Sunday, 23 March 2014

Author Study

I hope you read to your children on a daily basis, and I hope the parents of older children (6 to 8years olds) also read ‘with’ them on a regular basis even though the children can read by themselves at this age.

Try reading a few books by the same author for a few days at a stretch. In this way children not only get familiar with the names of the authors but also start paying attention to the author’s writing style. After you have read a few books of a chosen author, read to them a little about the author. They will be amazed to know that authors are real life people with their own interests and unique writing style. Also ask them to draw similarities and differences between books of the same author and different authors’ different writing styles.

Some celebrated authors that you can start with are Eric Carle, Kevin Henkes, Leo Lionni, Julia Donaldson, Roger Hargreaves and Robert Munsch. Many of them have their own website and many of their books are available as audio books online. Just type in the name of the book and the author in any search engine and you will come across many of them. Some websites even let you communicate with the authors. Recently my class wrote to Robert Munsch and much to their amazement he replied! Our children were ecstatic and they love to read his books even more now as they have a real life connect, a real experience to associate him with!

Just a little background of the author can multiply children’s interest in literature ten-fold!

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