What Makes Kids Want to READ?

When I decided to review the books that I have read to my children, it was intended as a means to share some motherly wisdom as well as allow me to keep in touch with my love for reviewing literature. So when I put up the widget displaying the books my kids enjoyed, it was meant as a sneak preview for my visitors to check what they can expect to find next or what was already reviewed on the blog. What I didn't expect was the excitement when my kids saw it! They weren't excited about the widget of course because they hardly know what a widget is!

The excitement stemmed from being able to recognise the books displayed on the screen. Such amazement and glee! For a while I didn't understand what the fuss was about until they began to compete with each other on who could say first the title of the book being displayed. *roll eyes* Yes...I rolled my eyes too. But what was interesting was that these were books that I had read only once to them with the exception of Little Monster Did It! That was my son's favorite and he would read it over and over and over....(you get the picture I'm sure. I'll let you know why it's his personal favourite when I review the book in my next post.) For now, let me not digress from my main intention of posting how I stumbled on another great way to motivate kids to read. And I realised that they were even more excited because they recognised these books. So when my son asked if I had done this wonderful thing of displaying the book sthey liked and I said yes, he was all ready to suggest even more books for me to include.

TA-DA!! That was when I was struck by the sheer power of this widget! I could get my kids to WANT to READ just so they could see the books on display on the computer. Now how cool is that? And they wanted me to display only books they liked. So you can assume then that the rest of the book reviews will probably be ones which they like very very much. Bingo! BUT I'll try to spare you the ordeal some of the books put me through and do a review of those except that I won't be displaying the book covers in my widget. I have to keep my promise - it's part of walking the talk as a parent. So I hope you'll thank my kids for being my censorship board and save you the trouble of finding good books to read to your kids. Now all you need to do is lookat the widget and find the title of the book reviewed in my blog! For me, I find motivating my kids such an eye-opening experience that I cannot fail to agree with the many SAHM out there that this job has no idiot-proof guide book. You just learn along the way....and some just makes your day - like this little widget treat!