Man, these are exciting days full of books in our household. Emily’s approaching 4 years old (three months away) and has an insatiable appetite for reading (and writing), in English and Chinese. She’s constantly sitting on the couch, or lying on the floor, or at the dinner table with a book open in front of her and is now reading aloud, in either language, calling mom or dad over from time to time to ask what a particular word means, then continuing through the book. No one’s pushing her. She’s eager to learn.
Admittedly, it gets burdensome at dinner sometimes, because she insists on reading a book almost every evening as she eats, so we sometimes have to tell her “no, I will not read to you now, I’m eating, you’ll have to wait.” And my wife sometimes would rather watch TV than read English books to her, which contain some lengthy and difficult vocabulary (eg., yesterday she was stumped by the word “pirouette” in a ballerina cat book).
But she has an insatiable appetite for books, so we keep feeding her what she craves. I read her a bedtime story almost every night (have done that practically since she was born), she owns well over 100 books, and we regularly acquire more, which is always a thrill for her. This weekend we visited the great public library beside Ta-an Park, returned 10 books and picked up 10 new ones.
While sitting on the library floor yesterday, rummaging the shelves for selections to bring home, I was shocked to learn how quickly she is learning. She was pulling various books off the shelves and handing them to me, many of which weren’t quite right, so I handed her one new book I had picked, which she had never seen before and she started to read:
Here is the blue sheep.
And here is the red sheep.
Here is the bath sheep.
And here is the bed sheep.
But where is the green sheep?
Etc.
I was astonished. I had thought I would teach her to read that book when we got home, but she could already read it. Wow, what a thrill.
Anyway, the point of this post is not to brag about my girl, but to point out how important it is to thoroughly inundate your child with books from the beginning. I know various people who say their child doesn’t like reading, is too impatient. And often one can see that it’s true. But I don’t for one minute believe that’s due to genetics – that some kids are genetically disinclined to reading wonderful books and in favor of noisy toys and rough-housing. I’m absolutely certain if those parents had surrounded their children with books from birth (or before), and sat down in a quiet place/time and read to them regularly, their kids would be as thrilled with books as mine is. My girl loves to run and jump and make noise and do vigorous activities too, but for her books have always been something very special (as special as chocolate for her, or even more), because she’s learned that from the start.
Of course, it takes some effort from the parents, not only to sit down and read the books to the child, but to pick out nice quality books, with fun illustrations. There are lots of crap books out there and they should be avoided – not just books with stupid text or crude, lousy cartoon illustrations, but even Disney books and the like. Sure, an occasional Mickey Mouse or Snow White won’t hurt (and my daughter, like every child, get’s excited about Disney), but there are so many books that are vastly better, more creative and more beautiful than that crass, mass-produced, McDonalds of children’s illustrators.
So, if you’ve got a new child (or an old one) I hope you’re doing lots of reading together. And, be sure to check out the main Taipei public library, if you live in Taipei. It’s really quite good. 
