I often think how lucky I was to have been a child growing up in the 1950s.
Television was a rare commodity and not part of our lives. Books were treasured and regular visits to the library were enjoyable family outings. Presents at birthdays and Christmas always included a book.
Comics such as Beano, Dandy and Bunty gave me hours of pleasure. They were delivered to the door with the newspapers every Thursday, and I read them from cover to cover, then saved them in a large pile to be read and re-read again and again.
I think it was much easier to fall in love with stories then, both by being read to and by reading independently. Life was less frantic, and when we had time on our hands we would make up games — a form of storytelling. Invented games went on for days, becoming ever more complex with time.
I am a keen user of technology, social media and e-books. However, I think we have to work much harder today to ensure that there is time for reading in our lives and in the lives of little ones.
There is little point in harking back to the past and the ‘golden age of books’ apart from understanding the changes and hanging on to the essentials. Books and reading are essential to humanity.
There have been wonderful initiatives in the UAE to encourage children to read more. The year 2016 has been declared the Year of Reading in the UAE to create a generation of book lovers and consolidate the UAE’s position as a global capital for culture and knowledge. This was declared by the President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, launched the Arab Reading Challenge (ARC) in a bid to encourage students in the Arab world to make reading a part of their daily routine. The ARC aims for a million students in the Arab world to read 50 million books, which will be achieved through an integrated system for supervising students throughout the academic year.
So what can we each do to encourage our young ones to read for pleasure?
Are you someone who does not really enjoy books, but now that you have children, you want to give them the best possible start?
Appeal to adults
Explore children’s literature and find out what kind of books you like. It is better, I believe, to select books that you enjoy and then read to your children. Good children’s books most definitely appeal to adults. Try reading them out loud to yourself and feel the rhythm and smile at the humour. Make time to read to your child regularly. Ditch the mobile phone, turn the TV off and find a comfortable sofa. Small children love listening to the same book again and again. The familiarity of the words and the illustrations is reassuring and will enrich their vocabulary and understanding.
If this is a daily occurrence in your child’s life, they will have the best chance of reading for pleasure as they grow older.
I found with my own children that they always liked books at bedtime, as did I. It was a good way to wind down. From speaking to others, this also leads to a long-term habit of reading at bedtime and drifting off to sleep.
Being able to read is a key tool to learning, education and future careers, so it is an essential skill for young people. If a child looks on books with pleasure and has positive associations with reading, you have given them a lifelong head start.
Children in the 21st century are subjected to a vast array of visual stimulation. Picture books are visual too, but with the added advantage of words, often rhyme, and familiar objects that they can identify.
It is a new year, and the time we look forward to with optimism and a wish to improve our lives. How about making reading a daily habit and a time to indulge yourself?
Lead by example; if you read for pleasure, your children will have a good role model. Become part of the UAE drive to proactively encourage young people to pick up not a mobile, not a tablet, not a gaming console, but one of life’s most simple pleasures — a book.
