As a children’s librarian and former bookworm, I’ve always felt a bit of a fraud as a mother. “Read to your toddlers for twenty minutes a day!” the posters behind me at the desk proclaim. “Be a reading role model, let your children see you reading!”
Ah, ADHD. Easier said than done.
It pains me to say this, but my kids—MY kids—are not really readers. Not the way their mother was at their age. They’re good readers, as far as process goes, but they have little desire to pick up a book and are even less likely to get sucked into it. I take that back: my third grader has developed slightly more interest in reading over the past few months, but it still doesn’t occur to her that, if she’s bored, reading might be a great way to spend her time.
And you know, maybe that is my fault. That whole “reading role model” thing—it’s true, my kids rarely see me reading for fun. I’ve discussed this whole Bookworm Paradox here before. But I don’t recall seeing my own mother read to herself for fun all that often (not counting the newspaper), and I picked up the habit anyway. Besides, my kids do strongly associate books with me. They’ve listed books among my favorite things in every “tell us about your family” questionnaire thing they’ve ever done at school. My daughter had even, unbidden, identified a picture of books in a preschool assessment at the age of three with, “My mommy knows a lot about those.” So maybe it’s not a matter of my failure at role-modeling.
Since before they could talk, I tried to read to them, but they could never sit still long. They could only handle short books with lots of pictures. A long, wordy picture book? A story from an anthology? A chapter book? HAH. I used to scoff at tales of parents reading complex middle-grade novels to their four-year-olds—”Don’t rush it! There are much more age-appropriate books out there!”—and while that’s true, maybe their four-year-olds were ready for complex middle-grade novels. Mine were not. And I was a little sad about it.
I hit a surprise winner with My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett when my eldest was five, and this is still my automatic number one Baby’s First Fantasy Novel recommendation. Seriously, if you’re anxious to get your youngsters into fantasy reading, there is no need to start your three-year-old on Tolkien. My Father’s Dragon all the way. Inventive, eventful without being scary, short chapters with pictures: perfect. And it worked on my little bundles of Attention Deficit, so it should definitely work for yours.
Then I took what turned out to be a brilliant piece of advice: read to your kids while they’re taking a bath. Captive audience, multitasking, and—this is important for ADHD kids—they can quietly play while still listening. To this day my kids can still not just listen to a story. They’re playing games or watching YouTube videos (without sound) or drawing pictures, and as strange as this may seem, they are still listening to the story. It’s just the way their brains are wired. They can hear better if their hands and eyes are busy.
So that was when I finally hooked my kids on being read to, at any rate. Now we read every night, me out loud to two kids who, yes, are perfectly capable of reading to themselves, but find it far more interesting to listen while they fidget with other things. And the best part is, I get to read, too.
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Yes, yes, Harry Potter is great, but when will we get on to something new? Since our family bedtime story is the only time I consistently carve out to read, I’ve been using it to satisfy my own reading cravings, at least when those cravings overlap with books my kids would also enjoy. There’s a pile of books at the library I’m waiting to bring home, as soon as we make it through Hogwarts in a few more months.
Here’s a short list of relatively recent books I am dying to read with my kids:
A couple other books made this list thanks to reviewers invoking The Westing Game:
Greenglass House and Ghosts of Greenglass House by Kate Milford: The former has been out long enough that it made my want-to-read list even before my kids were old enough to appreciate it read to them. Now the sequel is out. Still on the list.
York: the Shadow Cipher by Laura Ruby: I actually won a copy of this epic steampunk puzzle mystery from a blog giveaway, but immediately donated it to my library because I was out of budget that month, and the library needs it more than I personally need it. I’m just going to borrow it back… when I actually have time to read it.
Me and Marvin Gardens by Amy Sarig King: A.S. King writes surreal YA, some of which I’ve read, and while I loved the surreality, sometimes the YA-ness was a little much for me. But here she’s brought her brand of surreal to middle grade (under her full name, and I make it my duty to support other writers named Amy just on principle), which I would love to see. And it’s an environmental cautionary tale about a garbage-mutant creature. I come from a long line of environmentalists, and I could totally use surreal garbage-creature stories to bring my children into the fold, couldn’t I?
The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, by Mark Twain and Philip and Erin Stead: In other family history motives, family legend holds that the character of Huck Finn was actually based on one of our ancestors, so we have collective fond feelings for Mark Twain. But his work is generally iffy for sharing with young kids, being that even his children’s stories are now tinged with not-so-acceptable language. That’s why bringing this book home is so exciting. The Steads have by all accounts successfully adapted this unfinished bedtime story of Twain’s into something not only appropriate by today’s standards but also so seamless you can’t quite tell where the Twain ends and the Stead begins. And Twain’s words—or, something closely mimicking Twain’s words—are delicious to read out loud.
But not only will it be awhile before we get to anything new, I still have other OLD favorites that I need to share. I’m torn between my desire to read something new and my need to indoctrinate them in my own old loves so I can reference them and they’ll know what I’m talking about!
Here’s a list of books I’ve already read myself that I’m dying to read to my kids:
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery: I’ve always thought my daughter is remarkably like Anne Shirley, but the other day she tried to balance on the top of the shed roof so now it’s inevitable.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It’s going to be a little while longer before we can tackle The Lord of the Rings, the one with my favorite underappreciated underdog hero in all of literature, whose stubborn decency inspired me to name my son after him, and truth be told I’m really dying for that, for my son to meet the original Samwise* and make a proper role model of him. But until this household’s executive functions grow to handle that epic, we might at least dip our toes in a simpler look at Middle Earth, so they understand a little of my references, and the background of the Dungeons & Dragons worlds their dad introduces them to, and exactly who the very handsome Bilbo Baggins on the poster hanging above Mommy’s desk is. Not that the book version is all that handsome. But still.
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones: I’d always considered Jones’ Chrestomanci series good Harry Potter read-alikes, but my kids couldn’t get into Charmed Life when we tried it. Well, it’s this fractured fairy tale that’s my true favorite DWJ, and I always get the urge to read it again this time of year, right between May Day and Midsummer’s Day, and I can see it as a bit of a Wee Free Men read-alike, which my kids also recently enjoyed, so maybe? Maybe they’ll appreciate it more in a year or two, though, anyway.
The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan: Seeing as I’m already planning to read them the spin-off series, and it’s clearly a great read for Harry Potter fans, but most of all I know they’ll appreciate a universe in which having ADHD is actually a sign that you’re probably a demigod.
A Wrinkle in Time. Yes, I’m serious. I cannot get them interested in listening to this one. They enjoyed the movie, but we’ve only gotten two chapters into the book before they got distracted by other books they wanted to read more. It might be one of those can’t-handle-Mom’s-enthusiasm-so-we’ll-avoid-it-so-as-not-to-disappoint-her-if-we-don’t-like-it things.
So we need a lot more time in a day, or at least I need a much stronger read-aloud stamina.
PS: Before this article went up, the third grader did indeed pick up a book to start reading on her own: Squirrel Girl. So now when am I going to read it?
*Don’t worry, his name is not legally Samwise, it’s Samuel, but who calls him that?
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Amy M. Weir is a public youth services librarian in SW Pennsylvania, and there’s nothing she geeks out about more. Outside of work she obsesses over music (especially rock especially psychedelic pop especially The Beatles), sews clothes, gardens when the weather’s nice, avoids housework, and generally is the poster-child for Enneatype 9, which she attempts to counteract with yoga when she remembers. Her entire family has ADHD. This includes an RPG-and-firearms-geek husband who asked her out by playing a Paladin-in-Shining-Armor devoted to serving her character in D&D; a vehicles-and-video-game-geek 14yo named after a hobbit; an art-and-animation-geek 12yo named after a SFF writer; and an Imaginary Husband named Martin Freeman, who isn’t actually aware of this relationship.
