Sonderbooks Book Review of Raising a Reader

Reviewed August 3, 2004.
St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2003. 127 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (028.55 NAS).
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2004, #7, Personal Stories and Reflections

Here’s a series of essays about the joys of a mother passing on her passion for reading to her daughters. Each chapter ends with some suggestions for helping your own kids love books, including great suggestions of books to try with them.

I didn’t read this because I needed suggestions. I can say confidently that my two sons (ages 16 and 10) are hooked for life on reading. However, reliving the experiences and learning that someone else had similar ones was delightfully fun.

The book isn’t only stories and suggestions, it also includes musings about many things like our aspirations for our children and the insidious inclination to compare. She speculates about the line between passion and obsession, and the way each child is completely different from the one before.

Jennie Nash summarizes her goals well in the last paragraph of her introduction:

“Like so many of the things we do as parents, raising readers happens in bursts of delight and desperation, in the push and pull of digging in and letting go, day in and day out, both because of and in spite of our efforts. What I’ve set about doing in this book is to examine all the elements—positive, negative, planned, and accidental—that went into building the literary life of the two little people I know best. My hope is to share how it works and to show why it’s worth it.”

She succeeds beautifully in accomplishing this goal.

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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

*****Raising a Reader*

A Mother's Tale of Desperation and Delight

by Jennie Nash