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Reading For Pleasure - Parents Page

Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Promote Reading

Why Read For Pleasure

Reading for pleasure means any reading that is primarily for enjoyment. It covers a wide range of genres and publications, and includes both fiction and non-fiction. 

 

For example, gardening or cookery books can be read as instructional texts in order to carry out specific tasks, but can also be read purely for pleasure. 

 

Reading for pleasure should not be restricted to books from the school library but increasingly includes online reading, whether on a website, or via an e-reader such as a Kindle.

  • Fiction: Novels, short stories, jokes, comics, poetry, lyrics, plays and scripts

  • Non-fiction: Reference books, newsletters, letters, emails, biographies, memoirs, newspapers, magazines, websites

 

Why read for pleasure? Reading is a use it or lose it skill. If you don’t practice over time it becomes harder and harder.

January's Reading

 

Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Muinoz Ryan

This month’s book has been recommended by one of our home schoolers in North Carolina, USA. Having read my piece on New Year Revolutions, she is recommending this book because it has Spanish words throughout an easy accessible narrative.

Fifth-grader Naomi's great-grandmother has been a loving guardian for Naomi and Owen, her handicapped brother, since their mother divorced their father and abandoned them in Lemon Tree, Calif., seven years before. When the children's mother, Skyla, makes a sudden reappearance, she wants Naomi to leave Gram and Owen to move to Las Vegas—and Gram fears that Skyla and her new boyfriend have ulterior motives. Spirited Gram takes action: she and Fabiola and her husband, who hail from Oaxaca City, Mexico, and who knew the children's father, take the children and embark on an odyssey of sorts, in search of their father at Oaxaca's annual radish-carving festival. And the heroine's skill with carving connects her to her father long before they finally meet.

February's Reading 

I am David by Anne Holm

This month’s book has been recommended by one of our home schoolers in New Haw, UK. This learner has recommended this book as a very good read. “I have read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and find this book is much more hopeful. The story is written simply but it draws you in and you are willing David to succeed. An incredible story of survival against all odds.”

David escapes from the concentration camp where he has spent his entire life and flees across Europe. He is utterly alone – who can he trust? What will await him? And all the while, how can he be sure that they won’t catch up with him . . .

This is the remarkable story of David’s introduction to the world: sea, mountains and flowers, the colours of Italy, the taste of fruit, people laughing and smiling, all are new to David.  David learns that his polite manner, his haunted eyes and his thin features are strange to other people. He must learn to fend for himself in this strange new world.

March's Reading

 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adam

This month’s book has been recommended by one of our home schoolers in Laleham, UK. He is a SYFI fan, so I thought I would introduce him to some good old fashioned British SYFI.

 

“Douglas Adam didn’t set out to write SYFI but found himself without too many options after he blew up the Earth in the first chapter according to the blurb. He wrote for Doctor Who, he also wrote for Monty Python’s Flying Circus and this book is more in line with Monty Python than the SYFI I like to watch. The book has a very zany sense of humour and my Dad was chuffed I read this because he could talk about it. We finally had a book in common! He loved it but then again he would, he has that sense of humour. I would recommend this book if you like a laugh but I am not sure it really counts as SYFI today.”

Arthur Dent is trying to prevent his house from being bulldozed when his friend Ford Prefect whisks him into outer space. It turns out Ford is an alien who has just saved Arthur from Earth's total annihilation. Ford introduces Arthur to his myriad friends, including many-headed President Zaphod Beeblebrox and sexy refugee Trillian. Arthur makes his way across the stars while seeking the meaning of life, or something close to it.

April's Reading

This month’s book has been recommended by one of our home schoolers in Staines, UK. "I like this book because you feel like you are there in the story by the way the author describes the events in the story. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to connect the book they read."

 

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

 

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert are unmarried siblings who live on their ancestral farm, Green Gables, in the quiet town of Avonlea in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Matthew is sixty, and since he is getting too old to handle the farm work on his own, the Cuthbert’s decide to adopt an orphan boy to help him. This decision shocks the town gossip, Mrs. Rachel Lynde, who does not think Matthew and Marilla are fit to parent a child. However, instead of boy, a skinny red haired girl turns up instead. Feisty and full of spirit, it is not long before Anne finds herself in all kinds of trouble, but soon it’s impossible to imagine life at Green Gables without her.

Happy Kids with Books

May's Reading

This month’s book has been recommended me. This has been on my list to read but I never got around to it, thinking it was going to be a bit too Alex Rider or Percy Jackson. I have read enough of these books this year so didn’t really want to read another in the same vein. How wrong could I have been! I loved this book! The story is believable and told in unfamiliar way through the petrol log book, with loveable characters, nice convincing sub plots and what I liked most about this was I could not guess the ending. For someone who reads as much as I do that is a very big bonus!

 

Framed (the perfect crime – it’s a work of art) by Frank Cottrell Boyce  

 

Dylan is the only boy living in the tiny Welsh town of Manod. His parents run the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel garage - and when he's not trying to persuade his sisters to play football, Dylan is in charge of the petrol log. And that means he gets to keep track of everyone coming in and out of Manod - what car they drive, what they're called, even their favourite flavour of crisps. But when a mysterious convoy of lorries trundles up the misty mountainside towards an old, disused mine, even Dylan is confounded. Who are these people - and what have they got to hide?

June's Reading

This month’s book has been recommended by one of Row Town readers. “I didn’t think I would like this book because it is about teenagers who fall in love but with the background story of troubled Northern Ireland and how people just assumed that because you were this or that you would be like the stereo-type they have in their head is interesting. My Nan is from Northern Ireland and she said that this book captured the hatred and mistrust of the times. I would recommend this book to readers who like books based on real life.”

 

Across the Barricades by Joan Lingard  

 

In the middle of the times of conflicts in Belfast, Sadie Jackson, a 16 years old Protestant girl, meets an old friend of her after nearly three years. Kevin McCoy. The 18 years old boy, who lives on the other side of the city, is a Catholic. But this does not seem to bother the two good friends at all. While Kevin and Sadie are getting more and more closer to each other, suspicion and rumours begin to grow. Tommy, Sadie’s brother knows what she is up to and tries the best he can to void it, and so does Brede, Kevin’s sister. But not successfully. Obviously, no one around them seem to be very fond of this, seeing them together. Especially not their families and their friends.

July's Reading

This month’s book has been recommended by one of our Byfleet (UK) learners.   “I would have like more jousting and less of the family squabbling and village politics. But I like the historical details and the humorous remarks. I would recommend this book to a stronger reader. Although this has short chapter there are 100 of them and the story bounces about a bit between the boy Arthur and the King Arthur. So, you need to read carefully and remember which part of which life you are reading about.”

 

The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley Holland

 

This author has reworked the legend of the Round Table through the diary of a 13-year-old boy named Arthur, living in an English manor in the 12th century. One day, his friend Merlin gives Arthur a magical stone that shows him visions of the once and future king, whose story parallels narrator Arthur's so closely that at first the stone seems to depict the hero's destiny. The boy recording the events is not King Arthur, but rather someone infused with the king's spirit, living a largely parallel life. 

August's Reading

This month’s book has been recommended by one of our West Byfleet (UK) readers.   “I was put off this book by the title. I didn’t know what to expect. But it was ok, it was about a boy like my brother. I think it caught the feelings of the family who has somebody who is disabled and how to find the best life for them. I would recommend this book because of the animals and the hopeful story line.”

 

The Crowstarver by Dick Kings-Smith

 

John Joseph Sparrow is a sweet-natured child. He smiles often and his disposition is always sunny. Animals, even shy, wild animals are drawn to this gentle boy. He is known as Spider, because of the strange way he walks, is different in many ways. He speaks poorly, walks with a peculiar gait and it is obvious, even to his loving parents, Kathie and Tom, that he is not "normal". It's a relief really, when the local school refuses to take him. In the farming community in which Spider lives, his difference provokes some unkind reactions.

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