Yes, parents, there really is a magic formula to keep your kids reading through the summer and beyond. The secret ingredient? You.
Research shows that reading during the summer helps kids minimize the “summer slide,” the drop-off in reading skills that non-summer readers experience at the start of a new school year. Troublingly, the recent “Kids and Family Reading Report,” a biennial survey done by Scholastic, a publishing and media company, showed that among kids ages 9-11, 14% read no books during the summer of 2018, compared with 7% in 2016. Among kids ages 15-17, 32% read no books last summer, compared with 22% in 2016.