Bedtime Stories: GTA Kids Share Their Favourite Books On Family Literacy Day

Madalena, 10, loves reading a bedtime story with her mother every evening.

“The story we’re reading right now is Anne of Avonlea, the second in the Anne of Green Gables series. After we finish that, we plan to go on the third book in the Golden Compass series,” she said over the phone.

“We read the first two together, but she really wanted to read me the Anne of Green Gables series because she enjoyed it so much as a kid.”

But for many Canadians, spending that kind of time reading with a parent is not the norm. Four out of 10 adult Canadians – about nine million people – have a literacy level below that of a high school graduate, according to ABC Canada.

In 1999, the group founded Family Literacy Day to address the problem. This year, it falls on January 27. Even 15 minutes a day can improve a child’s reading ability.

“When we talk about literacy with families, we highly recommend that the children and the parents participate together,” said Sandy Kotsopoulos, manager of the Early Learning Centre at Ryerson University.

The centre has a wide range of books on hand, many of them written by Canadian authors.

“We always go from where the kids are excited and build on that. There are such lovely authors who also have Toronto experience, like Barbara Reid and The Subway Mouse. A lot of our kids take the subway and they like that whole idea that there’s a mouse family that lives in there,” she added.

“That works especially with school-age kids. Younger kids pretty much like anything where they can sit on your lap.”

But, Kotsopoulos pointed out, reading to children shouldn’t stop just because they can read on their own.

“We often think that as soon as our children learn how to read, we don’t need to read to them anymore, and that’s not the case. It’s not until they become quite competent readers and are able to handle books that are at their intellectual level that we can kind of back off from that reading opportunity.”

CityNews.ca spoke to two young readers about their favourite books.

When Madalena reads on her own, her choices tend towards the fantastical.

“A lot of my favourite books are about magic. I’m reading a book called Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede,” she said.  

“It’s basically about a daughter and she was born the 13th child, so she’s supposed to be unlucky to everyone around her. Whereas her twin brother is the seventh son of a seventh son, which means he’s supposed to help everyone around him and possess amazing talent.

“My very first favourite book would have to be the fourth Harry Potter book. Um, what’s it called? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. There’s a lot of action in it and magic, which I kind of like, and it’s very interesting too. They’re not all completely made up spells or anything. Some of them kind of have history. Like, ‘avada-cadabra,’ the killing curse, it was actually supposed to be a real curse in Egypt,” she said.

The Harry Potter series is also popular with Zachary, 8.

“I’ve read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and the first one. They have lots of action and there’s a lot of things that you learn. I read them by myself. I just read any time I can,” he said over the phone.

“I like books that are about magic and I like books that are chapter books. I’m too old for picture books. My twin sister, she’s older than me by four minutes, she doesn’t like to read.

“That’s not about magic, I like The 39 Clues. The Cahills, it’s a last name, but there’s four branches – the Tomas’s, the Lucian’s, the Ekaterina’s and I forget the last one [Janus]. They go around the world finding clues to be the most powerful person in the world. And I’m on the third book and they go to China. There’s these swords on the front so I think it’s about Chinese swords. Because samurais have swords in China,” he said.

Currently, he’s learning about a mountain-climbing expedition.

“I’m reading Everest right now and it’s about these kids that are training to climb Mt. Everest,” he described. “I get a bedtime story now too.”

“We read these books – the last one we read was Ella Enchanted. Oh, and The Fairies Return. I like it because there’s a lot of stories in it, like the black hill, where horses have to climb the hill and get three golden apples,” he said.


Family Reading Tips
Credit: Sandy Kotsopoulos

Make a personal book.

  • Your child is the star of the story and the characters are people he or she knows, like aunts, uncles and cousins.

Create a special story time.

  • For most families, Kotsopoulos says, that’s bedtime. Just “instilling that whole idea that stories should be a part of your life,” is important.

Make it fun.

  • “Anything that’s fun with language, such as a rhyming component, is great,” she recommends.

Read to your child.

  • “Even when they start to read themselves, because their comprehension level is higher than their ability to read, they still need to be read to. Anywhere from that four to eight or nine age group, they’re still slowed down by the technique of reading. They haven’t quite mastered the flow.”

erin.criger@citynews.rogers.com

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