Introduction: Benefits of Adults Reading Children’s Books
Adults reading children’s books? And that’s a reasonable question. Before I attempt to present some of the benefits of adults reading children’s books, there is something that I’d like to talk about first. Regular readers know that I am hosting the Read the World Extreme Reading Challenge.
The two main objectives of the extreme reading challenge are for participants to develop cultural sensitivity, as well as career resilience. They can do this by reading broadly and reading diverse books. Reading fiction and non-fiction books can teach you lessons that you can use in the workplace.
Each month, reading challenge participants visit a country on a specific continent by way of the books he or she chooses to read, as well as read books to develop workplace skills. As the host and participant of the extreme reading challenge, in April, I decided to read the books for that month, as well as get a head start on the books for May.
Two of the requirements of the reading challenge are to read a children’s classic that I didn’t read as a child, and to read a graphic novel. I grew up in Jamaica, so at the time, I didn’t have access to some of the classic children’s books. Over the past three or four years, I have included many of these children’s books on my reading menu.
Have you read?
Why Reading Children’s Books Is Important
Celebrating Children’s Book Week – Children’s Books You’ll Fall in Love with Again
Important Life Lessons from Children’s Books
Benefits of Adults Reading Children’s Books
- You let your imagination soar, taking you to places unknown.
- If you are trying to understand a difficult topic, you can start by reading a well-written children’s book because it will give you a good overview of the topic.
- You get a better understanding of what children are going through.
- Research for writing your own children’s book.
- A way to interact with your children by starting a discussion.
- A way to understand why certain children’s classics have stood the test of time.
Self-Publishing Children’s Books: Adults Reading Children's Books
Besides reading children’s books to satisfy the extreme reading challenge, and reading children’s classics I didn’t get to read as a child, there is another reason why I recently read several children’s books. A few weeks ago, I attended a webinar – How to Write & Publish a #1 Best-Selling Children’s Book to Amazon in 7 Days or Less – that Jay Boyer led. After the webinar, I was seriously thinking about buying the program, but I didn’t feel confident enough that I could write a bestselling children’s book. Boyer makes a considerable amount of money each month in affiliate marketing from Amazon. He focuses on the boys 8 – 11 age group. He uses Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a template because the series of books by Jeff Kinney has done really well. When Boyer wrote his first children’s book, he did so with his eight-year-old son.
I bought the original Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Big Nate Great Minds Think Alike by Lincoln Peirce to get a sense of what a bestselling children's book is. Although I had a few chuckles while reading both books, overall I did not like either. I am an adult, but looking back at my younger self, I do not think that I would have liked them at that time. But then again, I am not a boy. I was reminded of a writer’s retreat I attended a few years ago, and one of the session leaders said that you cannot truly write about something unless you have experienced it. That means that as a woman, I cannot write about boys, but I could write about girls because I was once one.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1
Big Nate: Great Minds Think AlikeHarriet the SpyMatildaEdgar Rice Burroughs' Jungle Tales of Tarzan
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Your experiences shape your outlook on the world. Having grown up in a culture where discipline was a big part of it, I didn’t like the way the kids behaved in the books, perhaps it was a case of “Boys will be boys.” I felt as if the kids had way too much freedom to do whatever they feel like, and there wasn’t enough parental guidance. Interestingly enough, I also didn’t enjoy some parts of Harriet the Spy because for someone her age, she had too much freedom to do what she wanted to do.
However, there were a lot of things that I liked about Harriet – big ones are that she asks a lot of questions and is very reflective. I enjoyed Matilda by Roald Dahl because it deals with a difficult topic and the Jungle Tales of Tarzan because I got insights into what life was like for Tarzan before he met Jane. Although I didn’t enjoy some of the children’s books I recently read, I learned major lessons from all of them. For the newer books such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Big Nate, the books demonstrate that there is a lot more pressure for children today to fit in.
The bottom line is I don’t have kids, so I am out of touch with how children will behave today. Could I write a bestselling book for boys 8 – 11 years? I’m not sure that I could, if Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Big Nate Great Minds Think Alike are representative of what boys enjoy today. I had some serious concerns about how the characters behave. We've been told to write about what we know. But Austin Kleon, in his bestselling book, Steal Like an Artist, and I think it was also Alice Walker, who said, “You should write the book that you want to read.” I am going to think about that some more, perhaps I can write a children’s book for girls. One that adults would also enjoy.
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
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Conclusion: Benefits of Adults Reading Children’s Books
The next contemporary children’s book that I read, I will try very harder to suspend my inner critic to see if I will enjoy it a lot more. Perhaps by doing that, I will realize more of the benefits of adults reading children’s book.
