Scholastic sponsored a survey of children's reading habits and released a report in 2008, Kids and Family Reading Report. The findings from the survey are consistent with and complimentary to our own in Growing a Reading Culture - Just for Parents. Some of the nuggets that support our own findings:
Kids like choosing their own books - 89% say their favorite books are the ones they picked out themselves.
Most kids say there are not enough really good books for boys/girls their age, and they say finding books they like is one of the key reasons they do not read for fun more frequently.
Parents underestimate the degree to which kids have trouble finding books they like.
There is an extremely strong relationship among the three dynamics of reading importance, reading enjoyment, and reading behavior.Kids are nearly twice as likely as their parents (26% vs. 14%) to say having trouble finding books they like is a reason kids do not read more books for fun.
Kids who are higher on one measure are higher on all measures, and kids who are lower on one measure are lower on all measures
For example:High frequency readers are five times more likely than low frequency readers to say reading is extremely or very important (94% vs.18%).
Kids who think reading is extremely important are more than four times more likely than those who think reading is a little or not important to love or like reading a lot (96% vs. 22%).
Kids who think reading is extremely important are ten times more likely than kids who think reading is a little or not important to be high frequency readers (53% vs. 5%).
Children who struggle to find books they like have far weaker reading relationships than other kids.
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