Encouraging Children to Read

How do you encourage reading in children? Good 

question, but I have no idea how people go about teaching children to read these days.

I can only fall back on how I encouraged my children to read in the 60s. One thing I did do, for which I was seriously mocked, was read aloud to my baby bump. After she was born, I read to my daughter every day. We had rag books which could be washed and re-read and there was always one stuck in her pram. By the time I was pregnant with my second child, my daughter and I read books together to the new baby bump and then the same with my third child, even if the book was only a picture book of farmyard or zoo animals and we read the name of the animal.

I used my local library all the time and my kids were encouraged to pick out a book for

themselves and one that I would read to them. They all started with author Angela Banner's Ant and Bee books. They particularly enjoyed Ant as he was often naughty while Bee was a bit more sensible. Simple three- and four-letter words were repeatedly printed in red (like the old Reader's Digest advertising letters) and the parent (or whoever) read the black print text. It wasn't long before my kids were reading the whole book for themselves. Other series were the Beatrix Potter and Ladybird books.

There were always books in our house and I followed the routine set by my parents. We didn't have TV until 1956, and only then because I regularly disappeared to the next-door neighbor’s house to

watch The Lone Ranger. Once we had done our school work and reading, then we could watch TV. My children could watch the children’s hour programs from 4.45 pm until 6.00 pm and then the TV was switched off and the reading began. They read a page from their books, each helping the other, and then I would read a chapter of the family book to them. The last book we read as a family was Watership Down.

In between times, while other parents refused to let their children read ‘rubbish’ comics, mine had their pick of whatever they pleased, one comic each per week which they all shared. They had their pick of the Dandy, Beano, Bunty, and Beezer and often, the day after getting their comics from

the local newsagent especially, several of their friends would magically appear and sit and read them, too. Whatever the cost of these comics was well worth the expense as the kids devoured them. I'm not sure if my neighbors noticed any improvement in their children's reading but all the kids were encouraged to read the words and not just look at the pictures.

I hear today that parents are encouraged to not teach their children to read at home as that is a job for teachers and schools. I don’t agree, especially with early reading programs like Hooked on Phonics and LeapFrog readily available. I can’t think of a more pleasing aspect of being a parent than sitting with your children and sharing the written word. My children are now all in their fifties and still avid readers. I like to think they had a good start with what we shared as a family.

Visit the following authors to see their opinions on the subject:

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1ly

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Anne de Gruchy https://annedegruchy.co.uk/category/blog/

A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/

Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/

Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

Why I started writing.

Our August topic is: What started you to write?

I can’t actually remember a time when I didn’t write. I was always scribbling something, somewhere. First with crayons, then with pencils and finally, joy of joys a fountain pen. The typewriter and computer came much, much later!

What I wrote seemed to be of far less importance than what I wrote with. My writing efforts were simply not appreciated by my family. At twelve-years-old, I was allowed to have the Girl comic as it was vetted and approved of by my parents for its educational qualities. From this source I began writing adventure stories for girls, one being a series about Virginia, Girl of the Golden West. My recollection of those early stories is that they were more than lurid, and I forgive my parents for their outright laughter on reading them.

I told stories to my children when they came along and we had tremendous fun with what we now call brainstorming. Each child had their chance to pick a topic, or start a story and off we would go, following the thread wherever it led us. I suppose I had always had a good imagination partly, I think, from being an early reader myself. I always had books around and made sure my children did, too. Because my daughter was into ponies, I decided to write a story about them for her thirteenth birthday.

I had no idea what I was doing, of course. I mistakenly thought writing chapters would be like writing lots of short stories and putting them together. Instead, I found it was hard work and I finished the book in time for my daughter's fifteenth birthday. But that whole process of putting a story together, like fitting pieces of a jigsaw together, fascinated and satisfied me like nothing else. I can only say I tinkered with writing from then on, cramped by a lack of confidence and no one to really share my ideas with.

It wasn’t until my late husband signed me up for a writing course that I got to grips with writing again. I found people who ‘got’ me, and I them. From small starts, I took up novel writing and now am happily working on book number eleven. Not a huge body of work, but one that satisfies me.

Visit these authors to see what inspired them.

  

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1ke
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

My New Cover

 

 AVAILABLE HERE

We all know the adage that you don’t judge a book by its cover. I have, especially in my early days of purchasing e-books, done exactly that and then been hugely disappointed when the quality of the content failed to match the quality of the cover. These days I look at the cover and then click on the ‘Look Inside’ button and read the excerpt before I decide whether to purchase or not.

I must admit that the last thing I thought about when I started writing my first Regency romance was the cover. It was a tough enough job to get the words flowing without having the angst of considering how those words would all be wrapped up in a neat package. I was totally ignorant of fonts, colors, and layout and had no idea how to create an attractive, appealing cover. Thank goodness for cover designers and, in particular, Books We Love’s own cover designer, Michelle Lee.

First e-book cover

I was so pleased with the first cover because it contained all the elements I thought I needed. My heroine, Emmaline Devereux, had long black hair, so the image of the girl was bang on. I needed a horse because she loved horses, and the old house in the background depicting her family home was so reminiscent of a house I had loved and lived in for more than ten years. But then my daughter made the comment that the image of Emmaline looked more like a schoolgirl than a clever spy capable of surviving the Peninsula War 1807 - 1814 when Napolean clashed with the Spanish Empire. Oh, oh. One burst bubble as I reconsidered what the image was actually portraying. 

Thanks to Books We Love, I had the opportunity for a new cover design when the book went into print. Again, Michelle Lee pulled in all the elements I requested on my Cover Art Form.

First print cover

The result, as you can see, is a more adult female image. I still had to have a horse to convey her love of horses, plus my hero. A similar female image graced the cover of His Ocean Vixen, Book 2 in the series but with the third book, His Unexpected Muse, coming in February 2019, I thought a new look all round might better pull the series together.

By now a little more savvy about cover design, I looked at the covers of the Regency romance best sellers on Amazon and noticed that invariably there was just a female image against an attractive background. Publisher Jude Pittman was again in agreement with the update and I spent most of one Sunday scrolling through images until I found a few that I thought worked. I am now totally happy with the image and feel that, finally, His Dark Enchantress has grown up.

After I revealed it on my Facebook author page, I had quite a few people contact me to tell me how much they liked it, most much more so than the previous two. I'm now looking forward to the update for His Ocean Vixen and next year the launch of His Unexpected Muse.