Adventures in reading

My older son is an extremely enthusiastic learner. He asks questions non-stop. He watches educational TV programs. He browses dictionaries and encyclopedias. But to everybody's great surprise, he does not like to read.

He's never liked to read. When he was a baby and I tried to show him picture books, he would crawl away. When I read him "word" books, he would walk away. When I tried nursery rhymes, he would run away. And when I tried short stories, he refused to listen. It is a mystery to me why a child who has such an inquisitive mind would refuse to read. I taught him how to read in Russian, just as my father taught me, at age 4. He taught himself how to read in English before he started Kindergarten. But knowing how to read did not translate into reading.

I tried not to push it. I am smart enough to know that if you push something too hard, you eventually will make a child hate it, while if you pretend not to worry, he might outgrow it. So I let it rest for a while. I let the school do the work - he could not walk away from listening to the stories in Kindergarten, and he was obligated to read short books in 1st grade. But we did not move any further than that.

In 2nd grade, Alex discovered non-fiction books. That was something he could use! The only books he would bring from the school library was math books ("Geometry for every kid", "Cool math", and his favorite "Math for girls"). He asked me to read and explain to him the physics book that we have, but unfortunately, I know so little about physics, that eventually he was explaining it to me. For his birthday, he got an astronomy book so big it would not fit on our coffee table. It took him the whole summer to read it, but he finished it from cover to cover. He asked for more astronomy books, but I am afraid that all the world's knowledge of astronomy was covered in that book and there is no more to be learned.

At least that was a start. Now, it was time to move to fiction books, I thought, but Alex did not share my sentiment. "What can I learn from a fiction book?" - he asked, - "It teaches nothing." "It expands your vocabulary", - I tried, - "It makes your imagination work." No result. "Fiction books teach you how to live, how to behave in difficult situations, what is bad and what is good." I was not getting anywhere.

As always, school came to the rescue. They set up a requirement that a child should read, or be read to, at least 15 minutes a day. I knew that Alex would not disobey school rules. In fact, now he would not go to bed until I read to him for 15 minutes (of course he preferred the physics book, but since I did not learn any more physics, I picked different books). We started with fairy tales by the great Russian poet A.S.Pushkin. Then we moved to other fairy tales, from Russia and other countries. Alex listened, but I knew he was not thrilled.

One day I was browsing the Internet book stores for something that might interest Alex, and I found a book "History of England for kids" by Charles Dickens (the book was actually translated into Russian). I bought it, and we started reading it. It was not an easy read, even for me, so "for kids" was a stretch. But Alex loved it. He remembered the dates, the names of kings, the dates of wars, and even understood the parts that I missed. It was an incredible experience reading it with Alex.

After that, I bought another history book - "History of Russia for kids." Again, "for kids" was a stretch, but Alex loved it all the same. Lucky for us, my father used to be a history teacher, and after reading a chapter, I would make Alex call his grandfather and ask about the parts he did not understand, or for more information about the chapter. Alex compared what he learned from a book to what my father was telling him, sometimes being surprised that the book and his grandfather did not agree on some point. He learned that history is not an exact science, and the experts sometimes disagree on what actually happened. It was another great experience.

After that Alex asked for another history book, but I could not find one, so I decided to go back to fiction. Going back to what we learned about English history, I picked up Mark Twain's "The Prince And the Pauper." This is what we were reading for a couple of weeks, and just finished today. I could not wait until the evening when we both crawled under the blanket and I read this book to him. I could tell that Alex was mesmerized. This is the first fiction book he actually loved, and I was so happy to share this book with him.

After we finished reading, we had a long discussion. We discussed what in the story was actually true, and what was fiction. We agreed that the book told us a lot about the kings Henry VIII and Edward VI, about their times and traditions, and how people lived in those times. So, we agreed, that fiction books can teach something too. We also discussed what made the story fictional, and incidentally, made it interesting.

My next project is to make Alex want to read by himself. I do want him to learn to do it, but at the same time I am sad about it because that means I will not be able to share those reading times and discoveries with him anymore. We agreed that our next big project is "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." I decided that we'll start to read together, and then I will try to get Alex to continue reading by himself. We'll see if any of us gives up.