How can parents help kids learn to love reading while encouraging great books that build character? Here are five ideas.
Have you ever handed your child a book that everyone raved about, but it turned out that your kiddo found it scary or upsetting? This scenario is a common one, unfortunately. Parents everywhere are trying to find great yet appropriate books for kids — engaging stories that will turn their kids into lifelong readers, but are not too intense, especially for younger children.
It can be tough to find the right fit, especially as different families have different standards. What’s a parent to do when you want your kids to love reading, but also want to make sure they're reading great books that build character?
My family has found a good way to navigate the unknowns — and sometimes really intense content — in all kinds of kids’ media. And I can’t take the credit for figuring out any of this, because I’m just copying what my own parents did with me decades ago! Here’s how we handle it all.
1Reading is the reward
The first step to raising readers is to approach reading not as a chore but as a delightful pleasure. My mom frequently gave my siblings and me books as gifts for our birthdays or Christmas, curating our home library with uplifting and character-building literature. I still cherish the worn copies of the Little House on the Prairie series and Anne of Green Gables books that I got for Christmas in third grade. She also took us to the library frequently and used interlibrary loan to find compelling reads.
Instead of bribing us to read, she treated reading itself as the reward: “You can finish your book when your homework is done.” I’ve kept this same approach with my own kids.
Wondering where to start finding these kinds of good books? My mom used this book list to find books for us, and I also like to use The Good and the Beautiful book list and Good Books for Catholic Kids to find wonderful new reads to give my children, either as gifts or in our many library hauls.
2Read books with your kids and talk about them together
One of the best reasons to read books with your kids is that it’s excellent for their intellectual development. In her thought-provoking book The Smartest Kids in the World, author Amanda Ripley breaks down in detail how talking about books and ideas with kids helps them succeed in school.
It’s also a fun way to bond as a family. I loved that my parents would read the books I was reading and talked with me about them. It was so much fun for eight-year-old me to share an appreciation for Little House on the Prairie with my dad. He knew all the references when my sisters and I played Little House, and he even took us to visit some of the historic sites from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, while my mom let us experiment in the kitchen with Laura’s historic recipes. Sharing these books with my parents encouraged my love of history and reading, and now my own kids enjoy them too.
At the same time, reading the kids’ books yourself allows you to foresee any problematic content. In one of the Little House books, Ma speaks in a derogatory way about the Osage people; since I knew this was coming up, I had a conversation with my kids about what she said and why it wasn’t okay. We also looked up some famous Osage people (like Maria Tallchief) and read about their lives to honor their history. In another book in the series, Farmer Boy, there are mentions of upsetting violence in the first four chapters; I opted to skip these parts when reading it aloud to my young kids (it didn’t bother my older kids).
I’m always looking for an opportunity to talk with my kids about books — and not just my kids, but all kids. My friends’ kids know I’m always going to ask them, “What have you been reading lately?” So now they know to report on their latest read before I even ask. I figure someone has to fight the literacy crisis, right?
3Teach your kids to tell you immediately if they come across something troubling
Reading what your kids read is all well and good, but it can only go so far. At some point, they start reading more books than we can keep up with. My 12-year-old plows through four or five books a week; there’s no way I can stay on pace.
So if you can’t read the books ahead of time and get to know their content, what do you do? Here lies the genius of how my parents handled things — truly one of their wisest parenting moves.
Once I was old enough to read chapter books on my own, my parents sat me down for a little talk. They said:
Now you can read on your own and you’re going to start reading books we haven’t read yet. With this power comes responsibility.
We are trusting you to come tell one of us if you come across something that’s scary, upsetting, inappropriate, or just makes you feel uncomfortable. You know you can always tell us anything.
I took this responsibility very seriously as a child, and I remember taking books to show my parents if something seemed off. Now, my own children are very conscientious about doing the same thing, and several times they’ve brought books to me to talk about something troubling in the story.
Whenever they do this, I affirm them:
I’m so proud of you for coming to tell me! Great job! You did the right thing. You handled that perfectly. I’m sorry to hear that part of the book was scary/upsetting but I’m so proud of how you handled it. You came to tell me right away, and this moment is a great reminder of what to do whenever something is bothering you.
This response turns an upsetting moment into something positive as I affirm their honesty and openness with me.
We have similar conversations about all media — TV, movies, things online, and even interactions with other people. I want my kids to know they can always tell me anything, especially anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, and that “we never keep secrets from Mom and Dad.”
Practicing coming to me with books they’re reading sets a strong foundation to build this habit in other areas. And it allows me to have total peace about what they’re reading, even if I’m not sure what the content is like, knowing they will always flag anything upsetting and bring it to talk to me about it.
4Encourage your kids to seek out positive and wholesome stories
My parents also told me to notice how some books are more uplifting than others. They said:
Just as there are different kinds of food for your body, there are different kinds of books that are food for your mind. Some books are good, wholesome, and nourishing “brain food,” while others are like “junk food” — fun to have sometimes, but that shouldn’t be the only thing you eat. And some are even like poison, and should be avoided always. You can notice how different books make you feel and what you learn from them, and try to choose most of your reading from wholesome and uplifting stories.
Recently I saw a similar message from The Good and the Beautiful Level 4, which reads:
Imagine that you see a cupcake that looks delicious on the counter — except for the green mold on one side and the tiny bugs coming out of it. Would you eat it? Of course not! You know what is good to put into your physical body and what is not.
What we put into our minds is just as important as what we put into our bodies. Just as we should strive to fill our bodies with wholesome food, we should fill our minds with wholesome words, ideas, and stories.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that this homeschool curriculum encouraged something my parents taught me decades ago.
As we guide our children and their moral development, we can explain to them the different kinds of books and encourage them to choose the best to read.
And again, all of these ideas apply to every kind of media — not just books. Whether looking at TV, movies, online content, or social media, we can teach our kids to seek out wholesome content and come tell us immediately if they see something unsettling.
5Decide for yourself if content is appropriate for your family
Finally, one of the wisest things my parents did was decide for themselves what content would be right for their children.
I’ve seen it happen many times that one family might love a story that another family finds really problematic. You can’t rely entirely on other people’s preferences and recommendations.
One of my favorite examples is how my dad handled the Harry Potter series when the first book was released. Many parents were banning the book, but my dad decided to make his own decision instead of taking someone else’s word for it. He read the first book himself, decided the content was harmless, and allowed me to read it. I loved the series, as do my kids, and we’ve enjoyed decades of delightful fun with these books.
At the same time, there were certain books and movies my friends loved that we didn’t have at my house. My parents did their research and concluded that those stories were not what they wanted their kids to imitate — and today, I also avoid those with my own kids. I particularly avoid books and movies that have siblings being nasty to each other, as I don’t want my kids to imitate that behavior when their siblings are supposed to be their best friends.
I will always be grateful that my parents did their own due diligence instead of getting caught up in the hype, whether for or against various media.
As a parent myself now, I try to incorporate all these things my parents did — treating books and reading as a pleasure, reading books with my kids and discussing them, training my kids to show me anything troubling, encouraging my kids to spend their time on wholesome media, and deciding for myself what content is a good fit for my family and our values. These strategies turned me into a voracious reader, and I feel confident that they will work equally well for the next generation.
