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Parenting: Parents, publishers, writers synergize to boost reading among children

Parents matter: Parents accompany their children at a literature-based visual arts activity aimed at promoting literacy and creative thinking at the Jakarta Storytelling Festival 2017, organized by Indonesian organization Rumah Cerita

Sebastian Partogi (The Jakarta Post)
Abu Dhabi
Wed, May 2, 2018

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Parenting: Parents, publishers, writers synergize to boost reading among children

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arents matter: Parents accompany their children at a literature-based visual arts activity aimed at promoting literacy and creative thinking at the Jakarta Storytelling Festival 2017, organized by Indonesian organization Rumah Cerita. Parents should be active in promoting a reading interest among their young ones. (Courtesy of Rumah Cerita)

Amid the onslaught of digital gadgets and various applications that distract children from literacy habits and skills, parents and other adults can work together to instill the love of reading in their young ones in an exciting way.

Reading books could actually save a child’s life during times of hardship. Besides boosting cognitive and linguistics skills – the best-known benefits of reading – reading books could also enrich children’s lives and bolster their resilience.

Co-founder Lana Halabi of the Halabi Bookshop, a small community bookstore and learning center in Lebanon that runs regular literacy activities for children as well as book clubs, told The Jakarta Post a story on how a love of books actually saved the life of a young boy she met.

“This boy was bullied at school. The only refuge he had at that time was coming home and escaping by reading his books,” said Halabi. Inspired by the characters and ideas he read about in these books, the boy eventually learned to cope with his situation.

“This experience made me realize that our relationships with books, which starts at a young age, is very personal,” said Halabi.

Halabi was a featured panelist in the “Capturing a Young Reader’s Interest” discussion at the recent Abu Dhabi International Book Fair 2018, which was held from April 25-May 1 in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. The discussion on April 26 also featured Lebanese children’s book author Raina Zaghir and children’s books chief editor Sara Sargent of international publisher HarperCollins, as well as Jordanian publisher Monna Henning, who currently lives in Sweden.

Halabi’s anecdote tells us why parents and adults need to help children develop personal relationships with books by instilling a lifelong reading habit from an early age.

Zaghir added that parents should be mindful of the challenges the digital era brought, with its various gadgets and apps chipping away at children’s attention span and decreasing their interest in printed books.

“Children would rather listen to music, watch videos and play streaming online games than reading,” Sargent lamented.

The publishing industry has also been stung by the sharp tail of the digital era, with bookshops closing everywhere from the Arab world to the United States, the United Kingdom and Sweden, said Sargent.

Zaghir, however, was adamant that, considering the negative impacts digital gadgets could have on children, these challenges did not mean that parents should give up their fight in promoting literary habits among their young children; in fact, these challenges created opportunities for adults to do so using exciting methods.

“Actually, the medical world has confirmed as well that it is not good for children to spend too much time in front of their tablets, not just in terms of optical health, but also psycho-social development as well. This argument can be used to promote print books among children, while also encouraging parents to spend quality time with their children through storytelling activities,” said Zaghir.

Halabi pointed out that reading printed books activated the children’s five senses, including the olfactory sense, triggered by the distinctive smell of new books, and the tactile sensation of turning pages. This was entirely different from reading on digital gadgets, which were “so plastic and plain”.

In order to instill a love of reading among children, parents had to be role models themselves, said Zaghir.

“You have to read books in your children’s presence. Take your children to libraries, give them books as presents,” she said.

It takes a village to help children develop their full potential, US politician and former first lady Hillary Clinton once wrote. Therefore, it is not wise to lay the burden of cultivating children’s literacy habits and skills at their parents’ feet; adults – especially the writers and publishers who need to sell their books – should work together to create an ecosystem conducive to achieving that mission.

Storytelling events

Halabi and Zaghir, for example, are collaborating to make this a reality through storytelling events at the Halabi Bookshop. Zaghir is a regular guest reader at the bookshop, engaging children by reading stories aloud from her own books.

“I try to make it funny and keep it simple without dumbing it down. Children need to grow with us adults. I read stories aloud as animatedly as I can while not faking it, just showing my genuine expression. Then I ask children key questions to help them connect the stories with their own, real world and their own, real experiences,” said Zaghir, explaining some strategies that could be useful to parents, teachers and literacy promotion activists everywhere.

She also made school visits for similar storytelling events with children.

“With the challenges posed by digital gadgets and social media, nowadays writers can’t just sit in their ivory towers anymore. They have to get out and engage with their readers,” said Henning, adding that such activities helped to promote authors’ works to a wider audience.

Commercial matters all considered, bookshops and publishers could also promote themselves through a series of community activities that involved adults and children alike in boosting literacy habits.

Halabi incorporates this strategy at her bookshop. While children are busy taking part in storytelling activities, their parents could partake of the store’s book club or music and potluck events.

She said she initiated the activities to promote the bookstore, which her father had established in 1960. In 2015, she began helping her father revamp the dilapidated bookshop to create a store with an intimate and unique atmosphere that made visitors feel at home, turning it into an ideal venue for community activities.

“We conduct monthly book clubs, attended by around 60 people, along with tea parties in partnership with a tea supplier in Beirut. We also conduct potluck theme parties where adults bring food and drinks,” she said.

“People actually like these activities, as the book clubs and parties can serve as ‘group therapy’ for them to share the challenges brought by their day-to-day lives, from where they can escape to this space. People still yearn for communal space,” Halabi added.

She used social media to promote the activities and events, which attracted people in droves as they tagged their friends through her posts. When used appropriately, she pointed out, digital technology could also play a role in boosting people’s interest in reading.

Architecture and interior design also made a difference in attracting buyers to a bookstore. “I retained a dash of nostalgia in renovating my father’s old bookshop. There’s an old-style ladder where you can sit down and read,” Halabi said, noting how she set her store apart from typical retail bookstores available elsewhere in her country.

Many volunteers also came to her bookstore to facilitate the children’s storytelling activities.

Tell me what you think: A volunteer at the Halabi Bookshop in Lebanon asks children questions to engage their minds during a storytelling session. It is important to help children build bridges between stories they read in books and their own lives to stimulate their brains. (Courtesy of the Halabi Bookshop)
Tell me what you think: A volunteer at the Halabi Bookshop in Lebanon asks children questions to engage their minds during a storytelling session. It is important to help children build bridges between stories they read in books and their own lives to stimulate their brains. (Courtesy of the Halabi Bookshop)

Similar trend

A similar trend in literacy promotion is also flourishing in Indonesia among organizations like the volunteer-run Rumah Cerita.

Rumah Cerita organizes events that aim to boost children’s reading habits, including the Jakarta Storytelling Festival and the National Literary Jamboree, the latter in partnership with the ASEAN Literary Festival.

It also applies unconventional methods for drawing out the children’s interest and in creating windows through which children could enter the rich world of literature, such as drawing pictures based on a book.

Admitting that her bookstore’s market segment remained very niche, Halabi said that she was happy to establish collaboration between the seemingly polar opposites of the commercial and cultural worlds in her country, and hoped that others would also establish similar hubs in their cities and countries.

Besides cooperating with bookstores to develop children’s activities, Sargent said her company now used different media platforms in an integrated approach to promoting their printed books.

“We connect to young readers through YouTube videos, for example. From there, they become interested in buying the printed books,” she said.

“We also create movie tie-in promotions in partnership with Marvel and various toy brands. When the Disney film Frozen was wildly popular, we also published books on that, and vice versa. When books are turned into films, this also boosts the books’ popularity. So these are the starting points where we can introduce print books to young readers,” she added.

Zaghir, meanwhile, kept in touch withyoung digital natives by making her books available via smart phone and tablet applications.

To sum up, the digital revolution does not spell pessimism for the future of our literacy tradition, and authors and publishers simply have to reach millennials through the platforms with which they are most familiar. Parents and volunteers, meanwhile, must take an active and continual role in helping children internalize the wonderful world of literature and literacy traditions.

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