Chapter 17

Tunnel/Jacobs: Children's Literature Briefly

This chapter only stated the obvious. However, I truly enjoyed reading it because I agree that children need more than just verbal encouragement and stimulation to get them to begin and to even enjoy reading. As parents and/or teachers, we need to actually model what we want children to do (for example, reading). By giving the child the "option" of reading different books, we can actually encourage a child to want to read. Parents often make the mistake of "forcing" the child to read by making it a task or requirement, which in turn makes the entire experience pretty terrible for a child. Therefore, if a parent truly wants reading to become an enjoyable practice at home, then they need to not only encourage it, but model it as well.