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stacie
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| Posted: March 19 2015 at 10:46pm | IP Logged
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My 7 year old son is an awesome reader...except he only WANTS to read one thing...the Beast Quest books by Adam Blade (and there are eighty something in the series!). He reads anything I set in front of him for other subjects but once he's done the assigned reading, he goes straight back to his beast quest books. We read aloud a lot but I can't get him excited about anything I'm reading! I've tried other "fantasy" books, but nothing gets him excited like those books. If he doesn't have a beast quest available, then I noticed that in his free time, he doesn't want to read. While I'm excited to see him reading often (when a beast quest is around!), I'd really like to see him reading other, more quality (less twaddle-y!) type books. I tried to explain the concept of "twaddle" to him, but no matter what I said, he reasoned that his beast quest books met those criteria. Maybe that conversation was just a little over his head?! Either way, I'd really like a way to encourage him to expand his literature selections! Any suggestions?
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: March 20 2015 at 12:43am | IP Logged
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I might just be inclined to let him read himself to a standstill with them. I know I can get "caught up" with a particular type of story and love to read a whole series of books that I love like that. And I also know from experience that with the less quality reading that after a certain number of books in the series, no matter how wonderful I thought the first books were.. it gets old and boring and I drift away from it.
This may be less about the quality of the literature and more about things that are good character traits like goals and stick-to-itiveness.
And it may be about less great character traits like being more determined to proceed the more opposition that is manifested.
I would use something other than other books to help with the initial distancing from those stories.. maybe play board games that take up free reading time 
It helps with the additive nature of the cycle (yes I consider books addictive ). By having less time to read and more time away from the books you start gaining perspective.
One of the things I find for myself is that it's hard to get into a type of story that isn't where my head is currently. So if you tried to tempt me to read a wonderful book but I was in the middle of Harry Potter.. even now, I might still finish the series before looking at the wonderful book. And I might not want to read that genre anyway. Even within a genre there's a huge difference in types of stories.. if you want more like the Hobbit, looking at distopian stories (like Fahrenheit 451) probably won't be appealing. So when you're in the midst of exciting beast stories.. books about something else may not break the cycle.
OK I don't sound that helpful.  I would use a two prong attack.. by adding in more fun things that take time from reading for the time being and letting him read himself to a standstill. If the books are that bad, then drop them altogether and deal with the fallout.
After that, start providing the quality of books you want him to have. Make it easy, buy him books for Easter, or his birthday or because it's a new month  but get him those books in his hands so that they're always there just waiting. Voracious readers won't ignore books forever. If you can tell that he likes to go and go and go on the same stories.. find good series to put in his hands so that he can have that same experience of keeping going with good books.
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SeaStar
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| Posted: March 20 2015 at 6:50am | IP Logged
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I know-
My daughter went through a Rainbow Magic Fairies phase around the same age. It was maddening, but hey- she was reading!
I felt better after listening to one of the Read Aloud Revival talks over at Amongst Lovely Things. In one of the episodes... maybe it was 5 or 6 or 7?-
one of the speakers said she just lets her kids own kids read phases like that out, as Jodie suggested.
She does not read twaddle out loud to her kids, and she reads to them a ton, so she figures they are at least hearing good books and the twaddly ones always pass away. 
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KellyB
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| Posted: March 20 2015 at 7:19am | IP Logged
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What if you continue to allow him to read the series, but require a rotation of books? For example, he chooses one, then you choose a historical fiction, then a saint bio, then another of his choice, a nature read, classic, his choice, etc. He might end up liking some of the other genres as well.
If you do this, I would be sure to put your best effort forth in choosing excellent books to supplement his reading.
All the best!
Kelly
Edited to add: I think this can be compared to the food our children eat. Dessert/junk food (i.e. the books your son wants to read) is fine once in a while, but for them to thrive and grow they need to eat a variety of food, not just what they want. The same is true about books, I believe. They need a variety to expand their horizons and grow!
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stacie
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| Posted: March 20 2015 at 3:48pm | IP Logged
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Thank you for the replies and encouragement!
I completely agree with you, Jodie, and I hadn't really thought about what it's like for me when I'm in the groove of reading something. In fact, my husband had been on me for awhile to read The Hunger Games...and I just hadn't been in "the mood"...when I finally was ready, I read it and loved it, but I'm sure if I had been "forced" to read it in my free time before I was ready, I would've been a little resentful.
I've been hoping my son would get bored with the beast quest books, but he's now on sixty-something and still going strong and now he's talking about how when he finishes these, he's going to go on to the author's next series (sea quest!)...  let's hope I can inspire him with some other series before then! If not, I think I'll just ride it out.
In the meantime, I really like the idea of either rotating some books for him or just making sure that my read-alouds are really good books!
Thanks so much!
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jawgee
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| Posted: March 20 2015 at 4:12pm | IP Logged
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LOL. Some situation with my 9YO.
He loves the Goosebumps series. I loathe them. I still have him read aloud with me for school every day - we rotate books between something he chooses and something I choose - but I told him the Goosebumps books are for independent reading only.
For his daily school reading with me, we are currently rotating between a non-fiction chapter book about Diamonds (his choice) and a Boxcar Children book (my choice). We usually do Rock-Paper-Scissors to see which book we read each day.
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Helping a reader choose "good" books
