When we start coming up on summer break I’m already thinking of all the reading we’ll get to do as a family. Free days to grab a book morning or afternoon, and finally dig into some of the longer chapter books and series that we’ve been looking forward to finishing. And then suddenly I’m here, end of week four and I’m not entirely sure where these days brimming with family reading went.

I decided to reach out to Darrie-Ann Richard, Children’s Story Time and Junior Book Club Coordinator at the River Bookshop in Amherstburg, Ontario. River Bookshop is one of my favourite places to be and Darrie-Ann is one of my favourite people. I spoke with Darrie-Ann for Episode 2 of the Little Tot Landing podcast, all about cultivating a love for books with your kids during the summer months, a habit that will continue all year long.

Darrie-Ann has a history of working in education and for the last 11 years has run a reading program in one of our local schools. She started working at River Bookshop tw years ago and holds really fun and engaging story times and her Junior Book Club is flourishing. “It’s kid led,” says Darrie-Ann about the book club. “I love hearing the kids’ perspectives. We’ve had books where all the kids were like, oh, I loved that and then last month we had someone say, you know what, I wish there was a little more depth to it … like this one didn’t have the same character development or I didn’t appreciate the characters as much as I did in the last one, I couldn’t connect with them. So it’s so lovely to see different personalities come out,” says Darrie-Ann. Kids can expect a range of genres, authors, representation of different nationalities and different life situations and scenarios in the books chosen for the Junior Book Club. I’m looking forward to getting my boys involved in it.

Darrie-Ann’s two children are avid readers and she chalks this up to her and her husband also being book enthusiasts. “100% it helps that I’m a reader,” says Darrie-Ann. “Kids mimic what their parents do, they mimic what adults are doing, what they’re seeing on television. And I think that it really helps that I’m not spending all day on an electronic, I’m taking the time to read as well,” Darrie-Ann adds.

I wholeheartedly agree and am hopeful that as I wander around the house with my nose deep in a book, my boys are taking note. They often ask for me to read to them and I will drop anything to do so. But we’ve come away from my early days in parenting though when I read constantly to my boys, especially when they were younger. I feel like my two youngest haven’t received the same experience that my two eldest did and I’m looking for ways to start incorporating more family reading time. I really appreciated Darrie-Ann’s tips for working reading into our daily routine in different ways, including with audiobooks. While we have a handful of audiobooks in my Audible and Libro.fm accounts, with an intention to play them at bedtime, we haven’t dug into them the way I thought we would. Darrie-Ann inspired me though to get back into playing audiobooks while driving around, or even doing what Darrie-Ann did when her kids were younger, reading aloud to the family while her husband drove. “If we were on a road trip, the radio was off and I would be reading from the book and the whole family was listening. My husband still remembers a book that we read on a trip to Tennessee when the kids were little – he laughed so hard during it. So he still remembers that,” says Darrie-Ann.

Just this week I finally downloaded the most recent Harry Potter that we have been working our way though and started pressing play every time we got into the car. The kids were hooked. I was hooked. It’s amazing how it just takes pausing for a minute to choose a book, download it to your phone and then you’re ready for family story time whenver and wherever. Because I’ve thought about audiobooks for road trips and daily car trips, but I would just keep forgetting to set aside the small amount of time it took to actually make it happen. Now we’re making progress on a book that we were hoping we would be done reading months ago. And I can just imagine the memories made when on family trips and everyone is engaged in the same story. Another shared experience.

Darrie-Ann says it’s also important to not give up when your child says that they don’t like reading. “It’s because they haven’t found the right stories yet. It’s because they haven’t found the right character that they can connect with. So don’t give up,” says Darrie-Ann. Similar to her themed road-trip readings, Darrie-Ann suggests connecting your child’s book choices to what they are into. “There are books about street hockey, or there are books about soccer, or there are books about going camping. And it doesn’t have to be fiction. It can be a nonfiction fact book,” says Darrie-Ann. Her son was really into space books, as was my eldest when he first started reading. We have shelves dedicated to National Geographic books and DK Find Outs.

Darrie-Ann also encourages everyone to not only think of audiobooks for car rides but for your children’s own reading consumption. “If you have that kid that is that technological kid, don’t feel that an audio book isn’t reading, because it is. If they’re already listening to something, why not incorporate an audio book into it and they’re still getting a story, they’re getting somebody else’s perspective, they’re being entertained still at the same time, and later when someone mentions, oh, I know that book because I listened to it.

In fact, studies show that the brain receives the same benefits from an audiobook as it does reading a book. I find I can get through so many more books myself if I go audio rather than reading. Different times of day call for one or the other and I love having the option.

I asked Darrie-Ann about extensions that she might recommend after reading. “I think sometimes it depends on the book that you’re reading. Like if you can engage them in something else, how wonderful is that? There was a summer where we did do that and the kids, we created almost like a reading challenge but different, we created a tree out of paper on our wall and every time the kids read a book, they would have a leaf and they would write what they liked about the book on the leaf and then we’d stick it to the tree and at the end of the summer they got to see how many books [they’d read.]” Darrie-Ann also offered other ideas like cooking something inspired by the book you’re reading or creating an art project inspired by something in the book. “When we do Harry Potter, you can make Hagrid’s rock cakes. You can create wands out of sticks,” says Darrie-Ann. These extensions allow you to fill up your day not only with reading, but with so many different creative pursuits. And, of course there is always the movie, if a book has one. “You can actually turn it into a fun family movie nights afterwards. And then it’s pointing out, well, that never happened in the book, or they missed this part,” Darrie-Ann offers. Family movie nights post reading Harry Potter books is one of my favourite things to do.

Summer reading can be a bit tricky to get back into when summer break first hits, but the benefits of it are endless. “Keeping up that reading in the summer keeps their minds engaged and ready to tackle that next year without it even being like, oh I have to go back to school. It’s like adding to what they’ve learned,” says Darrie-Ann. “And I also think keeping up reading through the summer is [important] when they’re not surrounded by kids all the time and learning from them. When they’re reading the perspective of the story or the life of somebody else, it’s keeping them engaged in that social context. So it’s, oh I read about somebody like that, and I can now find more similarities with a new friend that’s just moved to the classroom, or is new to the country, or has a developmental delay … or finding themselves in a story, and they’ve never seen themselves in a story. Nobody in class understands me, but this character is just like me. There are ways for them to not miss their friends so much because they’re meeting new friends in a story every day.”

I also appreciate the idea of getting kids to take a book with them whenever they leave the house. I often have one in my backpack or in the car. I never want to be left without something to read if I have a few minutes here and there. As Darrie-Ann mentioned in our talk, it’s great for situations during the summer when kids are waiting. Between sports and travel and all of the things happening, there is a lot of waiting. “The places that kids can read during the summer is laying by the pool, in the car on a road trip, waiting for your next soccer game or baseball game to start, or while you’re waiting for a sibling,” says Darrie-Ann. “There’s so many different things. Like you’re hanging out with a babysitter for the summer. You’re just looking for something to do,” Darrie-Ann adds.

This summer, Darrie-Ann has launched a Kids Summer Reading Challenge at the River Bookshop. The challenge is eight books before August 31st and they will then be entered into a draw for a $50 gift card, which is a good handful of books from the children’s section at River Bookshop. “I was thinking there’s just over eight weeks of summer, and I wonder if we could challenge every child in Amherstburg or Windsor-Essex County to read eight books for the summer,” says Darrie-Ann. And books don’t need to be purchased at River Bookshop. If you do purchase a book there, you will get an extra entry into the draw but the main goal is to just inspire kids to read. “We want to see that kids are reading this summer and enjoying their summer in multiple ways, not just lying by the pool,” says Darrie-Ann. Or, how about lying by the pool, but with a book in hand? 😊

If you’re interested in the Kids Summer Reading Challenge, visit River Bookshop for a copy or download one from their Facebook page here. And to sign up for information about the Junior Book Club or Sunday Story Times, send an email to info@riverbookshop.com.

Please comment below with your favourite ways to keep up summer reading engagement and book recommendations are always appreciated!

Happy reading!