . . Lambs, chicks, bees, and ducks await, and there's even a wolfish surprise, so be careful!

This delightful, interactive read-aloud is the perfect springtime story to share.

Ages 3-6 | Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens | February 14, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1681193144
Written by Jennifer Ward Illustrated by Susie Ghahremani
Publisher's Synopsis: Seeds can be big or small, round or pointy, and all sorts of colors. They can become flowers, trees, fruits, or vegetables, and they sprout all times of year, during spring, summer, fall, and winter.

But all seeds have one thing in common-inside each is a new plant life waiting to emerge. What kind of plant will bloom? Wait and see what will grow!

Including four gorgeous pull-out gatefolds, this lyrical and stunningly illustrated book includes fun facts about starting a garden.

Ages 3-6 | Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens | February 14, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1681190303
Illustrated by Liz Climo
Publisher's Synopsis: Be careful what pet you wish for in the newest picture book from fan-favorite author Ame Dyckman and rising-star illustrator Liz Climo.

When a little boy throws a coin in a well asking for a pet unicorn, he has no idea what kind of trouble he's in for. Unbeknownst to him, unicorns make the absolutely worst pets: they shed, they poke holes in your ceiling, and they make a big mess. With a knowing wink from Ame Dyckman, creator of Wolfie the Bunny and cheerful illustrations from Rory the Dinosaur creator and Tumblr star Liz Climo, this rollicking story shares all of the ways a pet unicorn can ruin your life, and is sure to have readers in stitches.

Ages 3-6 | Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers | February 14, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-0316343473
Written and Illustrated by Marthe Jocelyn
Publisher's Synopsis: Marthe Jocelyn is back with another clever concept book to follow Hannah's Collections, Ones and Twos and Where Do You Look? This time, she tackles counting and categories.

Sam's things are in a heap. Time to tidy up! He starts to organize his things, but quickly runs into trouble. He can make a pile of black and white things. But the penguin also belongs in the things with wings pile. He can make a pile of rocks. But the round rock also belongs in the round things pile. How will he ever sort his 100 things? Marthe Jocelyn takes a fun look at categories and counting in this very cleverly conceived story. Kids will delight in the cut-paper images of everything from a zipper pull to a robot, and Sam's surprising solution makes for a tidy end to this unique story.

Ages 3-7 | Publisher: Tundra Books | February 14, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1101918050
Written and Illustrated by Isabelle Simler
Publisher's Synopsis: A lovely and tranquil celebration of nature

The sun has set, the day has ended, but the night hasn't quite arrived yet. This magical twilight is known as the blue hour. Everything in nature-sky, water, flowers, birds, foxes-comes together in a symphony of blue to celebrate the merging of night and day.

With its soothing text and radiant artwork, this elegant picture book displays the majesty of nature and reminds readers that beauty is fleeting but also worth savoring.

Ages 4-8 | Publisher: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers | February 20, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-0802854889
Written and Illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully
Publisher's Synopsis: Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) was not only one of the greatest astronomers who ever lived but also the first woman to be paid for her scientific work. Born the youngest daughter of a poor family in Hanover, Germany, she was scarred from smallpox, stunted from typhus and used by her parents as a scullery maid. But when her favorite brother, William, left for England, he took her with him. The siblings shared a passion for stars, and together they built the greatest telescope of their age, working tirelessly on star charts. Using their telescope, Caroline discovered fourteen nebulae and two galaxies, was the first woman to discover a comet, and became the first woman officially employed as a scientist―by no less than the King of England! The information from the Herschels' star catalogs is still used by space agencies today.

Ages 4-7 | Publisher: Holiday House | February 28, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-0823436644
Written and Illustrated by Lane Smith
Publisher's Synopsis: Today is a perfect day for Cat, Dog, Chickadee, and Squirrel.

Cat is lounging among the daffodils. Dog is sitting in the wading pool, deep in the cool water. Chickadee is eating fresh seed from the birdfeeder. Squirrel is munching on his very own corncob. Today is a perfect day in Bert's backyard.

Until Bear comes along, that is. Bear crushes the daffodils, drinks the pool water, and happily gobbles up the birdseed and corncob.

Today was a perfect day for Cat, Dog, Chickadee, and Squirrel. Now, it's just a perfect day for Bear.

Lane Smith uses perfect pacing and vibrant illustrations to emphasize the power of perspective in this hilarious picture book about the goings-on in Bert's backyard.

Ages 4-8 | Publisher: Roaring Brook Press | February 14, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1626725362
Written by Kwame Alexander, Mary Rand Hess, and Deanna Nikaido Photographs by Joel Sartore
Publisher's Synopsis: A howling wolf, a stalking tiger, a playful panda, a dancing bird - pairing the stunning photography of National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore with the delicate poetry of Newbery award-winning author Kwame Alexander, this lush picture book celebrates the beauty, diversity, and fragility of the animal world.

Featuring more than 40 unique animal portraits, the pages invite kids to explore each creature's markings, textures, and attributes in stunning detail, while calling on all of us to help protect each and every one. Three picture-packed gatefolds inside showcase even more familiar and exotic species. These images are part of Sartore's lifelong project to photograph every animal in the world, with special attention given to disappearing and endangered species.

Ages 4-8 | Publisher: National Geographic Children's Books | February 14, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1426327674
Written and Illustrated by Stephanie Graegin
Publisher's Synopsis: Fans of Aaron Becker's Caldecott Honor winner Journey will love this utterly enchanting wordless picture book in which two friends follow a young fox deep into the woods and discover a wondrous and magical world.

When a young girl brings her beloved stuffed fox to the playground, much to her astonishment, a real fox takes off with it! The girl chases the fox into the woods with her friend, the boy, following close behind, but soon the two children lose track of the fox. Wandering deeper and deeper into the forest, they come across a tall hedge with an archway. What do they find on the other side? A marvelous village of miniature stone cottages, tiny treehouses, and, most extraordinary of all, woodland creatures of every shape and size. But where is the little fox? And how will they find him?

Stephanie Graegin's oh-so-charming illustrations are simply irresistible, and readers young and old will want to pore over the pages of this delightful fantasy adventure again and again.

Ages 4-8 | Publisher: Schwartz & Wade | February 28, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-0553537895
Written by Nic Bishop
Publisher's Synopsis: Rockhopper penguins live by the sea, but in many ways, their families are just like ours. Penguin parents take good care of their children. Mama penguin fishes for food, while papa stays home and watches the baby. But even little ones get tired of waiting for breakfast, and sometimes they wander off... Luckily, penguin parents always save the day!

Sibert Medalist and naturalist Nic Bishop has traveled around the globe to photograph animals of all shapes and sizes. Following in the vein of his bestselling, award-winning book Red-Eyed Tree Frog, now Nic takes a close-up look at caring, and sometimes comical, penguin families.

Ages 4-8 | Publisher: Scholastic Press | February 28, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-0545206365
Written and Illustrated by Deborah Freedman
Publisher's Synopsis: Deborah Freedman's masterful new picture book is at once an introduction to the pieces of a house, a cozy story to share and explore, and a dreamy meditation on the magic of our homes and our world.

Before there was this house,
there were stones,
and mud,
and a colossal oak tree-
three hugs around
and as high as the blue.

What was your home, once?

This poetically simple, thought-provoking, and gorgeously illustrated book invites readers to think about where things come from and what nature provides. Deborah Freedman's masterful new picture book is at once an introduction to the pieces of a house, a cozy story to share and explore, and a dreamy meditation on the magic of our homes and our world.

Ages 4-8 | Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers | February 28, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1481442848
Written by Kelly DiPucchio Illustrated by Christian Robinson
Publisher's Synopsis: Antoinette-a very special poodle-learns to follow her heart and be herself in this charming companion to Kelly DiPucchio and Christian Robinson's beloved Gaston.

Antoinette's three burly brothers each have a special talent. Rocky is clever. Ricky is fast! And Bruno is STRONG. Mrs. Bulldog reassures Antoinette that there is something extra special about her-but Antoinette is not so sure.

Then one day, while Antoinette plays in the park with her friend Gaston, Gaston's sister Ooh-La-La goes missing. Antoinette feels a tug in her heart and a twitch in her nose. She must find Ooh-La-La. She will not give up!

Can Antoinette rescue the puppy in peril-and discover what makes her extra special along the way?

Ages 4-8 | Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers | February 14, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1481457835
Written by Jeanne Walker Harvey Illustrated by Shennen Bersani
Publisher's Synopsis: Hawaiian locals and visitors always enjoy spotting endangered Hawaiian monk seals, but Honey Girl is an extra special case. She has raised seven pups, and scientists call her Super Mom. After Honey Girl is injured by a fishhook, she gets very sick. Scientists and veterinarians work to save Honey Girl until she can be released back to her beach. This true story will have readers captivated to learn more about this endangered species.

Ages 5-8 | Publisher: Arbordale Publishing | February 10, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1628559224
Written and Illustrated by Jason Chin
Publisher's Synopsis: Rivers wind through earth, cutting down and eroding the soil for millions of years, creating a cavity in the ground 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and more than a mile deep known as the Grand Canyon.

Home to an astonishing variety of plants and animals that have lived and evolved within its walls for millennia, the Grand Canyon is much more than just a hole in the ground. Follow a father and daughter as they make their way through the cavernous wonder, discovering life both present and past.

Weave in and out of time as perfectly placed die cuts show you that a fossil today was a creature much long ago, perhaps in a completely different environment. Complete with a spectacular double gatefold, an intricate map and extensive back matter.

Ages 7-12 | Publisher: Roaring Brook Press | February 21, 2017 | ISBN-13: 978-1596439504

For more of the best new picture books for kids, follow along with our articles tagged with New Books for Kids, Picture Books, Books for Ages 0-3, and Books for Ages 4-8.

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Best New Picture Books February 2017 : The Childrens Book Review

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The Children's Book Review | February 1, 2017 From the companion to Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, to a spirited picture book about two adorable badgers who get a little carried away while helping their mom out with the laundry, to a touching tale of a boy and his friendship with a horse, to a rollicking story that shares all of the ways a pet unicorn can ruin your life, these are the picture books that we feel represent the best of February 2017.

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All A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0-9 Other

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Sometimes we unintentionally discourage our kids from reading.

I know. It's hard to believe, but it's true. Here's what not to do - and why.

1. Having the Wrong Books

If you only have Steinbeck or The New Yorker as reading options, your kids will be discouraged from reading. It's highly unlikely your children will read unless they have access to books at their reading level and books about things in which they are interested. Get your dog lovers books about dogs and your Lego fans books about Legos.

2. Having Limited Access to Books

Books encourage kids to read. No books = no reading. Borrow lots of books from the library. Not just one or two books - borrow thirty. Flood your house with books. Then leave them in different rooms and piles so they're easily accessible. (This works. Trust me.)

3. Only Reading Aloud to Our Littles

We sometimes forget that our older kids need us to read aloud to them as well. As you probably already know, research shows that reading aloud to kids is the best thing you can do to improve their literacy skills, not to mention that it motivates them to read on their own. Plus, you'll get the opportunity to read amazing chapter books that can inspire discussion and bonding.

4. Not Letting Them Choose Their Books

Kids want to read books that they get to pick out themselves. That's not to say you can't advise on picking a good book, show them how to pick a just-right book, or even model reading the back cover or jacket flap of a book - but being able to actually choose the book themselves predisposes them to want to read that book. Let kids pick from a selection if that works best for you, but let them be in charge of the final decision. As Maya Angelou said, "Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him."

5. Offering Nonsense Easy Reader Books

Warning: This is my pet peeve and is somewhat controversial. Okay, here goes ... Many early readers are asked to read easy phonics books that are mind-numbingly boring. Boring because these books have no plot thread whatsoever. So the kid sits and strings words together, missing the whole point of reading: the narrative and exposition. Not only that, the child becomes uninterested and frustrated. So try to find easy readers that actually make sense. Tug the Pup and Bob Books are two good book series that have both decodable text and narrative meaning. Climbing off the soapbox now.

6. Making Reading Punitive

If you subscribe to the Love and Logic parenting method, which I generally do, we're not supposed to punish (" You didn't read, you don't get screen time.") or bribe (" I'll give you screen time IF you read.") but rather reward for positive behavior (" Wow, you spent so much time reading, I'd like to treat you to 30 minutes of screen time."). I think this is hard and tricky and it totally makes my head want to explode, but I bring it up so you can think about it. We don't want reading to become something dreadful or punitive. We want reading to be lovely and fun and rainbows and unicorns. Consider how you can reward for reading, not punish.

7. Not Reading Yourself

Your kids are watching your every move. Plus they copy you. So they need to see you reading regularly. The experts say this is good modeling. (I use this as my justification for reading all the time, especially when I should be making dinner or doing some other job around the house. Feel free to borrow this most excellent reasoning, too.)

8. Not Having Any Time to Read

If our kids are too scheduled with activities, they'll have no time to read. I know this makes sense, but it's something we need to think about carefully. What is your daily schedule like? Do you have time for reading? It's critical that kids have unscheduled time every day for reading as well as relaxing.

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8 Ways Parents Discourage Their Kids from Reading | Brightly

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Sometimes we unintentionally discourage our kids from reading. I know. It's hard to believe, but it's true. Here's what not to do - and why. If you only have Steinbeck or The New Yorker as reading options, your kids will be discouraged from reading.

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There is a cultural narrative about how electronic devices are pulling children away from books. When I meet with other university professors they often tell me that the students don't read anymore because their eyeballs are glued to their phones. Technophobes think we are raising a generation that doesn't understand the value of literature.

The polarization of old and new continues. Maybe it is leftover sediment from an anti-screen mindset that was always on the fringes of the golden age of television. It is a trite myth-like story that attempts to cast books as the underdog in battle against thechno-imperialism. Paper is the good guy and Gorilla Glass is the villain.

Common Sense Media's new report, entitled "Children, Teens, And Reading," attempts to offer a "big-picture perspective on children's reading habits in the United States and how they may have changed during the technological revolution of recent decades." The big scary takeaway:

According to government studies, since 1984, the percent of 13-year-olds who are weekly readers went down from 70% to 53%, and the percent of 17-year-olds who are weekly readers went from 64% to 40%. The percent of 17-year-olds who never or hardly ever read tripled during this period, from 9% to 27%.

These statistics are startling. But I'm not sure what this has to do with technology. The framing doesn't make much sense to me.

It seems to me that we currently live in a culture that is more heavily text based than any other time in history. People read all day long. Google, Twitter, and Facebook deliver words. People can't peel their eyes from the smartphone--essentially a text and information distribution mechanism. We actually have trouble NOT reading. Folks are always checking their email and their text messages. Sometimes it is hard to pull away from this matrix of letters.

Still, what are people reading? It seems like they don't read many books. I'm not talking about kids, but rather adults. Even the technophobes don't read books.

I've met highly educated elite individuals who have told me they just don't have time to read books. They skim the NY Times book review so they can participate in cocktail party conversations. They buy executive summaries from the back of in-flight magazines. I'm shocked by the number of people who ask me if there are audio versions of my books available.

Is the problem that kids don't read books, or is the problem that nobody reads books because our culture has become anti-academic and anti-intellectual? We'd prefer to read magazines and blogs that are subtly self-promotional in their incessant questioning the value of the humanities, liberal arts education, and those university degrees that are more dependent on books than algorithms and databases. The popular rhetoric tells us we need more STEM education, more engineers, more entrepreneurs. We're surrounded by an implicit anti-book agenda, and still we wonder why kids don't read books.

I'll admit that I'm biased. I'm an academic. I get paid to read. But my kids (6 and 8) also read a lot on their own. Not only because I require it--30 minutes of reading is a prerequisite to video game time--but also because their dad models good reading behaviors. Dad is always ordering new books; dad is always reading them. In my household, being an adult means feeling comfortable with books. Maturity means having excessive familiarity with long-form written word.

The Common Sense Media report agrees. "Parents can encourage reading," they explain, "by keeping print books in the home, reading themselves, and setting aside time daily for their children to read."

Strong correlations exist between these parental actions and the frequency with which children read (scholastic, 2013). For example, among children who are frequent readers, 57% of parents set aside time each day for their child to read, compared to 16% of parents of children who are infrequent readers.

When it comes to books, however, most studies show that the text delivery method is irrelevant. Good reading behavior has nothing to do with technology. E-readers, tablets, laptop screens are all capable of delivering long-form text. Books have nothing to do with paper. In fact, electronic devices only increase access to books. A report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center released earlier this year explains that "a majority of children ages 2 to 10 have access to a device for electronic reading: 55% have a multipurpose tablet in the home, and 29% have a dedicated e-reader (62% have access to at least one of these devices). Among children with one of these devices in the home, half (49%) engage in electronic reading, either on their own or with their parent (30% of all children)." Books matter; how kids read them doesn't.

My kids read on the iPad, the e-reader, and paper. I make sure of it. I read to my kids every night. I read with my kids during the day. I do it because I see it as a crucial piece of their education. I can't just outsource the raising of my children to specialists--and then complain that those teachers are failing. It is obvious to me that parents also need to be involved. They need to make sure their children read books.

Of course, it is easier to frame the story as paper vs. digital. It gives us permission not to engage with our kids. We can blame the video games and apps rather than blaming ourselves. Parents need to take responsibility for raising thoughtful, empathic, open-minded adults. Books are a crucial part of the equation. But even if we eliminated every digital technology from our lives, our kids still won't read books unless we tell them in no uncertain terms that books are an important part of being an adult.

Teach your kids to read. And teach your kids that it matters what they read. Renaissance Learning's annual " What Kids Are Reading Report " tells us a lot about what kids are currently reading and it is not all pretty. Their huge study "does not summarize sales or library data. It uses data from 318 million books read by 9.8 million students in the U.S. to determine what the most popular books are in a given year. It is the most extensive report in the U.S. that reflects K12 reading trends."

Three interesting findings:

1. Gendered reading starts as early as first grade. Elementary-school boys read tons of "Captain Underpants," but it doesn't even make it to the girls' top 20 list. We're conditioned to read statistics like this as proof that girls and boys have different preferences, tastes, and attitudes. I don't believe it. Alternatively, we might read this as evidence that we are creating an increasingly gendered world where roles and intellectual expectations are divided according to biological reproductive organs. If this is really what you want, by all means, keep at it. If not, there are plenty of books that are non-gendered; let your kids know that you think more highly of these.

2. Middle schoolers (in particular 6th graders) are reading the most words per student. The average words per student increases through middle school and then starts decreasing again in high school. I see this as evidence that parents are sending the wrong message about books to their children. We value literacy, cheering on small kids to learn to read as quickly as possible. But when these kids become adolescents they attempt to directly emulate their adult role models. If adults don't read books then trying to act like an adult means not reading books.

3. Books like Twilight and Hunger Games are more popular than literary classics. These days, teachers assign these more often than Shakespeare or Don Quixote. Most of them will tell you that it is because they figure any reading is good reading and books like these increase student engagement. On the one hand, this makes sense. On the other hand, we should remember that popular fiction prioritizes sales over content. They are revenue generators first and literary explorations of the human condition only afterward. This doesn't necessarily mean popular fiction is bad, but there's also a reason that certain books have transcended the economic, political, and epistemological trends of particular centuries.

At the end of the day, how our children read and what our children read says a lot more about adult attitudes about books than it does about the kids'. Model the behaviors and attitudes you want your children to emulate.
Jordan Shapiro is author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide to Maximum Euphoric Bliss, and MindShift's Guide To Games And Learning For information on Jordan's upcoming books and events click here.

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Kids Don't Read Books Because Parents Don't Read Books

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There is a cultural narrative about how electronic devices are pulling children away from books. When I meet with other university professors they often tell me that the students don't read anymore because their eyeballs are glued to their phones. Technophobes think we are raising a generation that doesn't understand [...]

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Selecting Books for Your Child: Finding 'Just Right' Books

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Selecting Books for Your Child: Finding 'Just Right' Books | Reading Rockets

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Does your child have a favorite book they want to read over and over again? Or worse, wants you to read over and over again? I bet you've memorized every word. You loved its adorable illustrations and clever text when you first brought it home, but now you've grown to hate it. You might even wish it would disappear forever. I feel your pain. I know it can be maddening, but before you toss this particular book, you may want to reconsider. Despite its annoyances, repetitive reading - whether you're reading to your child or they're reading to you - offers a surprising number of benefits for new readers.

Vocabulary and Word Recognition
The more a child reads, the larger their vocabulary becomes. When a child reads or hears the same book multiple times, they become familiar and comfortable with a greater number of words. That text you've memorized? Chances are your child has too, and that's a good thing.

Pattern and Rhythm
Hearing favorite stories read aloud helps children become aware of the pattern and rhythm of text. Language is more than just words - it's how words sound and connect to each other. Parents can model the rhythms of reading for children who are just learning how language works.

Fluency is the ability to read text "accurately, quickly, and with expression." Repetitive reading allows a child to read without stumbling or stopping, and reading time becomes more pleasant for everyone. Once a child masters one book, it makes moving on to another more appealing.

Comprehension
Reading comprehension is the ability to understand all the components of a story - from plot to character development to symbolism. Comprehension is "the essence" of reading. Each time your child reads or hears a book read to them, they learn more about the story itself. Each pass through the text or illustrations allows them to dive deeper into the story's meaning, preparing them for more complex narratives down the road.

Confidence
With fluency and comprehension comes greater reading confidence. Children who can follow a story and don't stumble over words are more self-assured about their abilities and more likely to enjoy reading.

Knowing that repetitive reading is good for your kids may not make reading Goodnight Moon for the thousandth time any easier, but maybe it'll help you stay sane while you do it.

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Why Reading the Same Book Repeatedly Is Good for Kids (Even If It Drives You Nuts)

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Does your child have a favorite book they want to read over and over again? Or worse, wants you to read over and over again? I bet you've memorized every word. You loved its adorable illustrations and clever text when you first brought it home, but now you've grown to hate it.

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It's not news that reading has countless benefits: Poetry stimulates parts of the brain linked to memory and sparks self-reflection; kids who read the Harry Potter books tend to be better people. But what about people who only read newspapers? Or people who scan Twitter all day? Are those readers' brains different from literary junkies who peruse the pages of 19th century fictional classics?

Short answer: Yes - reading enhances connectivity in the brain. But readers of fiction? They're a special breed.

The study: A 2013 Emory University study looked at the brains of fiction readers. Researchers compared the brains of people after they read to the brains of people who didn't read. The brains of the readers - they read Robert Harris' Pompeiiover a nine-day period at night -showed more activity in certain areas than those who didn't read.

Specifically, researchers found heightened connectivity in the left temporal cortex, part of the brain typically associated with understanding language. The researchers also found increased connectivity in the central sulcus of the brain, the primary sensory region, which helps the brain visualize movement. When you visualize yourself scoring a touchdown while playing football, you can actually somewhat feel yourself in the action. A similar process happens when you envision yourself as a character in a book: You can take on the emotions they are feeling.

It may sound hooey hooey, but it's true: Fiction readers make great friends as they tend to be more aware of others' emotions.

This is further apparent in a 2013 study that investigated emotional transportation, which is how sensitive people are to others' feelings. Researchers calculated emotional transportation by having participants express how a story they read affected them emotionally on a five-point scale - for example, how the main character's success made them feel, and how sorry they felt for the characters.

In the study, empathy was only apparent in the groups of people who read fiction and who were emotionally transported. Meanwhile, those who were not transported demonstrated a decrease in empathy.

Need more proof? Psychologists David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano at the New School for Social Research focused on the effect of literary fiction, rather than popular fiction, on readers.

For the experiment, participants either read a piece of literary fiction or popular fiction, followed by identifying facial emotions solely through the eyes. Those who read literary fiction scored consistently higher, by about 10%.

"We believe that one critical difference between lit and pop fiction is the extent to which the characters are complex, ambiguous, difficult to get to know, etc. (in other words, human) versus stereotyped, simple," Castano wrote to Mic.

Literary fiction enhanced participants' empathy because they had to work harder at fleshing out the characters. The process of trying to understand what those characters are feelings and the motives behind them is the same in our relationships with other people.

As the Guardian reports, Kidd argues that applying the skills we use when reading critically to the real world makes sense because "the same psychological processes are used to navigate fiction and real relationships. Fiction is not just a simulator of a social experience, it is a social experience."

The world around is as real as it gets. Might as well indulge in some fiction. Science says it'll make you better at interacting with people.

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Science Shows Something Surprising About People Who Still Read Fiction

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It's not news that reading has countless benefits: Poetry stimulates parts of the brain linked to memory and sparks self-reflection; kids who read the Harry Potter books tend to be better people. But what about people who only read newspapers? Or people who scan Twitter all day?

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Benefits of Early Reading - Why Teach Your Child to Read?

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As parents talk, sing and read to their children, existing links among brain cells are strengthened and new links are formed. At a younger age, learning is faster than it will be as the child grows older. When a child is taught to read, the process of learning has a profound influence on the entire functioning and development of the brain.