World Book Day 2024

Last year for World Book Day we talked about our favourite book characters in this post, so this year we turned to the CVP mums to see what the next generation are reading!

Rose

I dread the day when my son (currently eight… and A HALF – he will make this clear to anyone who asks) says he doesn’t want me to read to him at night. Reading for him clicked about a year ago – before then, he was very reluctant and said all books were BORING. Naturally I questioned if he was, indeed, my son, as reading is my passion and my whole academic and professional career has revolved around this love. However, having undertaken a research project on reluctant boy readers as part of my PGCE in Secondary English, I knew not to push him. Lots of parents I’ve talked to have said they are concerned that their children will only read Lego comics, Minecraft manuals and Pokemon cartoons but I’ve always felt that if they are reading anything at all, the battle has been won! No, my son wasn’t independently reading The Lord of the Rings at age six but he is now confidently (and happily!) reading on his own. He loves Tintin, anything by Tom Fletcher and is obsessed with The Guinness Book of World Records   We have just started The Hobbit – to his dad’s absolute delight – he’s been waiting to read this to him since he was born!

My daughter is four and is all about reading bedtime stories to her teddies. She sits in bed with a pile of her books and retells them to her rapt audience. Many of her favourites she knows verbatim through me reading them to her, but the others she interprets via the illustrations and sometimes I think she creates better narratives than the original stories themselves! She’s mastered her alphabet and is blending and recognising three letter words now and it’s lovely to see how proud and excited she gets when she helps me read her stories – it’s magical to think of the world that is opening up to her. She also loves it when my son reads to her; their favourite bedtime book is The Eyebrows of Doom by Steve Smallwood and my son’s impressions of the dastardly eyebrows are absolutely hilarious – but certainly not conducive to a calm and quiet bedtime!

Anna

Sadly my 12 year-old is too old for having books read to her (or so she thinks!) But I’m currently enjoying reading The Explorer by Katherine Rundell to my younger daughter – all of her books are favourites in our house. We’ve also recently enjoyed the Grimwood series by Nadia Shireen. I love reading aloud, so I’m now a very enthusiastic volunteer to read to other people’s children.

Elinor

I am currently reading The Wild Robot Protects, the third book in the Wild Robot series, with my son. It tells the story of how Roz the wild robot leaves her island home to try and save her friends and family from the poison tide that is creeping across the ocean, damaging everything in its wake with its toxic particles.

I tend to read short stories with my daughter rather than chapter books and we have been enjoying stories from Tales of Adventurous Girls which she got for Christmas.