How to turn your kids into bookworms

Step 8: Audiobooks

Although I did love reading out loud to my children, before they could read themselves their curiosity and appetite for stories very often was too much for my vocal cords. It is hard to read for more than 20 minutes straight, and they would have happily listened to 2 to 4 hours a day. This is where technology came in handy: I started out by recording myself as I read to them, but this ended up being more work than I anticipated (being a perfectionist, I would edit my recordings to remove stutters and interruptions, then I started recording music to accompany the stories and it quickly got out of hand). Soon I discovered audible.com, which saved me. There are other places to get audiobooks (including CDs at public libraries) but audible makes it so easy, and instantly gratifying that it's hard to resist.

Here are some audiobooks advantages:

You are no longer tied down to one spot and can move and do other stuff (like drawing, bouncing on a ball or standing on your head). Most kids can't sit still and read for more than an hour or two, but they can listen to a book for MUCH more time if they're able to move around. My older son's record is about 10 hours straight. I forced him to stop and go outside, but  I was only able to do so after I put his book on an ipod and dragged him out by the earbuds.... 

Beginning readers are often interested in stories which exceed their reading abilities. By the time they can read "Good Night Moon" their interests have moved on to bigger and better stories. Audiobooks help keep them interested, and also help them improve their reading ability dramatically, especially when you give them the text to follow as they listen.

The performances very often add a wonderful layer to the text, and it's fun to listen together to one story, rather than having everyone buried in their separate books.

This brings me to a slight drawback:

Younger siblings are not always ready to listen to the stories older kids enjoy -- Harry Potter got a little too scary for my younger son. He would go isolate himself in another room and close the door, but it turned him off the series (and chapter books in general) for quite a while. If not everyone is enjoying it, resort to headphones.