WORLD OF LEARNING: THIS SUMMER, NO BOOKS YOU HAVE TO READ, YOU JUST HAVE TO READ BOOKS

It’s summer. No more school. But most parents realize that it is not helpful for kids to take a vacation from learning.

Summer vacation, after all, did not come about because children deserved down time after the rigors of the school year. In an agricultural society, children were needed to work during the most productive time of the year.

In the information age, allowing kids to turn off their brains for three months is downright dangerous. As Richard Nisbett points out in Intelligence and How to Get It, summer vacation is a “natural experiment” that researchers have used to determine if access to education correlates with measured intelligence.

The evidence is clear, Nisbett says: “Kids are deprived of school over the summer, and this results in a drop or greatly reduced growth in IQ and academic skills.”

Citing studies that start in 1906, the Nation Summer Learning Association notes, “Research spanning 100 years shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer.”

But I’m not here to sell summer learning per se. What I want to do is to promote summer as a learning opportunity. This could be the time when reluctant readers can find some joy in reading. This is the one time of the year where kids can choose what they want to read.

Or is it? For many children, the pleasures of summer are diminished by a nagging vestigial reminder of school. It’s not enough that they had to read books they didn’t like during the school year. Now, lurking in the shadows of these lazy sunny days, looms the dreaded summer reading list.

To which I offer a subversive suggestion. School is out. Children don’t have to read the books on any list.

What would be more important, and more beneficial, would be to insist that kids read books every day of summer vacation. But those books would be ones they would get to choose.

That doesn’t mean you can’t look at that summer reading list. Teachers do try to select books that appeal to their students. But think of the list as a starting point. The goal is to read, and for your child to find out what he wants to read.

Look at other lists. Look at bestseller lists. Look at blogs. Go to libraries and ask the librarians in the children’s room for advice. Go to bookstores and look at the displays in the children's section and ask the staff for advice. Ask other kids and their parents for advice. Ask me for advice. Don’t give up.

Be willing to accept that what your child wants to read may not be what you would choose, nor exactly what you want him to choose. Your discomfort with Captain Underpants, or God forbid, Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger, in fact, could be a selling point for those works.

Someone who reads Shakespeare for pleasure, after all, is going to be someone who actually enjoys reading. “Those who try to crowd into the school years everything that ‘ought’ to be read,” Louise Rosenblatt writes in Literature as Exploration, “evidently assume that the youth will never read again after the school years are over.”

Why do we teach children how to read? Isn’t it so they will become lifelong readers? Don’t we want everyone—children and adults—to read? Don’t we want to keep growing and learning by reading books even after school is finished?

Use this summer as the chance to instill a love of reading. Insist on reading, but let the kids decide on the books. I agree with Nancie Atwell’s argument in The Reading Zone: “The only surefire way to induce a love of books is to invite students to select their own.”

Once you’ve made that your central principle comes the hard part—getting kids to read every day. That's not be easy in the midst of summer camps and play dates, but we all know the only way to make something a habit is to do it habitually. Carve out time for reading.

That means reading by everyone in the family. Seeing that adults value and enjoy books is far more persuasive than hearing adults tell you that you should value and enjoy books.

Rick Riordan, author of any number of books that kids choose on their own, says, “A lot of families, my family included, have a reading time. We all spend an hour a day reading. That's the family expectation. We make it a priority.”

Once we give kids the time to read, and we find books that fit kids instead of trying to make kids fit books, we’ll get kids who want to read. The more kids read, the greater their vocabularies and expertise. The more kids read, the better their abilities to express themselves, to make informed decisions, to understand the viewpoints of others, to analyze data from a variety of sources, to deal with problems.

Not to mention that they are likely to do better in school. According to Atwell, “the single activity that correlates with high levels of performance on standardized tests of reading ability…is frequent, voluminous reading.”

Rather than demand that kids slog through a couple of books they don't want to read over this summer, make the goal "frequent, voluminous reading" of books they choose.