I've always hoped I would raise kids who love to read.  Unfortunately, I have allowed too many things to compete for this love, things like television, Playstation, and such.  It's not that I let them have unlimited time with the electronic things, but I have given them enough to feed an apetite for it, and to quench an apetite for reading.  But lately something has changed.  I first saw it in my son Stephen.  He is now reading voraciously.  There are days he keeps a book in his hands, and I've actually had to say "put the book down so you can  . . . . "  I cringe as I say it, because I really just want to tell him to read to his heart's content.  Now my oldest is reading a great deal too.  I started wondering what I've done right. 

One of the things that I think has helped is using the reading baskets suggested by The Well Trained Mind.  A friend uses this approach, so I adopted it as well.  I keep a big plastic bin filled wth books relating to our history and science topics for the month.  I try to include a good variety of biographies, non-fiction, fiction, and even picture books.  Another thing I have done "right" is to read to them.  A lot.  I really worked on this habit at the end of the year last year, and it is starting to pay off.  They really love to snuggle up with a good book.  And recently I started selecting books for my oldest son that went along well with his interest.  He has been fascinted for a couple of years now with the whole Narnia, Lord of the Rings, etc. kind of fantasy stories, so a couple of months ago I got him a book from Lloyd Alexander's Black Cauldron series.  He has really enjoyed them.  I just added the Book It goal setting, and I think that is part of the new interest as well.  Hopefully they won't always have to read for pizza.  I suppose it's like anything else, if I reinforce a habit for reading, and they discover they actually enjoy it, they'll keep doing it.  At least I hope it works that way!