You are Never Alone

Do you read for pleasure?

The United States Census Bureau has just released a report that says for the first time since 1982, when the bureau began collecting such data, the proportion of adults 18 and older who said they had read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the previous 12 months has risen.

A recent UK report titled Reading – a pleasure or a pain? Attitudes to reading in years 4 and 6 says that reading enjoyment declines between Year 4 and Year 6. However overall, attitudes to enjoyment of reading and children’s confidence as readers have remained much the same between 2003 and 2007.

In 2004 in an Australian paper for the ACER Margaret Meiers wrote: “The research evidence suggests that, at home or at school, conversations about books, shared reading of books, and connecting everyday experiences with reading are valued activities that help students to become engaged in reading and contribute to the enhancement of future learning.

There are programmes such as the Premier’s Reading Challenge, run annually in nearly every Australian state under the sponsorship of the State premier, that provide incentives for Australian children to read. The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) is a volunteer run, not for profit, organisation that was established in 1945 and is comprised of individual members who are passionate about children’s and young adult literature. Every year it sponsors Book Week and there is a flurry of activity around Australia in librraies and schools, stimulating children to read. The dates for Book Week 2009 are August 22nd - 28th.

But nothing beats roles models. So I come back to my original question. Do you read for pleasure? If children don’t see their teachers and their parents and family reading for pleasure, then the struggle to get them to read is always an uphill one. And reading for pleasure affects everything else they do, as it establishes a basis for literacy development.