Although Read Tuesday hopes to promote literacy and encourage reading through a huge one-day sales event like Black Friday, improving literacy and reading is a great cause any time of the year.
Everyone who appreciates the benefits of reading can help with this in a variety of ways:
- Read books to children.
- Get children to read anything (age-appropriate, of course)—even signs, menus, or electronic messages. Ask them questions about it as this will aid in comprehension.
- Share your passion for reading with others. Let them see how much you enjoy it.
- Ask people what they have read lately. Share what you’ve read.
- Recommend good books to read (relevant to the person’s interests).
- Gift books for birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries. With e-books, it’s easy, instant, can be scheduled, doesn’t require a trip to the store or waiting in lines, doesn’t involve delivery charges, and (with big retailers) returns and exchanges are easy. Many e-books can be read on an iPhone, tablet, laptop, or PC.
- Attend a reading and bring your friends. If you’re an author, give a reading and let your passion for reading show.
- Hold a reading program for children at a school, day care, church, or a gathering with parents and children. (You may need to clear a background check to do this at a school.) A reading can also be videotaped and shown online (provided that you have permission to use any materials).
- Join a reading or writing club. Encourage others to join, too. If you can’t find one you like, start one featuring your favorite genre.
- Donate books to a school or library—especially, books that are very likely to be used.
- Hold a reading contest to encourage children to read. For example, there may be prizes awarded based on how many books a child reads in one school year.
- Read books in public—on airplanes, subways, buses, at a park, anywhere. Someone may think, “Wow, that’s a good idea,” or may ask, “Do you mind if I ask what you’re reading?”
If you can think of other ideas, please share them in the comments section. 🙂
Chris McMullen, Coordinator of Read Tuesday
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Might be situational, but having a child read a book before they see the movie version is what my parents did. I wasn’t allowed to see a movie based on a book unless I read it first.
That could be a big motivator, especially with boys. Kids’ movie books often come in different versions for different age groups, too. (At a somewhat older age, doing this with Ender’s Game, for example, would be a good way to get a boy to read an entire book.)
Girls too these days. Hunger Games, Twilight, and several of the paranormal romances that are becoming movies.