Welcome back to another week of Literacy Musing Mondays where we are book lovers and love to blog about learning, reading, writing, and literacy. This week we have a special guest post by Corinne Rodrigues about how she became a book lover. She also shares an important book review for parents which includes an affiliate link which means if you use it to purchase the book, a small percentage of the sale will benefit her blogging efforts. I know she will appreciate your support!

 Also this week, we will hold our commenting contest so please read on. 😉

Becoming Book Lovers

By Corinne Rodrigues

With Valentine’s Day just over, it’s natural that I think about love and my ultimate Valentine – books!

I am always grateful to my parents who encouraged me to be a book lover at an early age. While we didn’t have money for luxuries, books were never considered a luxury in our home. My parents bought us all the Enid Blyton series, and any gift money we received from our uncles and aunts went to buy more books.

My mother started reading to me at a young age, and I was so book crazy that I could pretend-read at 3 years of age. I actually narrated the story word for word and knew when to turn the page too. Mom fooled a visiting uncle about how smart I was to be reading at that age.

When I actually began to read, I loved spending time surrounded by books. Being an army brat, we moved frequently, and I learned early to entertain myself. Books became my best friends. One of my favourite games involved gathering and arranging books and pretending I operated a bookstore!

In my childhood, Indian authors in English had not really started publishing books for children. It was from reading that I was introduced to various cultures, especially British and American, since they were the books we grew up reading in India. Thanks to Pearl Buck, Gerald Durrell, Joseph Condrad, Neville Shute and other authors, I was introduced to their version of China, Africa, and some Asian countries. I can identify with Anna Quindlen when she says : “In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself.”

As I grew older my reading of inspirational, spiritual and self-development books provided me more inspiration than any individual could. Books helped me pull myself out of self-destructive habits and helped me see the value of finding and asserting myself.

My love of books continues to grow in midlife as I now have more time, and consciously make time to read and review books. My Kindle is my constant companion, and I’m blessed that my husband is not jealous of it!

Today, I would like to share with you a wonderful book for parents of young children – Book Love: Help Your Child Grow from Reluctant to Enthusiastic Reader (affiliate link). The book is written by a teacher, a freelance writer, and mom of two, Melissa Taylor, who blogs at Imagination Soup.

Taylor is an award-wining educator and parent who knows firsthand how hard it can be for parents to encourage their children to love reading, especially in this digital age.  Her eldest daughter resisted reading so she developed strategies to gently encourage her to read more.  In her book, Taylor shares these playful, out-of-the box strategies as well as tips for growing a reader and assisting kids who are learning to read.

Just a few of the many helpful insights and strategies she shares include:
– The most common reasons why kids find it hard to learn to read or may hate to read (too boring, too tricky, too blurry, too “sitty”)-and what to do about them.
– Activities and product recommendations to facilitate letter recognition, rhyming, sight word skills, phonics, and fluency.
– Approaches for improving word attack and reading comprehension.
– Book lists organized by kids’ interests.
– Printable sight word flashcards and word strategy bookmarks.

Packed with practical, bite-sized ideas that get children reading and loving books, Book Love can be your go-to guide for reading help for kids.

Parents, I would encourage you to make the effort to give your children the gift of a love of books. They will always be grateful to you.

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – ― W. Somerset Maugham

Bio: Corinne Rodrigues is a lover of words, a frequent book reviewer, and a self-acceptance blogger. Happily journeying through midlife, moving from self-improvement to self-acceptance, and enjoying being herself, you can find more of her writing on her blogs – Everyday Gyaan, CorinneRodrigues.com and Write Tribe.

Commenting Contest

Now on to Literacy Musing Mondays! The official commenting contest starts today. The person who comments on the most blogs next week will win a prize of Terri Blackstock’s If I Run  and a $10 Amazon gift card.

To win, you must submit to Mary a report on the number of and names of the blog posts in this week’s linkup on which you commented. The report is due in her email inbox by midnight Friday. Also you do not have to be a blogger to win our contest. All Literacy Musing Mondays participants are invited to participate.  Her email address is marykatbpcsc45 @ gmail.com.  In the event of a tie, the  co-hosts will vote on the tieing entries to determine the winner of the contest. We will announce the winner in next week’s linkup!  So get ready and start commenting today. Come back each day to check for new posts. 😉

By the way, the top commentor for this week’s linkup is Gayl Wright.  You can find her on these social media sites: Blog, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Instagram.

#LMMLinkup Top Commentor!

Remember last week was our practice week. The contest gets underway tonight! Send me your reports by midnight Friday for the chance to win the Top Commentor Prize Pack as described above! Note: The contest is open to U.S. residents 18 years or older. Good luck.

On another note:   At the bottom of the post today is a MailPoet opt in form if you want to continue to receive weekly reminders when our #LMMLinkup goes live. Starting March 1, I will send my weekly reminders to those who have subscribed using MailPoet and cease sending them through my personal email. You will be able to opt out at anytime with MailPoet without sending me a request after March 1. Please opt in by March 1; so I can keep sending your reminders. I want to keep you up-to-date on Literacy Musing Mondays info.

Now on to our linkup. First let’s

Last Week’s Top Clicked Post!

Favorite Board Books: Part II

by Dani Wagner

Dani writes about an important milestone in toddlers’ reading development: learning hands on about books. Board books are a critical resource in emergent literacy and help create book lovers at a young age! Dani includes a list of really ground-breaking board books for your youngest readers. If you are a parent, grandparent, aunt, or uncle of little ones, you don’t want to miss this post. This post is part of a series; so, you my want to check out part one first: Amazing Board Books: A Mom’s List.

 

My Favorite Post of the Week:

10 Rocking Advantages of Reading Aloud (for of All Ages)

By LitMama

 

Now, it is time to link up to the Literacy Musing Mondays hop! You will have until Saturdays at 12 p.m. now to link up! So come back often.

Linkup Rules:

1. Include a link back or the blog hop button linked to this hop on your posts.
2. Link up the urls to your posts not to your blog.
3. Please remember this is a family-friendly linkup.  Although we believe in the right for adults to read whatever they want to read, we prefer to read wholesome posts that feature literature that edify and uplift families. We reserve the right to delete any posts that are not family friendly. We love all kinds of literature and genres including family-friendly inspirational romances, fantasy, or science fiction. We do not welcome posts featuring books or written with excessive violence, sexual content, or cursing. These posts will be deleted.
4. We also want to be loving community by supporting one another. Please make a point to do this this week! Visit the two posts before yours and at least one other blogger’s post of your choice! I want to see lots of clicks on everyone’s posts. I know as a blogger, you know how it feels not receive comments, right. 🙂 Remember it is also nice to follow them on their social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
5. Follow your hosts and co-hosts on their social media.
6. Tweet about the link up too.

[tweetthis]Come join the fun! Link up your family-friendly, book- or literacy-related posts at #LMMLinkup ![/tweetthis]

Remember to share any ideas you have to improve the Literacy Musing Mondays community in the comments section below. We can’t wait to read your input!

Linking up the great linkups listed on my Linkup Parties page. I updated it this week so be sure to check it out!