Use books and the library

We know that reading lots of books helps to make children better readers.

Picture books are an imaginative introduction to the world of literature for children,

which plays a critical part in their development.

When you were growing up were you lucky enough to have a library at your school or near where you lived? Did you ever visit it and use it?

All children deserve the opportunity to learn to use reading and writing meaningfully in their lives – to become literate!

1. Help your children be better readers. Research published by the National Literacy Trust shows that young people (aged 8 to 16) who use the library are nearly twice as likely to be abov

Do you feel like your children or the children at your reading club don’t take proper care of the books around them? Books are expensive so it is understandable that we want them to last.

Are you a librarian who wants to share the power of stories and reading with children? Are you looking for ways to get children to visit the library regularly? Here are some ideas that librarians shared with us that will help you do this.

* Library Week: Use South African Library Week (in March each year) to encourage children and reading clubs to sign-up as members of the library. Run special events at your library that will attract new members and show everyone what libraries have to offer.

Can you imagine seeing people around you reading every day? Adults reading magazines and books on the train or in the taxi on their way to work; children enjoying books from the school library together as they wait for their lifts at the school gate; teenagers glued to the next chapter of a story on their cellphones as they walk down the road, and older people sitting on their front stoep reading the newspaper. And then, of course, reading at home too – family members reading in the morning and at night, together and on their own!

Helping young children to develop the ab

You can’t discover the joy of reading without having good books to read! And, the more books that children have around them, the more likely they are to pick one to try.