literacy
Creating a Memorable Main Character in Your Children’s Book
As a children’s author, I’m often pleased to find that I’ve inspired children and adults to write children’s stories of their own. A question they wonder is what exactly makes a good children’s book. It’s important that a children’s book have a charming protagonist with whom readers can identify. It seems that children tend to literally identify with characters they love; in their imagination and games, they often pretend they are indeed the beloved protagonists of their favorite movies, TV shows, and books.
So what qualities should a children’s story protagonist have? If you study the most popular children’s stories of the last few hundred years, many characters have a superhuman trait or superhuman power, but at the same time they have a human frailty about them which most people have in common—such as a fear or anxiety about something or something in their life that is causing them stress. In Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack is a regular, poor boy with magical beans, and Harry Potter of course finds that he is a wizard. Jack’s magical beans and Harry’s magical genetic endowment delight children, while Jack’s hard circumstances and the fact that Harry is an unloved orphan earn the sympathy of children everywhere.
In Danny the Dragon, I sought to have these same qualities, and I have met many children who truly love and identify with Danny. Of course, some wonderful children’s books lack a traditional protagonist, such as Goodnight Moon or some very delightful counting and alphabet books. This is why nailing down what makes for good children’s books can be a challenge!
School Library Journal is Raving about Danny the Dragon!
The renowned and distinguished School Library Journal LOVES Danny the Dragon just as much as the kids do.
A terrific review of the Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy DVD was published in the June 2010 issue. I’m very pleased to share it with you below.
Tina Turbin
Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy. DVD. 21 min. Imagination Publishing Group.2009, 2010 release.
PreS-Gr 3–When Jimmy and Sally visit the beach, they find a beautiful shell and take it home with them. They soon discover that it houses a dragon named Danny, wearing red tennis shoes and carrying a yellow backpack, and his navigator friend, Skipper. Danny and Skipper have dinner with Jimmy’s family and stay the night. The picture book by Tina Turbin (Imagination Pub. Group, 2008) closes with a promise that the friendly dragon will guide the children through a series of upcoming adventures. The DVD opens with a message from the author. Interpreter Carol Downing signs the entire story, standing on the right side of the screen as the pages turn. The fun cartoon illustrations by Aija Jasuna are scanned. Sound effects add to the narration, underscoring word meaning and helping children with some hearing identify sounds. Recommended especially for schools and libraries seeking to offer a greater variety of material to hearing-impaired children.
–Mary Landrum, Lexington Public Library, KY
Children Need Good Literature
The fact that kids need good literature is not a new one. Just look at the number of awards available in the United States alone to reward authors for superb children’s literature. The long list of such awards includes the Newbery Medal, Caldecott Medal, Coretta Scott King Award, and Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal. With such an extraordinary effort made to celebrate good children’s literature, there must be something important about it.
I know how short the attention span of a child can be yet how thrilling it is to watch a child’s imagination partake in an exciting adventure story. However, why should a child read good literature rather than watch an “educational” television show or an entertaining children’s movie? The answer lies in the benefits of reading to your child.
Research continues to support that reading benefits children of all ages in a number of ways. Reading helps to build your child’s vocabulary, develop his imagination, and improve his ability to communicate. In fact, there is a direct relationship between how many words an infant hears in a day and his language skills, and even his intelligence quotient. Reading is crucial in exposing your baby or young child to a variety of words. The images and colors in children picture books and illustrated books are also stimulating of the imagination. This is part of the reason why I spent a whole year interviewing illustrators after writing the first book in my series, Danny the Dragon—I knew from reading to my own children just how much children appreciate art in children’s literature.
So the next time you’re shopping for the kids at Wal-Mart, think twice before you get them another DVD, remember the pleasure you get from curling up with a good book, and pick out some high-quality children’s literature instead.
Helpful Tips to Encourage Learning in Your Children
First of all, read to your children! Studies show that reading to your child can begin before the age of six months, as soon as they’re able to enjoy the images and pictures inside of their books. Children have varying attention spans and you should keep in mind not to push too far past these limits and not to force them to read, as children tend to dislike things they are forced to do when it’s not on their own determinism. You can read to your child or have them read you, or take turns.
Play board games to stimulate an interest in learning. Not only are they tons of fun, but they help your child develop his reading skills and practice following rules.
A family day at the museum, library, or other stimulating place will encourage your child to be interested in his environment and take a hands-on approach to learning. Ask your child questions about the artwork he sees at museums, such as “Why do you think the painter chose this color?”
Volunteer at your child’s school whenever possible. You can go along on field trips, help decorate for class parties, or read to the class. This will show that you care about your child’s schooling enough to go to his school yourself.
Finally, make sit-down dinners a regular part of your family’s evening, turning off the TV and cell phones so you can sit and talk without distractions. Take advantage of this time to show a genuine interest in your child’s schooling and in academic subjects in general. Ask him lots of questions, tell him funny anecdotes about when you were in school, or tell him what you thought of the book he’s reading in his literature class when you read it in high school yourself. This gets across the important message that learning is important, one of the most valuable lessons you’ll teach your child and which will help ensure his success in all his future endeavors.
Getting Involved in Your Child’s Education
First, make sure your child is well-rested and well-fed. A well-balanced diet, with nutritious meals at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and healthy snacks after school, has been shown to improve academic performance in children. Kids also need to be well-rested in order to focus during the day.
Next, take advantage of every opportunity to meet your child’s teachers, such as parent-teacher or open-school nights. Not only will you make sure you’re not missing vital information, such as what the teacher expects of your child’s homework assignments, but you’ll show your child and his teachers that you care about his education.
Familiarize yourself with your child’s daily routine by making a copy of his schedule. If you know gym class is on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, you can make sure your child brings his gym clothes on these days.
Check your child’s backpack and planner to make sure you see teacher’s notes, important dates, permission slips, and graded assignments and tests. You prevent your child’s embarrassment in school by making sure your child is prepared for the special events and activities you’ll find out about through your backpack inspections and can provide your child with help for anything you find he may need help with.
Stay connected with other parents. Sometimes your child’s perception of what’s occurring in the classroom may not be accurate, or perhaps your child hasn’t been mentioning some essential information. By forming connections with other parents, you can ensure that you’re not missing out on vital data.
Is Your Child Struggling with His Homework? Tips on How to Help
If your child is clearly upset or unable to figure things out, or if his teacher isn’t giving him the help he needs during the school day, you should step in and work out the child’s misunderstandings. The idea is to keep your child winning. Academic confusions can build up over time so that kids may eventually take a loss on studies. You will help to create independent learners by making sure they understand the basics of arithmetic, reading, grammar, etc. so that as they progress in school, they’ll be able to grasp new lessons and apply what they learn effectively.
Another way to foster independence is to read over his work and make a challenge for him to find the words you see are misspelled or other mistakes. This will get him interested in and used to checking over his own work for errors. It is also essential to get your child in the habit of using reference materials on his own. Get him a good, age-appropriate dictionary and encyclopedia set (or online encyclopedia subscription) so he can look up what he doesn’t understand. The dictionary is too difficult if your child frequently doesn’t understand the words in the definitions of words he’s looking up.
If your child is averse to doing homework, it’s probably not because he’s inherited his father’s stubbornness but more likely that he is having difficulties that need to be straightened out as soon as possible before his confusions multiply.
“It might seem like an attitude problem, but his reluctance may be a sign that he’s having difficulty with the material,” says Jed Baker, PhD, author of No More Meltdowns. You should talk to your child’s teacher to see how he’s doing in class; if he’s struggling, he needs help. Go back through the beginning of his material and move forward clearing up any misunderstandings about terms and symbols. Also, make sure he didn’t skip a vital step in his learning. For example, some kids have a very hard time doing long division because they didn’t fully understand multiplication or because they were absent when the class was learning about estimating. Go back to basic concepts and make sure he understands these.
With these tips you’ll soon find that your child is not only able to get through his homework better, but he’ll even perform better in school, and you and your family can focus on a variety of other fun activities to do together after school.
Homeschooling Your Child—Some Reasons to Consider It
It used to be that homeschooling had a certain stigma to it. When people heard the word, they pictured a child isolated at home from children his age and indoctrinated into his parents’ extremist views. However, homeschooling has steadily grown in popularity over the years, and it’s widely acknowledged now that homeschooling provides many benefits.
First, it helps to foster a closer, more loving relationship between you and your child. Related to this is the homeschooling benefit of having the opportunity to teach your child the values that are important to you and your family. When you homeschool your child, you can teach him the moral and ethical principles that you cherish as part of his curriculum.
Academically, homeschooling has countless benefits. Here is the opportunity to give your child an individualized education geared toward his interests, purposes, and speed of learning. Sometimes children perform poorly in school because they are forced to move at a pace which is too fast for them and before they know it, they find themselves too far behind to catch up. Sometimes subject matter in school doesn’t interest them individually.
Homeschooling allows the parent to have control over the sort of values and ideals that the child will learn. Let’s face it. Some schools and teachers may be teaching values to our children that we may fundamentally disagree with. You can design a curriculum for your child that demonstrates your values. For example, you can have him read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography or teach him about Thomas Alva Edison in order to promote hard work and persistence, or you can show him to respect all faiths by having him learn about each one.
Rounding Out Your Child’s Homeschool Education
One of the benefits of homeschool is giving your child the opportunity to pursue his own hobbies and interests. I find that homeschooling tends to require less time each day than traditional schooling. Usually, three to four hours of lessons is plenty, and your child can use the rest of his day to take a computer class at the local college, playing community sports, doing volunteer work, etc. It is very important to make sure your child gets plenty of interaction with peers and other adults as well to build the social skills, which are necessary in life as much as academic skills.
Literacy Statistics Need To Be Confronted by Parents
First, the most important thing you can do to ensure the literacy of your own child is being involved. Research on the effects of parental involvement shows a consistent, positive relationship between parents’ participation in their children’s education and their children’s academic performance.
Reading to children and also homeschooling are a couple of ways for parents to increase their involvement and improve their children’s ability to read. Reading to children should be done as early as six months of age, as soon as babies develop an interest in the pictures and illustrations in books. Keep in mind that every child has a different attention span.
You can volunteer at libraries and schools, in already-established programs or programs of your own, by reading to children the books they cherish and by helping them to read these books on their own. Even just an hour or two a week of your time can go a long way in helping improve the literacy of children in your own community.
In the end, there should be a long-term solution to the literacy problem implemented in our schools, but there’s no sense in waiting on the sidelines and expecting your local schools to take care of the problem. In the meantime, be proactive and raise awareness. With your efforts and the efforts of those around you, the literacy situation will be confronted. However, without your help, this victory over illiteracy is not guaranteed.
Ways to Get Your Kids Reading
First of all, start young. Studies show that reading to your child should begin before the age of six months, as soon as they’re able to enjoy the images and pictures inside of their books. Collect some board books, either buying them at the bookstore or getting some hand-me-downs from friends and family. All children have varying attention spans and you should keep in mind not to push too far past these limits in their attention and not force them to read, as children tend to dislike things they are forced to do not on their own determinism. Every child is different and sometimes it takes time for his interest in reading to develop and his attention span to lengthen.
Next, get your child reading on his own, but at his own speed. Studies show that kids are not ready to read at the same time. Sometimes kids don’t begin reading until six years of age, but with patience, he may still turn out to be an able, avid reader. Homeschooling the first few years is often a good way of ensuring your child isn’t forced to begin reading before he’s ready, which can leave him at a loss.
You must also set a good example yourself. I know from being the mother of three grown children how easy it can be to let your kids turn on the television or play a videogame or to zone out yourself in front of the TV. However, it’s important to show your children how much you cherish reading by taking them to the library regularly, checking out books for yourself, and turning off the TV for family reading time, where everyone can read together or, as your kids get older, read their own books separately to themselves. An environment enriched in reading is crucial in building an appreciation in children for reading and strong literacy.
The use of aids such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the internet is imperative. Keep a couple of good dictionaries around, simple children’s ones as well as more advanced ones, to help them learn new words and how to spell them. When they are reading about something they don’t really have much familiarity with, such as certain animals, show them pictures online or take them on a field trip to see what they’re reading about up close. This will make them more interested in what they’re reading and teach them how to teach themselves things, fostering a love for learning in them.
